RevDem Podcast · Review of Democracy

How Courts Can Hold Authoritarian Leaders Accountable

·42 min·2 clips

Bolsonaro used executive aggrandizement and electoral manipulation to build a self-coup pathway.

Gabriel Pereira opens with a question at the center of contemporary democratic politics. The episode asks how elected leaders can erode democracy from inside the system, and whether democratic institutions can actually hold them to account. Brazil is the main example. After the failed attempt to overturn the 2022 election result, former President Jair Bolsonaro was prosecuted and barred from office. That outcome raises the bigger question of when legal institutions can confront leaders who challenge democratic rules. Pereira is joined by Luciano da Rosa and Manuel Guerque, the authors of the Journal of Democracy article that frames the discussion. The conversation stays close to Brazil's high courts and their response to Bolsonaro over four years in office. A large part of it is about traditional judicial review. The court annulled presidential orders that sought to replace the head of the federal police. It also struck down presidential decrees that reduced civil society participation in public policy councils. During the pandemic, the court annulled a controversial decree tied to pandemic management decisions. Those moves fit the standard constitutional role of courts. The episode then shifts to the more disputed part of the story. The Supreme Federal Court used its broad criminal jurisdiction to self-initiate criminal proceedings. That allowed it to open investigations without relying on the prosecutor general appointed by Bolsonaro. The discussion makes clear how unusual that move was. The court relied on its internal rules and bylaws, including a provision that appears to have been invoked for the first time. Those inquiries expanded into high-profile cases involving fake news, digital militias, and related allegations. The episode keeps coming back to the line between ordinary judicial review and a more controversial form of court action. Pereira and his guests use the Brazilian case to ask how far courts can go when democratic rules are under attack. The conversation stays focused on the conditions that let courts act. The result is a careful account of courts, power, and the difficult line between review and confrontation.

As heard by us

A careful case study of how courts can still matter when democratic norms come under pressure.

The episode centers on how elected leaders can hollow out democracy and how institutions answer back, with Brazil giving that question real force.

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Why you'd press play

You want a clear look at how courts can confront an elected leader who bends the rules.

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