After Democratic Erosion: Institutional Resilience and Democratic Distortion in Brazil

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This paper discusses Brazilian democracy which survived Bolsonaro, but did not return to its previous equilibrium. Breakdown was avoided through a combination of contingency and institutional resistance: a permissive fiscal moment that ultimately proved insufficient, an international signal that a government born of a coup would not be recognized, and, decisively, a judicial-electoral response concentrated in the Supreme Federal Court (STF), the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), and above all in Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The outcome was neither restoration nor breakdown, but a redistribution of institutional power under distorted conditions: an executive more constrained, by institutions that are themselves less accountable. The paper asks what a failed episode of democratic erosion leaves behind. Three questions organize the analysis. How did the institutional response that contained Bolsonaro redistribute power among Brazil’s political institutions? What kind of democratic defect did that redistribution produce? And why should we doubt that the result is a settled arrangement at all?