Brazil’s Cycle of Democracy and Punishment
Written By: Carolina Rassi Constantini
Brazil emerged from a 20-year-long military dictatorship in 1985, and since then, the country has witnessed something extraordinary in global politics. Nearly every president has faced prosecution, impeachment, or imprisonment. Fernando Collor was impeached. Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) avoided charges but was investigated. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was imprisoned. Dilma Rousseff was impeached. Michel Temer was arrested. Jair Bolsonaro is currently in prison.
It is clear that Brazil holds its presidents accountable, but many question whether this cycle is evidence for or against a stable democratic political system. Some argue that it is simply the healthy functioning of checks and balances—proof that no one stands above the law, while others argue it reveals a system so corroded by corruption and partisan warfare that peaceful transfers of power have become almost impossible. The answer lies somewhere in the middle: while some Brazilian presidents did commit crimes that warranted prosecution, there is certainly evidence to suggest that the opposition uses prosecution as a political tool.
Lula and the Impeachment Presidency
The Brazilian 1988 Constitution was drafted while the country was in a euphoric state post-military rule. It gives Congress a large amount of power to block executive action while limiting the president’s tools to govern unilaterally in any way. This imbalance means the executive branch is dependent on legislative goodwill. As a result, an intensely fragmented political system emerged: Brazil has over 30 political parties, and coalition governments are the norm. The presidency requires constant negotiation with Congress in order to achieve any policy victories. This fragmentation was partially intentional, however, as the framers’ main priority was to prevent the authoritarian concentration of power from occurring once again. What they got instead, as current politics suggests, was a system where governing requires buying political support through the distribution of ministerial posts, public contracts, or other “favors” that make it seem as if corruption is written between the lines of the Constitution.
Fernando Collor de Mello was Brazil’s first elected president in nearly three decades. He was elected in 1989 on an anti-corruption platform and then impeached three years later for running a notorious kickback scheme. His treasurer, Paulo César Farias, orchestrated a very brazen corruption network that, when uncovered, came as a shock to many Brazilians. At the time of Collor’s fall, the impeachment was publicly viewed as a victory for Brazilian democracy, a sign that the country was holding its leaders accountable after years of authoritarian rule.
The historical pattern, however, suggests that Collor’s impeachment also served to establish a sort of template. In Brazil, when presidents become politically weak or when their coalition fractures, the system doesn’t simply remove them through elections: it destroys them through legal proceedings that may or may not be motivated by justice.
Operation Car Wash
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the current Brazilian President, serving his third term, but was in jail just 7 years ago. Lula’s first and second terms occurred from 2003 to 2010, during which an economic boom lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty. He left office with approval ratings above 80 percent. Then came Operation Car Wash, an anti-corruption investigation that began in 2014 and implicated hundreds of politicians, many of whom were in Lula’s party (a left-wing party called Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), or the Worker’s Party).
Lula was convicted in 2017 of corruption and money laundering and was sentenced to twelve years in prison. He was jailed in 2018. The conviction relied on a beachside apartment prosecutors claimed was a bribe from a construction company. Lula maintained his innocence, but his imprisonment ended his candidacy in the 2018 election, in which he was leading in polls before the arrest.
In 2021, a Supreme Court justice annulled Lula’s convictions. He claimed that the judge who convicted him, Sergio Moro, had been biased, citing leaked messages that he believed showed Moro had collaborated improperly with prosecutors. Moro had also accepted a position as justice minister under Bolsonaro, the president who benefited most from Lula’s removal from the 2018 election. Bizarrely, with the same ease that one would flip a light switch, it seemed that suddenly Brazil’s most celebrated anti-corruption operation looked like nothing more than unwarranted political persecution.
Lula ran again in 2022 and won. A man who spent 580 days in prison returned to the presidency, and his administration worked hard to paint him as a victim of the weaponization of legal processes for political gains. Again, his supporters see vindication in his return to the presidency, while his critics see a corrupt politician who has become an expert at gaming the system.
It is still undeniable that Operation Car Wash uncovered genuine, massive corruption in Brazilian politics. It is also true that in some ways, it became a weapon used selectively, especially given its spectacle-like nature at its peak. In any case, the fact that Lula has returned to power is a very current testament to the Brazilian cycle of democracy and punishment and, in his case, democracy again.
Dilma’s Fall
Dilma Rousseff, the first female President of Brazil—and Lula’s “political child”—was impeached in 2016. Officially, she was removed for fiscal mismanagement, charged with manipulating government accounts to hide budget shortfalls. These “pedaladas fiscais” (fiscal pedalings) were technical violations, but they were also practices that previous administrations engaged in without consequences.
Her removal followed a constitutional process requiring a two-thirds vote in the Chamber of Deputies to authorize the trial, followed by a final Senate vote. Critics went as far as calling this impeachment a coup disguised as constitutional procedure, while supporters insisted it was a necessary process to ensure she was held accountable for economic mismanagement during a severe recession. The larger cause of Dilma’s impeachment was loss of political support, not only her violations. Brazil’s political class turned on her—again, as if switching off a light switch—when the Operation Car Wash investigation began ensnaring members of PT.
Michel Temer, her vice president and her replacement as president following her impeachment, also faced his own corruption charges. Congress, which had impeached Dilma, voted twice to shield Temer from prosecution while he was in office. He was arrested once he left the presidency. Charges were eventually dropped, but the pattern of prosecution held.
Bolsonaro and Polarization
Jair Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 partly as a backlash against PT’s corruption and the fallout of Operation Car Wash. He is currently serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup d’état and attempting to overturn the 2022 election (which returned Lula to power). Prior to his conviction, he was under investigation for attempting to smuggle jewelry from Saudi Arabia, for his role in the January 8, 2023 riots when his supporters stormed government buildings (similar to the January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack), and for allegedly falsifying COVID-19 vaccination records. The cycle continues. Each prosecution, celebrated as justice by the current president’s supporters and condemned as unwarranted political persecution by their opponents, deepens polarization in a country already deeply polarized. Each impeachment or arrest feeds narratives that create extremists. Brazilian politics has become a zero-sum game where losing power often means losing freedom.
Brazil’s cycle of democracy and punishment means that the robust accountability mechanisms simultaneously feed polarization and instability. The question this raises matters beyond just Brazil: Can accountability function in a system so riddled with corruption that nearly everyone at the top is guilty? Brazil has not answered this question as of yet, but it keeps being asked, one prosecution at a time.
Written By: Carolina Rassi Constantini
Edited By: Betsy Barnard