O impeachment (?) de Dilma Vana Rousseff

Abstract

Studies on political instability in Latin American presidential democracies have identified a new pattern of political crisis resolution in the region: the removal of presidents by means of impeachment rather than the breakdown of the democratic regime through military intervention and the establishment of authoritarianism. This new paradigm emerges in the mid-1980s with the advent of the Third Democratic Wave, marking a new stage in the comparative study of Latin American presidential system. In this context, by using the single case study method, the research seeks to point out the main institutional causes leading to the impeachment and removal of Dilma Rousseff. By doing so, I consider the following assumptions: (i) the grounds for the impeachment complaint resulted from a natural accountability process involving the interaction of both the vertical and horizontal dimensions, respectively the press and state oversight agencies; (ii) the impeachment and removal of the President is comparable to a vote of no confidence, thus being a functional equivalent of parliamentarism as well as a de facto flexibilization of presidentialism; and (iii) the political decision to impeach and remove Dilma Rousseff was the result of the pure and simple abandonment of the President by the ruling coalition parties located to the right of the ideological spectrum, namely, PMDB, PP, PR, PSD, PTB, PRB, in order to break the status quo, by removing the President, and carry out reforms of interest to the market, as outlined in Michel Temer’s government programme called “A bridge to the future”