The Brazilian Constitution in crisis (2015-2022): a loss of normative substance and selective effectiveness

Our paper offers a constitutional reading of the institutional and economic crisis that started in Brazil in 2015. We analyze the constitutional and legislative reforms that took place under the Temer and Bolsonaro administrations and the application of the Constitution. This analysis shows that a political change began that caused the loss of normative substance in the “transformative” Brazilian Constitution of 1988 and made its selective social effectiveness more acute. Critics who announce the “death” of the 1988 transformative constitutional project capture the revisionist neoliberal practice in recent years, although their statement should not be considered in absolute terms. What in fact occurred was not the abandonment of the constitutional project, but the selective ineffectivity of constitutional norms and programs, which affected mainly social rights and restricted redistribution policies while ignoring the constitutional promises of social transformation. Liberalism with its institutional expression in the separation of powers was maintained, but the progressive essence of the transformative part of the Constitution was emptied.