Ending Up in Pizza: Accountability as a Problem of Institutional Arrangement in Brazil

Abstract

Brazilians often complain that investigations of corruption by public servants drag on for years or bring few legal sanctions on the perpetrators. This lack of accountability is so pervasive that a slang phrase, acabou em pizza, is often invoked when investigations are inconclusive. This article investigates the role of four Brazilian public institutions charged with keeping public servants accountable. For analysis, it breaks the accountability process into its three component stages: oversight, investigation, and sanction. Through a study of six prominent cases of corruption, it shows that the weakness of the accountability process in Brazil is due not entirely to the toothlessness of individual institutions of accountability, but also to the independence of such institutions at each of the three stages. These findings suggest that institutional arrangements influence the degree of accountability, and thereby also public trust and confidence, in Latin America's largest democracy.

Accountability, Corruption and Local Government: Mapping the Control Steps

“…The few studies that have been carried out on this topic have repeatedly argued that Brazilian accountability institutions are unable to better control corruption cases because they are not fully coordinated (ARANTES, 2011;AVRITZER and FILGUEIRAS;2010;LOUREIRO, 2011;TAYLOR and BURANELLI, 2007;. These studies have shown that the Brazilian institutions of horizontal accountability are, internally, sufficiently wellstructured to perform their statutory duties; but there is a pressing need to create mechanisms of coordination between them.…”

“…On the other hand, there are scholars dedicated to in-depth analysis of the phenomenon, carrying out detailed case studies that highlight how corruption is a process immersed in complex human interactions, which do not allow comparisons that transcend time and space. It is common to see the study of major corruption scandals which receive special media attention in this second group (CHAIA and TEIXEIRA, 2001;TAYLOR and BURANELLI, 2007). However, by analyzing solely the scandals that received media attention, this approach fails to report on cases that are not investigated.…”

“…In the case of the Federal Police, it is empowered to investigate criminal offenses, but with no authority to adopt any kind of sanction. In Brazil, criminal cases progress in a triangular way: they are opened by public prosecutors, which depend on police investigations, which, in their turn, require judicial authorizations (ARANTES, 2011;SADEK and CAVALCANTI, 2003;TAYLOR and BURANELLI, 2007). The literature has reported a huge tension on this triangle, especially between the PF and MPF when it comes to corruption scandals strongly monitored by the media (ARANTES, 2011).…”

“…This institution does not rely on proximate institutions to pursue its own administrative investigations (SPECK and NAGEL, 2002), being empowered to make independent decisions on administrative matters regarding public expenditures. Nevertheless, its decisions can be challenged by other institutions with overlapping powers, and the accused can, for instance, question TCU decision by appealing to the Judiciary (SPECK, 2011;TAYLOR and BURANELLI, 2007). Given this possibility, the TCU has focused its attention on second-best, compensatory administrative sanction mechanisms in order to escape the weakness of the Judiciary in enforcing civil or criminal penalties (TAYLOR and BURANELLI, 2007).…”

“…These studies have shown that the Brazilian institutions of horizontal accountability are, internally, sufficiently wellstructured to perform their statutory duties; but there is a pressing need to create mechanisms of coordination between them. Furthermore, the Brazilian accountability web concentrates an enormous emphasis on the investigative phase and in a competitive way, only to meet with the lack of attention devoted to the monitoring or sanction phases of the accountability process -the penalties from the Judiciary are carried out so slowly that they could be considered virtually non-existent (LOUREIRO, 2011;POWER and TAYLOR, 2011;TAYLOR and BURANELLI, 2007). With those diagnoses in mind, in the next section I examine the six Brazilian accountability institutions under analysis, in respect to their roles and responsibilities in the accountability web.…”