Brazil: Corruption as a Mode of Rule (original) (raw)
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Political Corruption and Democracy in Contemporary Brazil 1
2011
The government of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva was affected by a serious corruption scandal involving its handling of its parliamentary support, its political party and its senior ministers in 2005. Accusations were leveled by the leader of one of the main parties forming part of the governing coalition during the president’s first mandate. In spite of this, Lula was re-elected in 2006. It is clear that although it is a questiona that affects the public perception of politics, it is not an issue that mobilizes voters to hold governments responsible and answerable to society. This article contends that, whichever the cause is, it is a consequence, alongside other determinants of corruption, of Brazilian political culture; it implies that corruption affects public ́s perceptions about the quality of democracy in the country. The study tests this hypothesis empirically, along with others derived from competing approaches. O governo de Luis Inácio Lula da Silva enfrentou um sério escândalo...
Political Corruption and Democracy in Contemporary Brazil
2010
The government of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva was affected by a serious corruption scandal involving its handling of its parliamentary support, its political party and its senior ministers in 2005. Accusations were leveled by the leader of one of the main parties forming part of the governing coalition during the president’s first mandate. In spite of this, Lula was re-elected in 2006. It is clear that although it is a questiona that affects the public perception of politics, it is not an issue that mobilizes voters to hold governments responsible and answerable to society. This article contends that, whichever the cause is, it is a consequence, alongside other determinants of corruption, of Brazilian political culture; it implies that corruption affects public ́s perceptions about the quality of democracy in the country. The study tests this hypothesis empirically, along with others derived from competing approaches.
Corruption in the perception of Brazilian society: persistence and resilience
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Political corruption is one of the most severe and complex problems facing new and old democracies. Fundamentally, it involves the abuse of public power for any kind of private benefit, including advantages to governing parties over their opposition. It thus defeats the principle of political equality inherent in democracy, as its protagonists can obtain or maintain power and political benefits disproportionate to what they would achieve through legitimate and forms of political competition. At the same time, it distorts the republican dimension of democracy because it makes public policies result, not from debate and public dispute between different projects, but from behind-the-scenes agreements that favor spurious interests. Despite the efficiency of classical methodological instruments such as opinion polls with structured questionnaires and qualitative research with focus groups, it is still possible to identify biases in the quality of the information collected on corruption. ...
Handbook on the Geographies of Corruption
In the first Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, in 1995, Brazil was ranked the fifth most corrupt -after Indonesia, China, Pakistan, and Venezuela -of the 41 countries surveyed. As more countries were added to the index, Brazil consistently ranged between the 45 th and 55 th percentiles (where higher percentiles indicate better control of corruption) in the rankings in the late 1990s and early 2000s. From 2003 to 2014, the country placed around the 60 th percentile, ranking as the 72 nd best out of 180 countries in 2007, for instance. In the most recent years, however, Brazil has fallen several places in the rankings, placing 79 th out of 176 countries in the 2016 rankings, leaving it back at the 45 th percentile. The most recent years of Brazilian history have revealed the persistence and pervasiveness of large-scale political corruption in the country, despite high-profile anticorruption initiatives undertaken over the past 20 years. In this chapter, we first describe the persistence of corruption in Brazil with reference to major scandals, statistics about the criminal accusations made against politicians at all levels of government, and information about the variation in state-and local-level corruption across various regions of the country. In the second part of the chapter, we describe the institutional innovations
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The anti-corruption struggle has become an international political doctrine since the 1990s. On the one hand, it has been anchored in organizations that promote ideas and models of "good governance" -NGOs, think tanks, the World Bank, etc. On the other hand, it acquired normative force in conventions of the UN, OECD and other institutions that induce changes in national laws. The mobilization of this doctrine in the Brazilian national space is related at once to the effects of political conjuncture and to longer structural factors. Since the re-democratisation of the country, legal elites have obtained increasing corporate and political gains. At the same time, the anti-corruption prescriptions have reinforced political and economic groups' discourse seeking to reestablish the neoliberal agenda of the 1990s. In Brazil, this agenda's central axis focuses on the (de)legitimation of the social rights enshrined in the 1988 Constitution, and of the social policies implemented in the last decades. Among these structural factors, we can highlight the corporate growth and the political credit accumulated by judicial agents since the re-democratisation of the country. Looking at international variables as a starting point, this article aims at shedding light on the links between Brazilian institutions and international anti-corruption initiatives. The results are based on the comparison of the trajectories of core actors in this process and the main anti-corruption initiatives of the 2000s in Brazil. These initiatives, paradoxically, have contributed to positioning judicial agents as central protagonists of a new version of the Brazilian authoritarian political tradition.
The political economy of corruption in Brazil
Revista de Administração de Empresas, 1999
This article is the first part of a research on corruption in Brazil and it is theoretical. Despite this, it provides an economic interpretation of corruption using Brazil as a case study. The main objective of this research is to apply some microeconomic tools to understand the "big corruption"�. However, I am going to show that corruption is not simply a kind of crime. Rather, it is an ordinary economic activity that arises in some institutional environments. Firstly, some corruption cases in Brazil will be described. This article is aimed at showing that democracy itself does not ensure control over corruption. Secondly, I am going to do a very brief survey of institutional changes and controls over corruption in some Western Societies in which I am going to argue that corruption, its control and its illegality depend on institutional evolution by streamlining the constitutional and institutional framework. Thirdly, I am going to explain how some economic models could b...
Political Corruption Cases in Brazil in 21 st Century
Political Corruption Cases in Brazil in 21 st Century, 2020
The Diploma thesis approaches the issue of corruption cases in Brazil in the 21st century. The first part covers a theoretical background of corruption, and description of international institutions and their anti-corruption agenda and instruments. The second part of the thesis part aims to analyse most extensive political corruption scandals in the government of Brazil since 2000; moreover, it examines changes in the legal framework and political environment; results of ongoing prosecution of high-level politicians, as well as the impacts on political situation
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This article examines the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism in Brazil. The study draws upon a review of the achievements and limitations of the federal administrations led by the Workers’ Party (PT, 2003–2016), and the political forces pushing for the overthrow of President Dilma Rousseff. In sequence, the article examines the economic drivers and the social composition of the right-wing forces massing against the PT, and their relationship with allegation of corruption. Finally, the article outlines the political process driving the election of President Jair Bolsonaro, in order to conclude that Brazilian democracy is disintegrating rapidly and, possibly, irreversibly.
Political Corruption Cases in Brazil in 21 st Century DIPLOMA THESIS
Brno 2020 iv Declaration I declare that I carried out this diploma thesis titled, Political Corruption Cases in Brazil in 21 st century independently under the guidance of Mgr. Martin Hrabálek, Ph.D., and only with the cited sources, literature and other professional sources of information mentioned in the enclosed list.