Impeachment in the United States and Brazil
Why does impeachment seem to cause more collateral damage to democracy in Brazil than it does in the United States?
The British political system created impeachment. Even though it’s generally attached to parliamentary systems, this resource is also present in those presidential, such as in the United States and Brazil.
The political cost it takes to mobilize such a procedure is more burdensome in the presidential system. Added to that, we also need to measure the importance of the party system and public opinion on this issue.
So our question is: Why does the impeachment procedure seem to cause more collateral damage to democracy in Brazil rather than in the United States?
When one compares the different phases of the impeachment procedure in both Brazil and the United States, they are almost equivalent. In short, the process begins in the House of Representatives. In the case of a simple majority of votes, the process goes to the Senate.
In the case of a qualified majority of votes in the Senate, the president is removed from office. The same situation happens in Brazil, with the difference that both the House of Representatives and Senate demand the qualified majority of votes.
If the two political systems and their procedures are similar, the answers to our question must reside in two areas:
- The party system;
- Public opinion.
The role of political parties and public opinion
The impeachment case against Donald Trump was through a criminal charge made by the Democrats. They declare that Trump negotiated with Ukraine’s Prime Minister to investigate and collect information about alleged connections of the Republican’s greatest rival of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden.
The current forces contemplate:
- The majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives;
- The majority of Republicans in the Senate;
- The election race between Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren within the Democratic Party.
To sum it all up, the power relations are limited to the two parties (Democrats and Republicans), and the election race is limited to two Democratic candidates and a Republican one. So, the wins and losses in the impeachment procedure will affect all of them.
In Brazil, the most recent impeachment case was a criminal charge against Brazilian president Dilma Roussef, of the Worker’s Party. The voting took place in 2014, and at the time, the number of political parties that had congressmen in the House of Representatives was 24.
When we compare the Brazilian and American systems, some considerations must be made. In the United States, the setting of political winners and losers is precise. If Trump is removed, it will show the loss of the Republican Party and also the strengthening of the Democrat candidate Elizabeth Warren.
In the Brazilian scenario, the main loser was the Workers Party. Although the rest of the political parties were also affected in more complex ways, given the significant number of those who are actively involved in Brazil’s political arena.
To finish, we need to show how national and international public opinion interprets impeachment, especially in terms of popular trust in institutions.
These institutions are:
- Political parties;
- The heads of State;
- The governmental system;
- The judiciary system.
If public opinion loses trust in the political system, we can’t derive this only because of the impeachment process. It also derives from political history and the social creation of each country.
The fact is that no system can change this political heritage. Is the bipartisan system a better answer than the multi-partisan?. Even with the direct costs concentrated at only one political party?
In either case, political parties’ resilience is paramount, whether to avoid a trust crisis in institutions or to create new leaderships capability of recovering the dynamic between citizens and political parties.
(Written by André Frota and Guilherme Lazzari)
