Reforming in a democratic vacuum: the authoritarian neoliberalism of the Temer administration from 2016 to 2018

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses the political processes surrounding the implementation of a neoliberal economic agenda by the Brazilian President, Michel Temer’s government, from 2016 to 2018. With its point of departure in the literature on authoritarian neoliberalism, the paper argues that the impeachment of the democratically elected President, Dilma Rousseff, led to a ‘democratic vacuum’ in which neoliberal reforms were instituted on a fragile mandate of elite support. The processes defining the approval of the public spending ceiling, labour reform, and the failed attempt at pension reform are analysed as an expression of authoritarian governance through the insulation of policy-making from wider public scrutiny. In the Brazilian case, these policies were pursued within a formally normal institutional context, which nonetheless was characterized by a lack of democratic legitimacy and electoral accountability.