5th International Conference on Public Policy Barcelona, 2021 T02P09 / Advancing Research on Policy Dismantling

Systemic policy dismantling in under Bolsonaro: Coalition politics, underlying ideas, and emerging discourses

Carolina Milhorance1

Abstract:

Despite increasing accounts of policy dismantling and discontinuation processes, most case studies examined in literature followed concealed and omitted forms of dismantling. This contrasts with the systemic dismantling unfolding in Brazil since the beginning of the Bolsonaro administration in 2018. Drawing on a review of the literature on the Brazilian case, this study identifies the origins and mechanisms of policy change common to different sectors. A particular emphasis is placed on rural development, land, social protection, environment, and protection of indigenous peoples. The limitations in the dismantling literature are highlighted, particularly regarding the unclear theoretical premises of change. The study argues that the role of ideas and discourses, and the politics of coalition building, are often overlooked in dismantling studies. It shows that the dismantling for some policy fields may be traced from the early , as the means of policy implementation change; however, a more active interest in reviewing the goals of public policies is observed in the late 2000s. This reflected the renewed articulation of conservative coalitions tied together by populist rhetoric. Keywords: Policy dismantling; Brazil; policy change; far-right

1 Researcher at the Center for International Development and Agricultural Research (CIRAD), Environments and Societies Department, Art-Dev Research Unit. - Montpellier, France. Email: [email protected], Publications: www.researchgate.net/profile/Carolina-Milhorance; https://twitter.com/MilhoranceCarol.

1 1. Introduction

Policy dismantling and rupture processes have traditionally been addressed in policy studies. Welfare-state retrenchment and the weakening of social policies are common subjects for institutionalist scholars (Pierson, 1994). Recent studies have analyzed the regression of democratic institutions in and the (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018). A comprehensive framework for analyzing the mechanisms, causes, and outputs of policy dismantling was provided by Bauer et al. (2012). These authors argued that the distribution of the costs and benefits of dismantling define the strategies and stages of this process. Consequently, most case studies examined with this framework followed concealed and omitted forms of dismantling.

This contrasts with the process currently unfolding in Brazil. Since mid-2010, the country has been regressed in terms of several public policies; however, this process featured a compelling and systemic approach since the beginning of the far-right Bolsonaro administration in 2018. Several internationally renowned policies in distinct fields, such as food and nutritional security, poverty reduction, territorial development, and deforestation control, have been targeted (Milhorance, 2018; Sabourin, Grisa, et al., 2020; Sabourin & Grisa, 2018). Although some dismantling stages partially originate from initially obscured choices and reduction in public spending during the tenure of Workers’ Party President Rousseff, it has now become a fundamental government strategy. This major change in national politics has been followed by an increasing interest by scholars and analysts, and there is growing literature in the field (Barcelos, 2020; Barbosa et al., 2021; Fernandes et al., 2017; Granemann, 2016; Macambira, 2020; Sabourin, Craviotti, et al., 2020; Sabourin, Grisa, et al., 2020). However, most studies focus on specific sectors and fail to address the dismantling process from a systemic lens and to place it in the context of a major political shift.

Drawing on a review of the emerging literature on the Brazilian case, this study proposes a first attempt to identify some of the mechanisms common to different sectors and provide a broader view of the current dismantling process. This is part of an ongoing effort to understand the consequences and breadth of changes observed in Brazil since the arrival of far-right political groups for the presidency. The limits of addressing these

2 macro-processes in a single study are acknowledged, and a particular emphasis is placed on interrelated policy fields such as rural development, land, social protection, environment, and protection of indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that several traditional policies for education, culture, human rights, and security have been also weakened.

This study builds on the understanding of dismantling as a category of policy change. Thus, it highlights some of the limitations in the dismantling literature, particularly regarding the unclear theoretical premises of change. Key elements such as institutional settings and state bureaucracy are captured (Bauer & Becker, 2020) and analyzed herein for the Brazilian case. However, by drawing upon policy process theories, the study argues that the role of ideas and discourses, and the politics of coalition building, are often overlooked in dismantling studies. The prominence of far-right populist discourses in bringing together distinct coalitions under a broader government alliance is also explored, along with the importance of the discourses in disclosing the initiatives which Bauer et al. (2012) expect to be undertaken through hidden strategies. The mechanisms of the resilience of Brazilian policies are addressed by delineating these emerging trends.

2. Contributions and limitations of the dismantling analytical framework

Until the early 2010s, policy scholars considered that dismantling and rupture processes lacked a systematic research agenda (Bauer et al., 2012; Jordan et al., 2013). These authors emphasized the criticality of analyzing the process and the extent of dismantling, rather than focusing on the occurrence or non-occurrence of it. This research gap was first addressed by Bauer et al. (2012) who developed a comprehensive framework for analyzing policy dismantling mechanisms, causes, and outputs. The factors leading to policy change through dismantling were divided into three types: i) external factors and prevailing macro conditions, such as the stability of the financial system, technological change, spread of certain ideas of reform, and unforeseen elections; ii) situational factors, which are primarily background issues; and iii) institutional constraints and opportunities, particularly those related to opportunity structures comprising the features of the political system (the polity). Moreover,

3 depending on the specific combination of factors affecting the preferences of political actors and their capability to pursue policy dismantling, hidden or disclosed strategies can be chosen (Bauer et al., 2012). This study mainly contributes toward highlighting the stages of dismantling and governments’ strategies to abandon certain policies, including strategies that remain hidden from political attention, which is often the case for EU-led policies (Bauer et al., 2012; Pollex & Lenschow, 2020).

An additional contribution is the in-depth analysis of the institutional settings preventing dismantling, particularly the weight of institutional constraints and veto players confronting policymakers. The politicians’ need to seek consent from institutional, partisanal, or other societal actors makes the dismantling process costlier. Therefore, the institutional—even constitutional—context influences not only the mode but also the concrete target of policy dismantling. For instance, the features of the United States (US) polity—legalism, based on distributed power and several checks and balances—has historically contributed to constrain dismantling and prevent “unilateral strategies.” This includes the role of state bureaucracy, which shows how political leaders—even populist leaders such as —are faced with an established administrative order characterized by embedded bureaucracies, institutional legacies, and path dependencies that constrain the available administrative choices (Bauer et al., 2012; Bauer & Becker, 2020).

Another series of studies focused on the policy outputs of dismantling by addressing changes in the configurations of policy instruments that may influence policy impacts (Knill et al., 2009). Barnett, Wellstead, and Howlett (2020) drew on the US subnational biofuel policy to highlight the mechanisms of dismantling by removing or adding policy instruments to a particular policy regime or portfolio to reduce or obliterate its effects. These authors examined the internal contradictions in instruments’ portfolios that can cause incoherence and inconsistency between the instruments. These studies indirectly address an important element of policy change analysis: defining the real object of change. In other words, prior to analyzing the strategies and causes of dismantling, it is important to identify the policy components undergoing change, such as the issues in question, structure and content of the policy agenda, content of the policy program, or the outcomes of implementation (Capano, 2009). Both policy goals and implementation

4 means are usually addressed in dismantling literature; however, the distinction among the policy components that undergo change is rarely stated. This concern is addressed in this study by distinguishing among the policy goals, tools, and impacts of change, as proposed by Howlett and Cashore (2009).

Despite these contributions, dismantling literature still faces some limitations. One of the main aspects addressed by this study is the need for a clearer statement of the theoretical premises regarding the factors of policy change. In addition to the factors of change proposed by Bauer et al. (2013) (e.g., external factors, situational factors, and institutional constraints and opportunities), specific patterns of policy design shape the distribution of costs and benefits to those affected by a policy (Gürtler et al., 2019). Thus, a key factor in this literature is the extent to which the costs and benefits of dismantling are perceived to be dispersed or concentrated across the affected actors. This perception is influenced by the type of policy and the organizational and institutional structures that characterize the political system (Bauer et al., 2012).

Following this argument, the dismantling of policies that are perceived to have concentrated costs and diffused benefits (such as environmental policies) would be rewarding for some political actors, depending on the strength of the interest groups bearing the costs (for instance, well-organized economic groups opposed to environmental regulation groups). Conversely, social policies perceived to have diffused costs and concentrated benefits are normally led by politicians’ blame-avoidance narratives. This pattern is aligned with much of the welfare state retrenchment literature; for instance, in the context of economic , politicians are “forced” to withdraw public funds from vulnerable beneficiaries (Bauer et al., 2012). Nevertheless, although the authors consider the spread of certain ideas of reform as a source of dismantling, we argue that neither public opinion nor the perception of the distribution of the costs and benefits of dismantling are objective indicators; they reflect political actors’ perceptions and are significantly affected by the institutional structures that obtain a certain momentum in a political system. We draw this argument on the assumption that the identification of factors leading to dismantling is an essentially epistemological choice, with certain theoretical concerns regarding causality mechanisms.

5 There are substantially different views in the literature regarding the drivers of change (e.g., ideas, interests, political institutions, actors, networks, and socioeconomic conditions). These have fostered a variety of theoretical frameworks that include, but are not limited to, the advocacy coalition framework, multiple stream approach, punctuated equilibrium framework, and path dependency framework (Capano, 2009; Hogan & Howlett, 2015; Muller, 2013; Sabatier & Weible, 2014). Previous studies analyzing the dismantling of Brazil’s family farming policies have already discussed the limitations of the assessment in terms of the perception of the costs and benefits of specific policies. According to these studies, the costs and benefits vary according to the political systems established, the socio-historical meaning of each policy in this system, their recognition in public opinion, and dominant coalitions (Sabourin, Craviotti, et al., 2020; Sabourin, Grisa, et al., 2020). Building on these debates and premises put forward by cognitive policy approaches such as advocacy coalition studies, we argue that the role of ideas and politics in coalition building is key to understanding the factors of dismantling. Moreover, we contend that political discourse is essential for dismantling analysis, particularly when distinguishing between disclosed and hidden strategies. For instance, in the Brazilian case, populist narratives succeed to bring together distinct conservative coalitions.

3. Emergence of a conservative wave in Brazil

Brazil underwent important economic and political changes during the 2010s. Andrade (2020), summarized that the country shifted from economic growth to recession, from left-wing to far-right politics, and from neo-developmentalist to ultra-liberal economic policies. Despite the initial resilience of the Brazilian economy to the 2008 global financial crisis, its effects negatively impacted commodity-export-oriented countries such as Brazil in the mid-2010s. Additionally, the domestic economic choices of President Rousseff and the governments’ inability to deal with increasing (and diversified) social contestation movements, along with the gradual rise of conservative groups of interest, resulted in a major crisis. This culminated in Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016. took office and replaced 13 years of the Workers’ Party progressive left-wing administration with a conservative-oriented government. This

6 political turn reached its peak after the election of the far-right candidate, , in 2018.

The governmental shifts in 2016 and 2018 opened the door to a systemic dismantling of a wide range of public policies, including social, rural development, environmental, health, educational, and cultural policies. A common feature of most policies targeted by this process has been their establishment in the democratization period and consolidation during the Workers’ Party governments, particularly during Lula da Silva’s mandates (2003-2006; 2007-2010). This study does not assess the stages of dismantling all these policies in Brazil; rather, it identifies the coalition politics, underlying ideas, and emerging narratives influencing this comprehensive and combined process.

Therefore, the first aspect to be highlighted is the delegitimating strategies that shaped the discourse favorable to a large-scale dismantling process. The conservative wave that ascended in Brazilian politics was partially sustained by criticism of state inefficiency and the economic crisis (Burity, 2020). This was radicalized during Bolsonaro’s election campaign whose promise was to “replace all that is in place.” In his discourse, the economic crisis was eminently moral, caused by corruption and attacks on family values waged by the left (Feres Júnior & Gagliardi, 2021). The support for Bolsonaro was diversified, although united by conservative views of economic or societal values and put together thanks to populist narratives. These included evangelical churches, concerned with conservative family values; middle and upper-middle-class voters and militarist groups, mostly critical of the Workers’ Party heritage and affected by media coverage of corruption scandals and increased violence rates; and economic groups active in financial markets, which supported Bolsonaro’s economic plan designed by Paulo Guedes, a liberal economist who had graduated from University of Chicago (Christophe et al., 2021; Feres Júnior & Gagliardi, 2021).

It is worth noting that although the notion of populism recently reemerged in policy spaces, each country has created its own unique historical experiences, and this notion is not a consensus in literature; it has been interpreted in terms of ideology, as a discourse, as a political logic or strategy to gain power, as a style of communication in relation to post-truth politics, and in light of transformations (Cesarino, 2020; Christophe et al., 2021). The juxtaposition of “the people” versus a threat of some

7 kind from an “other,” generally “the elite,” is a central feature of populist discourses. National identity is a determined source of exclusion, which is often defined through ethnically or culturally “different” individuals and groups, migrants, or representatives of religious or social minorities, as well as the corrupt or aloof elite. The political system, which ignores the needs of “the people,” is depicted as hostile (Christophe et al., 2021). Based on performances and emotions, the evocation of crises and threats is crucial to this discourse, and sophisticated communication strategies serve to spread the urgency of threats.

Analyzing all the origins and nuances of the concept is not an objective of this article; rather, it looks at the populist rhetoric translated by Bolsonaro to show how it was possible to bring together ideas and political groups not necessarily like-minded: economic neoliberalism, conservative societal values, and lawfare and militarist beliefs. Divergences exist among these groups; however, their coordination has been, until now, successful in promoting policy change through a systemic dismantling process. Some of the features of this process are common to several policy fields and rely on the ascension of the coalitions supporting the Bolsonaro administration, combined with equivalent dissatisfaction with the status quo. As stated by Laclau (2007), distinct social demands that remain unsatisfied by public power tend to develop solidarity links following a logic of “equivalence” between them. Analyzing left-wing populist waves in , the author contends that a common popular identity can emerge from demands not met within the existing institutional system that fosters criticism of the status quo. Common symbols and leaders appealing to frustrated masses contribute to the politicization and blending of heterogeneous demands.

4. The mechanisms for a major policy change

4.1. Decline of social spending and review of minority rights

The first feature identified in the Brazilian dismantling process contributes to the literature on state retrenchment through neoliberal reforms. Similar to other periods of world history, the criticism of the developmentalist state, as promoted by the Workers’ Party administrations, gained attention in Brazil as a result of the abovementioned economic crisis. Fiscal austerity measures were implemented by Rousseff in the early

8 2010s and reduced the scope of action of various policies (Sabourin, Grisa, et al., 2020). The ideas regarding the need for state reform and control of public spending have been considerably spread by distinct economic groups and attracted popular support given the media coverage of corruption scandals in the mid-2010s (Christophe et al., 2021).

Budget cuts have been gradually observed in several fields. For instance, Rousseff’s administration reduced public spending on research for environmental monitoring and the management of protected areas (Barbosa et al., 2021; Fernandes et al., 2017; Magnusson et al., 2018; Pereira et al., 2020). Furthermore, both the amount of funds and public coverage of programs for food and nutritional security declined, including the public food purchases from family farmers (Ribeiro-Silva et al., 2020). It is worth mentioning that these policies were traditionally promoted by coalitions involving social movements that benefited from the election of the Workers’ Party in the 2000s but lost space, resources, political weight, and legitimacy in the early 2010s (Niederle et al., 2019; Sabourin et al., 2014). Nevertheless, it is important to point out that, though Rousseff’s administration curtailed the implementation means of several policies, including social protection, family farming, land, and environment (Sabourin, Craviotti, et al., 2020; Sabourin, Grisa, et al., 2020), the goals of these policies did not change. The emphasis on aspects such as poverty reduction based on a structural approach, the universalization of access to basic rights, and rural development remained central to the government’s agenda.

Nevertheless, if the dismantling process began with the reduction of funds justified by the aggravation of the economic crisis, it was later shaped by voluntary and robust strategies as the political groups empowered after the 2016 presidential impeachment proceeded with a substantial austerity movement. In its first week in office, the Temer administration abolished the Ministry of Agrarian Development and eliminated or severely reduced internationally celebrated programs that were providing welfare to the rural poor, such as conditional cash transfers (Bolsa Família), among several other setbacks (Andrade, 2020). The approval of the constitutional amendment 95, which froze public spending on social policies for 20 years, strongly emphasizes this scenario (Ribeiro-Silva et al., 2020). This included spending on public education and the universal national health system and challenged the notion that these were people’s rights and

9 the duty of the state, as promoted by Brazil’s 1988 Constitution (Reis, 2018). The reform of the national pension system has also progressed during this period, although it was only approved by Congress in 2019. Therefore, an unprecedented regression in the national system established to reduce social inequalities and protect vulnerable populations has been launched (Laschefski & Zhouri, 2019).

This process peaked during the Bolsonaro administration, as the Minister of the Economy highlighted a single solution for the economic crisis: reducing public spending. Although to neoliberalism has historically been a common feature of left- wing populist discourses in Latin America (Mény & Surel, 2000), the neoliberal economic narrative was reinforced during the Bolsonaro election campaign by radicalizing the idea that reducing the state size and replacing state prerogatives with the private initiative was necessary to hinder corruption (Andrade, 2020; Feres Júnior & Gagliardi, 2021). As a novelty of this populist rhetoric, beneficiaries of social policies (e.g., traditional communities, indigenous peoples, and family farmers) were portrayed as the “enemies” of the nation, subjects of “assistentialist” policies, and drainers of public resources. Note that the establishment of affirmative action measures in the early 2000s to balance discrimination and exclusion provoked nationalist criticism (Christophe et al., 2021). Bolsonaro and his campaigners have made intensive use of new media technologies to depoliticize these affirmative action policies, and ending them was a campaign promise (Feres Júnior & Gagliardi, 2021).

Additionally, the policy actors promoting these basic rights, such as civil society organizations and grassroots social movements, have been criminalized and accused of illegally profiting from public funds. These included NGOs that were attacked to promote indigenous rights in the Amazon region. In this context, the objective of obstructing civil-society groups’ ability to implement their projects went to the point of weakening one of their main sources of financial resources to the country, the Amazon Fund. Managed by the National Bank for Social and Economic Development (BNDES), the Amazon Fund received donations of over US$ 1 billion from countries such as Norway and Germany to fight deforestation and foster resilience in rural communities.

Note that significant budget cuts were also observed for the agencies that directly supervise the Amazon Forest, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable

10 Natural Resources (IBAMA), and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio). In its first year, the Bolsonaro government cut 95 % of the budget for the National Policy on Climate Change; 26 % for the Federal Conservation Management and Implementation Program; 24 % for IBAMA’s Inspection and Control Program; and 20 % for Environmental Inspection, Prevention, and Control of Forest Fires Program budget. Some of these cuts involved discretionary expenses, such as buying fuel for vehicles to monitor the forest and providing lodgings for agents who combat deforestation at the street level (Pereira et al., 2020).

Similarly, special departments for indigenous health and indigenous special health districts were eliminated. These were key elements of Brazil’s health policy consolidated during the 2000s that was rooted in the view of social and geographical inequalities in access to public services. These measures sought to incorporate indigenous care within the context of the general population over the ascension of a discourse based on a so- called “universal Brazilian citizen” (Polidoro, 2020). The same type of argument was used to dismantle public policies specifically for family farmers. At the symbolic and discursive level, this process sought to homogenize the audience, erase the diversity of rural areas, and address the differences between categories of producers only from the point of view of farm size or scale (Niederle et al., 2019). The impacts of these measures include the high level of casualties from COVID-19 among indigenous populations struggling to access health care. Equally alarming was the sharp increase in violence toward rural people that followed the 2016 impeachment and consolidation of these populist narratives (Andrade, 2020).

Therefore, rather than a neoliberal turn, this narrative was employed to change the overall policy goals and promote an active dismantling of several of the country’s social policies, along with a review of the historical rights of minority groups and indigenous populations. The neoliberal narrative was applied only to policy fields that were considered beneficial to the opposition. Simultaneously, military spending was gradually expanded, including salary increases to compensate for military pension reform (Schreiber, 2020). As a reserve military officer himself, Bolsonaro’s support from military forces has been a key stability force for the government, despite internal disagreement with the Minister of Economy.

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4.2. Reinforcement of an extractive land-use development model

The dispute over the regulation of natural resources is not new in Brazil. Since the early 2000s, economic groups and business entities, particularly in the agribusiness, energy, and mining sectors, have been claiming for greater agility in the environmental licensing processes, the simplification of bureaucratic procedures and rules, more flexible agreements, and the “freedom to invest.” These groups have traditionally advocated decentralized decision-making processes and greater participation of the private sector in the regulatory system. Environmentalists’ concerns regarding the development of major infrastructure and resource extraction projects (i.e., dams, highways, power plants) in protected areas and indigenous lands have been highlighted since the early 2010s (Ferreira et al., 2014; Viola & Franchini, 2014). Moreover, the 2012 Forest Code lowered the level of forest protection under Brazilian law and exempted many rural producers from environmental obligations. For some environmentalists, this is one of the first examples of relaxing forest governance; however, Rousseff vetoing some items of the bill and the establishment of new conservation instruments, such as payments for environmental services, mitigated the opposition to this reform (Kröger, 2017).

Nevertheless, coalition politics and the reinforcement of these “brown economy” and agribusiness interest groups are at the origins of the gradual change which unfolded in the late 2010s. The power of agribusiness and other extractive-led economic groups has historically been considerable in Brazilian politics, owing to their substantial material capabilities, access to positions of legal authority, and a successful discourse that promotes large landowners and agroindustries as working for national development and global food security. For instance, a cross-party and strong political group called bancada ruralista is known to promote their interests in the Congress. The growth of commodity exports in the 2000s has been presented as a source of their increasing power (Barcelos, 2020; Lima, 2021; Pereira et al., 2020).

The prevailing hegemony of these groups in Brazil, including during the Workers’ Party’s mandates, has been a common subject in the literature. For instance, the ambiguous strategy of Lula’s administration in bringing together family farming and agribusiness groups under a dual agricultural policy—and its international cooperation policy—has

12 been commonly analyzed and strongly criticized by domestic and international civil society movements (Milhorance, 2018). Some political economy studies address the Workers’ Party’s moderate economic program, its neo-developmentalist strategies, and the difficulty involved in instituting a welfare-oriented regime within the institutional framework of neoliberalism (Andrade, 2020; Laschefski & Zhouri, 2019; Saad-Filho, 2014). Others contend that the age of finance capital leaves little room for pro-poor reforms, as the financialization of economic policies and the distribution of production across the world have weakened the bargaining power of workers and curtailed the welfare space of nation states (Sirohi, 2019). This debate is not within the scope of this study. What is studied, however, is the gradual change in the policy goals for land use and the regulation of natural resources.

The conformation of an environmental “self-declaratory” regulation model has progressively gained support in Congress and become one of the main policy agendas of Bolsonaro’s administration (Barcelos, 2020; Pereira et al., 2020). Economic groups involved in this process have promoted the notions of “simplification” or “loosening” of state bureaucracy. A key element in these debates is the “burden” of public hearings and social compensation for land expropriation (Barcelos, 2020). The Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, became the main sponsor of the deregulation agenda. An activist hostile to the preservation of natural resources and one of the harshest critics of the licensing laws, Salles gained international notoriety due to his negligent watch over the Amazon and for stating, during the COVID-19 crisis high-level meeting in May 2020, that the government should take advantage of the media coverage of the pandemic to pass more flexible environmental protection laws – that is, for occupying indigenous land and weakening the surveillance and prosecution of violations. An additional change in support of environmental deregulation was the authorization of more than 500 pesticides in 2019, most of which contain components considered dangerous to the environment and human health by the EU (Pereira et al., 2020).

Moreover, Salles is known for his unrestricted defense of rural private property, which in many parts of the country, especially in the Amazon, means regularizing logging as well as illegal occupation of public or indigenous lands (Sabourin, Grisa, et al., 2020). Another controversial measure was the attempt to transfer the responsibility for the

13 demarcation of these lands from the National Indian Foundation to the Ministry of Agriculture, headed by pro-agribusiness groups. The arguments of “unproductive use” by indigenous populations of these lands and the concern for integrating them into an economic development pathway were put forward as justifications for these changes. Pereira et al. (2020) argue that this was a clear effort to encourage the expansion of agriculture and livestock in public lands and followed Bolsonaro’s campaign promise to not proceed with the implementation of agrarian reform projects or land titling for indigenous populations. However, such attempt was denied by the Supreme Court of Brazil.

It is worth mentioning that land titling has historically been one of the more conflicting agendas in Brazil (Sauer et Mézsáros, 2017). During the Temer administration, the neoliberal management of lands reemerged in the policy agenda, including the authorization of the sale of land initially assigned for agrarian reform, while the rules for regularizing the illegal occupation of public lands were loosened and further facilitated by the Bolsonaro administration (Sauer et al., 2020).

This also follows the significant tension between the federal government and environmental NGOs, mentioned earlier. Based on sovereigntist arguments over the Amazon territory, the populist narrative of a “foreign enemy” interested in Brazil’s natural resources gained support (Sabourin, Grisa, et al., 2020). Likewise, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ernesto Araujo, reinforced this narrative by showcasing climate and anti-deforestation policies as part of an “international Marxist complot” (Watts, 2018). The chancellor was one of the main ideological characters in Bolsonaro’s government, making clear his sympathy for former US President Donald Trump as the main political force who could re-establish Western centrality in world affairs. Therefore, the shift from Lula’s South–South strategy, which consolidated strategic partnerships with Latin America, Africa, and the BRICS countries over the 2000s (Milhorance, 2018), was claimed as a key foreign policy objective. According to this narrative, the US president elected in 2021, Joe Biden, is a leftist globalist ready to impose sanctions against Brazil’s right to explore the largest tropical forest in the world.

Another major element has been Araujo’s troubled relationship with China, Brazil’s main trade partner, whose government was painted as an ideological rival. However, this

14 claim showed that the alignment with the US was centered more on the conservative values represented by Trump than on economic considerations (De Sá Guimarães & De Oliveira E Silva, 2021).

Several impacts have been highlighted from the dismantling of environmental regulations and land policies. These include the unprecedented increase in the deforestation rates and forest fires in the Amazon, the permissions granted to use a considerable number of pesticides and pollution, and the lack of actions to minimize the effects of oil spills (Barbosa et al., 2021; Ferreira et al., 2014; Levis et al., 2020; Sabourin, Grisa, et al., 2020). These changes have not gone unnoticed, as international attention has been actively attracted to Brazil’s environmental deregulation and attacks on traditional populations and their lands. The escalating conflict with China and the rising awareness of Europe’s consumers of Brazil’s agribusiness products regarding the environmental impacts of this policy have been calling for a more nuanced, less ideological discourse from the agribusiness actors by the Minister of Agriculture. This does not mean, however, that at the agricultural-commodity producer territories, the continuous attacks on environmental NGOs and restrictive environmental laws are not welcomed. The extent to which domestic actors will be able to reestablish their political legitimacy and build new coalitions with support from international actors remains to be analyzed (Capelari et al., 2020).

4.3. Weakening of democratic institutions and state bureaucracy

Finally, an additional element that is common in most of the recently dismantled policies is their embeddedness in a broader democratic politico-institutional framework. The establishment of citizenship participation mechanisms for the formulation and monitoring of public policies has been a mark of several interventions during the country’s democratization process since the late 1980s. Characterized by distinct degrees and outcomes, several social, food and nutritional security, and environmental policies have gradually become an object of accountability in consultative forums. Nevertheless, drawing on a security-led and authoritarian project, one of the strongest

15 measures of the Bolsonaro administration was to extinguish most of these participatory stances.

Through the 2019 Presidential Decree n. 9.759, most of these councils were abolished simultaneously. A major example is the National Council for Food and Nutritional Security (Consea), a consultative body of the Presidency of the Republic with significant organized civil society participation, and a resonance box of societal demands (Ribeiro- Silva et al., 2020). Other instances have been weakened, such as the National Council for Rural Sustainable Development (Condraf) and the territorially based platforms, created to coordinate policy actors and civil society organizations active in a given territory. These have been trimmed since the Temer administration, with a sharp reduction in the number of meetings, which preceded the decision to actively dismantle it in June 2019. Finally, the National Council for the Environment (Conama) excluded the participation of civil society (Niederle et al., 2019; Sabourin, Grisa, et al., 2020)

This process first relied on the argument of reducing public spending associated with the functioning of participatory forums. However, the eradication of such instruments reflects a major change in policy goals and the consolidation of Brazilian democratic institutions. The narrative of a “communist” ideological danger arising from the growing role of civil society actors in public management was once again mobilized. Another common argument, which was first observed in the early 2010s, is the allegation of irregularities and corruption in the implementation of programs involving civil society organizations, such as food purchases from family farmers and construction of rainwater catchment cisterns. The mid-term effects of these dynamics have been the judicialization and change in management systems, reducing the role of these organizations in policy implementation (Nogueira et al., 2020; Sabourin, Grisa, et al., 2020).

Note that politization of personnel or norms and reduction of accountability or pluralism of political spaces are particularities of populist discourses, justified by the claims to speak for a single person and to mold and steer the state according to these leaders’ ideological needs (Bauer & Becker, 2020). Nevertheless, as stated in policy literature, discourse alone does not define the effect of the dismantling of democratic institutions.

16 The robustness of administrative orders is a key element in this context (Bauer & Becker, 2020; Knill et al., 2009). This is also true for the Brazilian case.

First, Brazil’s state bureaucracy is mainly composed of career civil servants whose role has been key in assuring the resilience of several policies. In this context, military officers played a central role by assuming leadership positions in sectoral ministries and particularly in environmental regulation agencies. In 2020, more than 1,500 officers were estimated to have been appointed to the sectoral ministries, ousting technical civil servants from these management positions. The establishment of the Amazon Council, mainly composed of military officers and headed by the Vice-President, a General himself, confirms the militarized turn in Brazilian policies, partial capture of state bureaucracy, and weakening of participatory instruments. For policy fields such as family farming, the Ministry of Agrarian Development never had a stable body of civil servants, and most of its programs had volatile budgets, always subject to cuts and contingencies (Sabourin, Grisa, et al., 2020).

Second, the Bolsonaro administration’s inclination to govern using presidential decrees left the Congress and the Supreme Court with the decision of whether to accept some of the daily policy decisions and reinforced the gradual judicialization process (Vilhena, 2018). Despite the highly conservative Congress, parliamentary alignment with the executive body is far from automated. According to Avritez (2021), Bolsonaro won the presidency not as a political leader but as the leader of a political movement. His government was initially composed of a few politicians targeted by his anti-system narrative of a corrupt political elite. This contradicted Brazil’s traditional government arrangements, characterized by a multi-party alliance presidentialism (Vilhena, 2018). The option of only interacting with allies (e.g., public security, evangelic, and agribusiness parliamentary fronts) failed, and several governmental projects dependent on congressional approval were paralyzed in the first year of governance. Negotiation for budget allocation through parliamentary amendments and political appointments emerged as a crucial issue for political support; however, this option has also created conflicts with the economic group in the government, favoring budget cutoffs (Avritzer, 2021; Couto, 2021).

17 Third, the fragility of institutional and political mechanisms to contain the dismantling process is, at least in part, the result of a low level of institutionalization of public policies and participatory spaces. Most of Brazil’s social and family farming policies rely on federal resources and ministerial guidelines (Diniz & Piraux, 2011; Eiró, 2019; Sabourin, Craviotti, et al., 2020). In the context of limited funds, subnational actors in several Brazilian regions have consolidated new partnerships with international donors to ensure the continued allocation of funds to policy implementation. For instance, in the Northeast region, grassroots civil society organizations and state governments have strengthened their partnerships with the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD). State governments are qualified to receive international funds through concessional loans; however, these agreements must be approved by the Ministry of Economy. A US$ 25 million IFAD loan to the Ceará state, ruled by the Workers’ Party, was rejected in 2019. However, a new funding mechanism involving the BNDES was designed to prevent direct interactions between federal and state governments. In 2020, a Green Climate Fund project established a multi-state and flexible approach managed by the BNDES and opted to select borrower states after funding approval, which significantly reduced the risk of having the loan denied by the federal government (IFAD Brazil, 2020).

For civil society organizations, the international community has been a traditional source of political support and financial resources. In the context of political shift, it has also become an increasing alternative for subnational governments. The role of these governments in addressing global policy issues, such as climate change, is not new in literature (Anderton & Setzer, 2018; Setzer, 2015). Nevertheless, it recently became a key strategy. For instance, in the context of the 2020 World Climate Summit and Biden’s commitment to this agenda, the consortium of Northeast state governors sent a letter to the US Embassy in Brazil calling for partnerships on climate actions, in which the governors expressed their intention to expand low-carbon agriculture programs and promote environmental conservation. This was reinforced by a second letter signed by 24 Brazilian state governors, advocating for the need for local actions to tackle climate change.

18 Therefore, in addition to state bureaucracy and institutional constraints, renewed international alliances and funding mechanisms can also be highlighted as factors of resilience to dismantling.

5. Conclusion

This study analyzed some of the macro-processes driving the systemic dismantling of public policies in Brazil. By drawing on the growing literature of the Brazilian case, it was possible to identify some of the common trends of this process and highlight the contributions and limitations of dismantling literature. Policy dismantling was put in the context of a broader political shift and policy change observed in Brazil since the mid- 2010s. The study showed that the origins of this process for some policy fields may be traced from the early 2010s, under the Workers’ Party administration. This initial change mainly addressed the means of policy implementation, particularly through budget cuts justified by the effects of the economic crisis. This process then acquired more visible features and an active interest in reviewing the goals of public policies established during the 2000s, which reflected the renewed articulation of conservative coalitions tied together by populist rhetoric and anti-corruption narratives. Future research could further analyze this process drawing on policy styles or regime change literatures.

The theoretical premises of the dismantling analysis were clarified, with a focus on the elements of cognitive policy analysis, such as ideas, coalitions politics, and discourses. It was argued that the factors of dismantling (e.g., structural, situational, and institutional) do not clearly state their causal links with policy change; in other words, the theory of change sustaining the analysis of dismantling should be further outlined. For instance, this would unpack what Bauer et al. (2012) conceives as the costs and benefits of dismantling. The rise of populist narratives is but one example of how these categories of analysis should be nuanced. By mobilizing a correspondence of distinct social demands and dissatisfaction with the status quo, populist rhetoric complicates the notions of costs and benefits of dismantling and their connection with the type of dismantling strategy (e.g., hidden/visible). Previous studies have also shown that the perception of the costs and benefits of dismantling varies according to the socio-

19 historical and political meaning of each group of policies (Sabourin, Craviotti, et al., 2020).

Finally, the political drivers of policy change and resilience were addressed. A key contribution of dismantling literature is the in-depth analysis of institutional features of each political system, including the mechanisms of checks and balances and state bureaucracy. The Brazilian case shows fragilities in policy institutionalization and the ability of the federal government to neglect state bureaucracy. Moreover, this study discusses the role of coalition politics and the potential for new domestic alliances as factors of resistance, as well as the consolidation of existing alliances with international actors and the establishment of new funding mechanisms that can bypass the federal government. Last, the impacts of change, as presented by Howlett and Cashore (2009), could add to future research. The limits of populist and negationist rhetoric in terms of concrete effects have been faced by Trump, who experienced an election defeat in 2020, partially owing to the disastrous results of his management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly dreadful human impacts have been observed in Brazil. Although this case shows extreme circumstances and considerable outreach, improving policy dialog with citizens remains a crucial issue for most societies.

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