The literature on democratic backsliding offers conflicting assessments of democratic vulnerability. A central source of this disagreement is the failure to distinguish between illiberal rhetoric and illiberal attempts, on the one hand, and democratic erosion and democratic breakdown, on the other. Building on this distinction, we argue that democratic vulnerability to illiberal actions by elected leaders depends primarily on two factors: the inherited strength of institutions in constraining executive overreach and the degree of internal unity within the incumbent's party or coalition. While pluralistic party competition and a robust civil society can provide important safeguards, what ultimately determines how far illiberal strategies advance is the legacy of effective institutional checks on the executive and the extent to which an autocratic-leaning leader commands unified partisan loyalty. We provide evidence for this argument through a mixed-methods design combining a statistical analysis of democratic backsliding in Latin America from 1978 to 2024 with four case studies-Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro, Colombia under & Aacute;lvaro Uribe, Ecuador under Rafael Correa, and a paired comparison of Argentina under Carlos Menem and Cristina Fern & aacute;ndez de Kirchner - tracing the mechanisms behind successful and unsuccessful illiberal initiatives.

ABSTRACT Brazil, for many scholars and pundits, showcased the risk of democratic breakdown with the election of a far-right populist like Jair Bolsonaro. Against pessimistic expectations, however, not only has Brazilian democracy survived but politics has returned to business as usual. What can explain this supposedly unanticipated outcome? This article provides an analytical assessment of this this puzzle and offers an alternative explanation. We argue that both the diagnoses of Brazilian institutions and the predictions made were misguided. We explore the role played by the Supreme Court, party system, media, and congressional politics in restricting Bolsonaro’s illiberal initiatives.

AbstractThe received wisdom on executive–legislative relations in multiparty presidential systems is that the size of the president's majority in Congress is the key factor explaining governance patterns, particularly the president's legislative success. However, in many cases presidents enjoying a nominal majority have been unable to pass legislation and have faced institutional instability. The article departs from a conventional definition of divided government and focuses on the preference incongruence between the governing coalition and the floor of Congress. It argues that the ideological distance between the floor and the coalition is a key factor explaining the president's cost of governing (which includes factors such as the distribution of cabinet portfolios and budgetary transfers to coalition partners). The article provides an empirical test with data from Brazil that find that the greater the ideological incongruence, the higher the cost of governing for the president.

Governments face a fundamental tradeoff between regulatory independence and control. Attempts of interference have the effect of reducing the system's level of commitment and credibility. On the other hand, an administration runs the risk that the autonomy delegated to regulators might be used to pursue outcomes that may harm their interests. This tradeoff is particularly relevant when there is an alternation of power with the arrival of a new political elite with different preferences. This paper uses data from a 2016 survey on regulatory governance applied to Brazilian regulatory agencies. This data is compared to a similar survey performed in 2005. The new survey results turn out to be surprisingly similar to those of a decade earlier, suggesting strong resilience of regulatory agencies despite significant attempts at political interference by powerful presidents. The factors explaining the resilience of regulatory governance in Brazil lie in its broader institutional endowment, which moderates the effects of executive interference.

We show that Brazilian voters strongly sanction malfeasant mayors when presented with hypothetical scenarios but take no action when given the same information about their own mayor. Partnering with the State Accounts Court of Pernambuco, we conducted a field experiment during the 2016 municipal elections in which the treatment group received information about official wrongdoing by their mayor. The treatment has no effect on self-reported voting behavior after the election, yet when informing about malfeasance in the context of a vignette experiment, we are able to replicate the strong negative effect found in prior studies. We argue that voters' behavior in the abstract reflects the comparatively strong norm against corruption in Brazil. Yet on Election Day, their behavior is constrained by factors such as attitudes toward local political dynasties and the greater salience of more pressing concerns like employment and health services.

Voters may be unable to hold politicians to account if they lack basic information about their representatives' performance. Civil society groups and international donors therefore advocate using voter information campaigns to improve democratic accountability. Yet, are these campaigns effective? Limited replication, measurement heterogeneity, and publication biases may undermine the reliability of published research. We implemented a new approach to cumulative learning, coordinating the design of seven randomized controlled trials to be fielded in six countries by independent research teams. Uncommon for multisite trials in the social sciences, we jointly preregistered a meta-analysis of results in advance of seeing the data. We find no evidence overall that typical, nonpartisan voter information campaigns shape voter behavior, although exploratory and subgroup analyses suggest conditions under which informational campaigns could be more effective. Such null estimated effects are too seldom published, yet they can be critical for scientific progress and cumulative, policy-relevant learning.

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Brazil's experience in building a relatively successful universal health system was made possible by the combination of political incentives to serve poor constituencies, which made it politically sustainable; fiscal sustainability and the great extractive capacity of the Brazilian state; and the institutional capacity to run a complex decentralized system. This chapter argues that Brazil's Unified Health System (SUS) has faced two important challenges: finding new financial resources for the sector and promoting efficiency gains. Finding new sources of funding has involved unprecedented political costs despite the increasing saliency of public health in the public agenda. Efficiency gains are also unlikely to occur in the near future due to the recent deterioration of public sector management since 2012 and other specific factors, including the judicialization of health care.

This chapter explores the political and institutional factors explaining the dismal performance in the implementation of infrastructure investment programmes in Brazil. Rather than simply stating that poor infrastructure is a constraint to economic growth and productivity, this chapter focuses on the political reasons why the choices have led to underperformance and persisted over time. By factoring into the analysis political and institutional dynamics, we identify which interest groups are affected by infrastructure policy and which political actors are involved in making those choices. By focusing on the preferences and relative powers of these actors, as well as on their interaction in terms of coalition management—all of which are determined by political institutions—a clearer picture emerges of the determinants of policy choices and outcomes that emphasises the trade-offs, restrictions and interdependencies with other policy areas that are crucial given the ‘general equilibrium’ nature of those choices.

This chapter fleshes out an inductive framework for understanding stasis and critical transitions. The framework has been developed with a lens on Brazil, but to illustrate its wider applicability, this chapter applies the framework very generally to understand the critical transitions in Argentina from the early twentieth century to 2014. The key elements in the framework are beliefs and leadership, which interact synergistically and vary across countries. Because beliefs and leadership cannot be measured rigorously and classified, the use of the framework necessarily involves subjectivity and interpretation. With more case studies applying this framework, more general lessons on the dynamics among beliefs, power, leadership, institutions, policies, and outcomes that form stasis or development can be constructed.

This chapter examines Cardoso's presidency, arguing that his leadership was not solely top-down; rather, the Cardoso team coordinated other organizations and citizens to buy into the Plano Real. It argues that, first, Brazil entered into a virtuous path toward a critical transition, which was not inevitable. Second, to quell inflation entailed up-front costs and coordination problems that required leadership, which the Brazilians resolved by maintaining that social inclusion would still be given priority as long as it was fiscally sound. Third, new economic and political actors developed a stake in the reform process and formed a constituency that did not exist before: firms redeployed their assets in new profitable ways (as opposed to rent seeking) and politicians increasingly voted for public goods.

Public anger at revelations of widespread corruption, along with the rising cost of coalition politics, has brought Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff to the brink of impeachment. Yet the crisis has also revealed the strength of the country’s law-enforcement and judicial institutions.

Brazil is the world's sixth-largest economy, and for the first three-quarters of the twentieth century was one of the fastest-growing countries in the world. While the country underwent two decades of unrelenting decline from 1975 to 1994, the economy has rebounded dramatically. How did this nation become an emerging power? This book looks at the factors behind why this particular country has successfully progressed up the economic development ladder. The book examines the roles of beliefs, leadership, and institutions in the elusive, critical transition to sustainable development. Analyzing the last fifty years of Brazil's history, the book explains how the nation's beliefs, centered on social inclusion yet bound by orthodox economic policies, led to institutions that altered economic, political, and social outcomes. Brazil's growth and inflation became less variable, the rule of law strengthened, politics became more open and competitive, and poverty and inequality declined. While these changes have led to a remarkable economic transformation, there have also been economic distortions and inefficiencies that the book argues are part of the development process. This book demonstrates how a dynamic nation seized windows of opportunity to become a more equal, prosperous, and rules-based society.

This chapter lays out a brief conceptual dynamic to interpret the past fifty years in Brazil. Its framework rests on tying together the key concepts of windows of opportunity, beliefs, dominant network, leadership, institutions, and outcomes. The chapter argues that it is the dynamics of the concepts that led to institutional change in Brazil and in turn a new trajectory. It then discusses the important dominant networks in power, along with their beliefs, in four periods: 1964–1984 (the military years); 1985–1993 (the early years back to democracy); 1993–2002 (Fernando Henrique Cardoso's presidency); and 2002–2014 (the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff years).

The chapter explores the sources of the institutional malaise in Brazil under the Workers' Party administration of Dilma Rousseff (2011-2014). The malaise is described as a puzzle considering the overall good performance of the Brazilian economy and the improvements in poverty and inequality. The chapter identifies institutional and non-institutional sources for the malaise. The former includes the functioning of coalition presidentialism, while the latter involve the abuse of the social contract: the low-quality public services citizens get in return to heavy taxation and the misuse of tax revenue due to widespread corruption. The chapter's conclusion is optimistic because it shows that citizens are prepared to pay more taxes in return for better services. Moreover, the strengthening of checks-and-balances institutions points to a gradual and sustainable improvement in government's overall accountability.

This chapter discusses institutional deepening and the subsequent economic and political outcomes in the two terms of Lula and first term of Dilma. It also advances three main arguments. First, markets, as evidenced by exchange rate movements, did not anticipate the smooth political transition process from Cardoso to Lula. High uncertainty about a Lula presidency was the norm. After the initial shock resulting from the electoral results, Lula drastically reduced uncertainty by providing credible evidence that his administration would not abandon fiscal and monetary orthodoxy. Second, the new beliefs and institutions effectively constrained political and economic elites in their interaction, thereby enabling competitive processes in the political and economic arenas. The established political institutions locked-in and reinforced the direction of change by affecting the incentives facing individuals, organizations, and politicians.

This chapter discusses the factors, especially changing beliefs, that led to redemocratization and the subsequent institutional changes during the years 1985–1993. After the military government, the middle class demanded more inclusion in the political arena. To a certain extent, this happened with multiple parties, and only one claiming to be a right-wing party. Unexpectedly, the franchise was given to illiterates seemingly because the belief in social inclusion warranted it; the illiterates were not in the streets clamoring for the vote. The granting of the franchise to illiterates had few short-term, but many long-run, consequences. Moreover, the business sector was less open than the political sector, with the initial maintenance of import substitution programs. Business was still in the hands of elites with lots of regulations as well as ways to avoid regulations—for a price.