Methodological foundations of the Emergency Agenda, a tool for mapping the authoritarian agenda since 2019
BY ADRIANE SANCTIS DE BRITO, CONRADO HÜBNER MENDES, MARIANA CELANO DE SOUZA AMARAL AND MARINA SLHESSARENKO BARRETO
Democratic recession, authoritarian populism, autocratization: the current democratic crisis in Brazil and elsewhere has been studied in various fields of knowledge and called by different names. Facing the lack of empirical and conceptual tools to analyze the multiple factors involved in the current processes of democratic decline, which have intensified in recent years, LAUT has developed the Emergency Agenda project1. As its central object the platform has the Brazilian political-institutional junctures since the inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro on 01/01/2019 and aims to build a well-informed archive of formal and informal acts of public authorities whose actions that have damaged or put democracy and freedoms at risk have been mapped through research in the mainstream press and specialized monitoring hubs.
The project cross-references literature on “illiberal” democracies and constitutional erosion, states of exception and emergency, and the incomplete transition of political regimes, and seeks to bring them into the conversation, since the phenomena they describe are currently correlated and combined, but have not necessarily been related by researchers. Under this approach, which combines theoretical analyses from different fields with the observation of empirical phenomena found in the current Brazilian context, we have developed a way to classify the events that pose risks to freedom and democracy. This classification was never intended to be permanent and can be refined as the need arises. In this paper, we present the main references that have informed the construction of each of the categories articulated in the Emergency Agenda.
Check out the main references for the construction of each of the categories of the Emergency Agenda.
Acts that employ tools of constant authoritarian reinvention. Authoritarian manifestations that coexist with the democratic regime and affect democracy as a system of choice of legitimate representatives or as institutional dynamics that protect rights and guarantee pluralism.
Acts justified by tackling the covid-19 pandemic or another emergency. Under the democratic constitutional regime, emergency acts must respect the Constitution and protect the rights to life and health. Even so, because they create exceptional restrictions related to the health crisis, they require constant control over their necessity, proportionality and temporal limitation. In the long run, they demand attention so as not to become an anti-democratic 'new normal' beyond the moment of emergency.