Autocratic legalism: The first year of Bolsonaro's term.

Abstract

As facing an international context of rising authoritarianism and fragilized democracies by illiberal tendencies, the understanding of this phenomenon is important to interpret which way the illiberal project has influenced the first year of the 2019-2022 term. Jair Bolsonaro elected allegedly being on the edge of the traditional status quo - in several opportunities - claimed to be an outsider from the legal pattern and its rules. Thus, identified this posture from the elected president, this article analyzes the first year of Bolsonaro-Mourão’s term concerning its legislative proposals and in which way there is a tendency to legal authoritarianism. The hypothesis centers on the high power of the Brazilian executive’s agenda, which can be an instrument of a legal transformation. The objective of this research was to analyze if this agenda can be used as an illiberal instrument with an authoritarian intent by the executive power in the legislative year of 2019, focusing on legislative proposals from executive power in the same year. The research centered on four types of legislative proposals: Proposals of Constitutional Amendments, Complementary Bills, Provisional Measure, and Regular Bills. The chosen proposals were concentrated for their power on the agenda and its bills in the Brazilian context. The conclusion is that, in the first year of his term, President Bolsonaro does not use explicit mechanisms of democratic erosion, using instead, subtle forms of discoordination of a democratic order.