Four Years of State Dismantling - 06/03/22
By Michelle Morais de Sá e Silva
Since the very initial moments of the Bolsonaro administration, policy experts in Brazil and abroad have realized that long-established federal policies were being either questioned or completely undone. In the famous executive orders known as “revogaços,” (revocations) Bolsonaro extinguished hundreds of previously existing federal executive orders. Some of them were no longer current or relevant, but many were essential to sustaining important federal policies and regulations, such as those that created participatory bodies. Supreme Court Justice Carmen Lucia has recently recognized the extent of ongoing policy dismantling, evoking the image of a “termite attack” on Brazilian environmental policies.
Some may argue that the so-called processes of policy dismantling promoted by the Bolsonaro government are the natural outcome of the democratic electoral process. However, federal policies have not been the only targets of Bolsonaro’s moto of “we have a lot to undo.” Several other elements of the Brazilian state have been somehow challenged, weakened, or completely eroded since 2019, constituting a broader and far-reaching process of state dismantling.
The pursuit of an explicit agenda of state dismantling by the Bolsonaro administration has been manifested in what Cardoso Jr. et al (2022) have called “institutional harassment.” Such diffused and generalized process of institutional weakening has been observed in several areas of the federal government. Indigenous protections, human rights, education, health, culture, and racial justice, to mention a few, have not escaped policy dismantling and institutional harassment.
One of the less salient but most silent dimensions of this process has been the government’s open contempt for civil servants, mimicking Donald Trump’s backlash against the so-called “deep state.” In a recent research project on the federal bureaucracy, Borges and I have identified a pervasive climate of fear amongst federal civil servants, leading many to either leave their jobs, take temporary leaves, ask to be stationed at different agencies, or switch to assignments as removed as possible from their policies of expertise. Our research findings have been confirmed by similar work done by Lotta et al (2022), who have mapped the various tactics of harassment adopted by the Bolsonaro administration, as well as the possibilities of resistance that have been found by some bureaucrats. Unfortunately, our findings have indicated that, as much as some individuals might be willing to resist ongoing state dismantling, in the long run many give up and rather resort to individual “survival” tactics.
From a neoliberal perspective, attempts to reduce the state machinery may seem to be an expected part of the neoliberal playbook. However, what Bolsonaro has mounted in the Brazilian state does not fully conform to neoliberal economic principles—and certainly not to liberal political principles. Bolsonaro’s Economy Minister has been promoting a minimum-state philosophy of sorts, as it excludes reforms related to cutting back expenses on the military, especially when it comes to military benefits and pensions. If on the one hand civil servants are blamed for government spending, on the other hand military personnel have not only maintained their privileges, they have also occupied key political appointments in government, including the position of Minister of Health during the Covid pandemic.
In a country with rampant inflation and increasing poverty and unemployment, the state will be essential to support the population in coping with the results of an ill-managed pandemic. However, a once emerging economy and rising leader in the Global South, Brazil is now back to a stage of deficient state capacity.
Moving forward, the October presidential elections will put the country at a critical crossroads. There is a clear choice between further weakening Brazilian state capacity or reversing to a course of institution-building and policymaking. Even in this latter, more positive scenario, great challenges lie ahead. Re-engaging the federal bureaucracy will be one of them, as it is essential to any possibilities of policymaking and policy implementation. Federal workers, who have been alienated from the policy process for the past four years, will need both reassurances that the period of harassment has ended and a government agenda that motivates them to resume high levels of engagement with their work. All of this must take place, in addition to the challenges of figuring out hybrid work routines and a pressing need for innovation, diversity, and inclusion.
Post-Bolsonaro Brazil will need to grapple with how to simultaneously reduce poverty, face climate change, mourn Covid deaths, and deal with right-wing extremism. In the wake of the past four years of state dismantling, overcoming those issues will entail rebuilding a federal state structure that is now in shambles.
Michelle Morais de Sa e Silva is the Co-Director of the Center for Brazil Studies and Wick Cary Assistant Professor in International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Morais received her PhD from Columbia University and her MA from the International Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, the Netherlands. She is the author of the book Poverty Reduction, Education, and the Global Diffusion of Conditional Cash Transfers (Palgrave Macmillan).
