Over the past decade, Brazil has shown steady progress in transparency, e-government, elimination of the impunity culture, and e-participation. However, it still has much to improve on in terms of addressing administrative burden, regulatory quality, and press freedom. While neighboring Uruguay offers the best model for continuing what is already a positive evolution, the quality of governance varies wildly across different geographical regions. This poses a challenge for Brazil’s federalism regarding how to prevent the poorest regions with the highest inequality from falling behind and negatively affecting others. In addition, controlling authoritarian tendencies is also a challenge.
➜
See Brazil on Index of Public Integrity
Selected trends from the Public Integrity Index
Trends in Judicial Independence, Administrative Burden, Freedom of the Press over the past 13 years
A summarized picture of the political and social reality in Brazil in the last decade is: good efforts to control corruption that did not last long. Therefore, observing those trends together with the events happened in the country in the same period, with a special focus on the events happened in the last year it does seem like corruption is not an exception in the country. In this case, it is not possible to control corruption only targeting few outlaws and providing system maintenance, it is necessary to channel efforts into transitioning to good governance. One of the reasons why the latest efforts to control corruption in Brazil might have turned out to be a disappointment has to do with the sole targeting of the supply side of corruption, while the demand side, those who benefit from corruption, such as international companies working in the country, have not been targeted, possibly for being politically more difficult to do so.