By FRANCISCO PEREIRA DE FARIAS*

The leaders of financial-banking capital sought to shift the center of hegemony in the State apparatus, transferring it from the Executive to the Legislative

Political clientelism is a way of reinforcing political solidarity within the ruling class, since the benefits distributed (positions, funds, equipment) are signs of economic compensation, made by the hegemonic faction, to the interests of subordinate factions, in exchange for political stability. In other words, the bargaining of immediate material advantages for political support is the manifest aspect of intergovernmental, party and electoral relations; however, more deeply, it is the interests of the hegemonic faction that, to a large extent, constitute the latent content of the relationship between state apparatuses, party competition and electoral disputes.

International financial capital and national banking capital won control of the federal executive branch in the 2018 presidential elections. The expression of this hegemonic alliance was the economic policy led by Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, whose axes represented a radicalization of the neoliberal program: deregulation of the economy, privatizations, and monetarism. The adoption of a parliamentary and ministerial composition through client parties was a way consistent with this hegemonic policy, centered on the cost-cutting strategy, as it bypassed broader agreements with subordinate social forces that would mean economic sacrifices by the hegemonic interest ring, as was the case with restrictive environmental policy or expansive wage policy.

The tendency of these forces aligned with extreme neoliberalism was to minimize the role of political parties and social groups in channeling general demands to the State apparatus, opposing a policy of social pact or class alliance. The leaders of financial-banking capital sought to shift the center of hegemony in the State apparatus, transferring it from the Executive to the Legislative.

Since the leader of the executive branch in Brazil is elected by majority vote, he or she has the incentive to discuss strategic or national issues of government policy; in contrast, the proportional election of parliamentarians leads them to an immediate or fragmentary perspective on national policy issues, in view of the electoral return. The shift towards legislative dominance translated into a tactic of controlling the government's budgetary process, mainly through changes in the provisions of parliamentary amendments.

In 2016, in a context of crisis in neo-developmentalist hegemony (Boito Jr, 2018), the parliamentary opposition managed to approve the constitutional change that made individual budget amendments mandatory. This was the first step in a path that aimed to remove political control of the budgetary process from the Executive.

It is worth noting that since 2000, Senator Antônio Carlos Magalhães had been proposing to make individual parliamentary amendments mandatory. However, this proposal had not been put on the agenda because the neo-developmentalist coalition, which was the guarantor of a policy of broader agreements, was committed to the provisions of collective amendments (bench, committees). During the Lula II government (2007-2010), the weight of collective amendments in discretionary spending was on average 60%; during the Bolsonaro government (3-2019), the average of these amendments was 2022% (Faria, 28).

In 2019, Constitutional Amendments 100 and 102 approved, respectively, the mandatory nature of budget amendments by state benches and the mandatory execution of discretionary primary expenses, which are mainly investments. In addition, the National Congress made amendments by the standing committees of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies mandatory and extended the role of the general rapporteur in the budget process. Finally, still in 2019, Constitutional Amendment 105 was approved, establishing special transfers or transfers with a defined purpose, which did not depend on an agreement or contract with the beneficiary entity, allowing the parliamentarian to donate to the municipality of his choice, without specific destination and without oversight by the Federal Court of Auditors, up to half the value of his budget amendments. This explains why the expenditures of individual amendments in the federal budget have exceeded those of collective amendments throughout the Bolsonaro government, reversing the trend of the Lula and Dilma governments.

However, the mechanism through which the legislative branch has made the most progress in political control of the budget process has been the powers of the rapporteur-general to the government budget. In 2020, the Primary Result identifier was established to discriminate the amendments of the rapporteur-general (RP-9). By triangulating this mechanism with the constitutional norms and the rules of procedure, in practice the amendment of the rapporteur-general becomes almost mandatory, with the regulation of the possibility of indicating the beneficiaries and the order of priorities of such amendments. This results in the exponential growth of the amount of resources of the rapporteur-general's amendments: if during the Lula I and II governments, a total of R$25 billion and R$30 billion were applied, respectively; in the Bolsonaro government, this total reached R$93,2 billion.

It is understandable that, in a context of democratic limitations, in which hegemonic forces tend to emphasize clientelistic parties and local or parochial interests, there is an increase in the budget for individual amendments, to the detriment of collective amendments. And more important in this individualistic tactic is the concentration of resources in the amendments of the general rapporteur, who is normally subordinate to the president of the Federal Chamber.

However, conflict within the governing coalition was not excluded, which in the Bolsonaro government controlled both the Executive and the Legislative branches, promoting the interests of large financial-banking capital with a relative balance of powers or a low level of conflict, although the tendency was for the Legislative branch to dominate. Given the advance of the National Congress, that is, the direct representatives (financed by electoral campaigns) of the hegemonic alliance in the budget process, it was predictable that there would be a reaction from the Executive branch, its indirect representatives (related to career civil servants). One manifestation of this was the ruling by the STF of the unconstitutionality of the general rapporteur amendment in December 2022. But there was no return to status quo previous in terms of the Executive's budgetary prerogatives, with the scenario of limitation of its budgetary attributions remaining; what was done was to prevent the continuity of the new “composition tool” of the governing coalition (RP-9), developed and implemented from the Legislative (Faria, 2023).

In a context of relative consolidation of democracy in the 1990s, when hegemonic forces, defenders of moderate neoliberalism, did not oppose the democratic regime, giving importance to political parties and social groups, there was a low rate of individual amendments and a low correlation between the implementation of individual amendments and the votes of parliamentarians on government projects (Figueiredo; Limongi, 2005). The development of a strong party system can mitigate budgetary electoral cycles, particularly in a majoritarian electoral system, by redirecting legislative competition towards the most strategic issues for the country's development.

However, it is possible to hypothesize that, in this context of neoliberal politics and democratic stability, the power of clientelist bargaining has shifted from individual amendments to collective amendments, expressing a sophistication of clientelist practices. As one analyst observes, the great advantage of collective amendments, which were designed to serve the greater interests of states, regions or sectoral committees, would supposedly be that they were free from ulterior motives [sic.!], since they would have to be the object of formal negotiation between groups of parliamentarians (with minimum quorum requirements). Unfortunately, over time, collective amendments began to suffer from the same problems as individual amendments (Tollini, 2008, p. 218).

It is predictable that the ruling coalition would use the increase in parliamentary amendments in the federal budget as a means of strengthening its political cohesion, despite rhetoric to the contrary. President Jair Bolsonaro denied that the increase in the release of parliamentary amendments was a practice of “old politics”: “everything that is released is in the budget. (…) Nothing was invented, there is no backdoor, there is no hidden conversation anywhere, everything is in light of the legislation” (Economic value,12\07\2019).

There is also a discourse of criminalizing political clientelism, trying to distance oneself from a practice that is inherent to capitalist democracies. But what is actually being tried to hide is the conduct of regression to the individualistic forms of this political bargaining, expressed in individual parliamentary amendments and special transfers that do not depend on a specific destination and in the amendments of the general rapporteur. One effect of this is a change in the role of the legislature in defining public policies, focusing on short-term priorities and goals and fragmentary measures, whose electoral returns may be greater.

A concrete manifestation of this political tendency was announced in a report by the Jornal The State of S. Paul, in May 2021, referring to the case of the rapporteur-general's amendments, nicknamed the “secret budget”:

Secretly, these extra resources were concentrated in a group of members of parliament. This is money that is separate from the traditional individual amendments that all members of Congress are entitled to, whether allies or opponents. […] In the North Region, the city of Santana was the one that benefited most from the secret budget. At the request of Senator Davi Alcolumbre (DEM-AP), the city signed a contract to transfer R$95,7 million for paving streets that would have been destined for Macapá if ​​his brother, Josiel Alcolumbre (DEM), had won the election for mayor of the capital of Amapá. According to sources, in order not to boost the term of office of the family's adversary, Alcolumbre redirected the investment.

Despite its discourse on “new politics,” which in practice could mean opposition to clientelist politics, the Bolsonaro government responded specifically to the hallmark of governability, which is parliamentary and ministerial coalitions. Having become president of the Chamber of Deputies, the government bloc received ten deputy leaders in the House, including ten different parties, and granted a client party, the Progressive Party, the leadership of the government in the Chamber and, subsequently, to this same party, the Ministry of the Civil House, the main ministry for articulation and negotiation between the Executive and the other branches of the State apparatus. On the other hand, the Ministry of Communications was reinstated and handed over to another client party, the Social Democratic Party; and several other small parties that make up the so-called Centrão, bringing together party blocs considered pragmatic, gained positions in the second and third tiers of the Ministries or Federal Executive Agencies (Amaral, 2021).

The Bolsonarist coalition practiced clientelism as an attempt to return to the system of “personal loyalties”, typical of the old agrarian oligarchies (Leal, 1975). However, in place of these traditional oligarchies, which disappeared with the penetration of capitalism in the countryside, the political cadres of origin rose in a kind of the lump bourgeoisie (land traders, militias, religious companies, etc.), which multiplied in clientelist party legends.

* Francisco Pereira de Farias He is a professor at the Department of Social Sciences at the Federal University of Piauí. Author, among other books, of Reflections on the political theory of the young Poulantzas (1968-1974) (anti-capital fights).

References

AMARAL, OE Political parties and the Bolsonaro Government. In: AVRITZER, L.; KERCHE, F.; MARONA, M. (org.).  Bolsonaro government: democratic regression and political degradation. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2021.

BOITO JR, A. Reform and political crisis in Brazil: class conflicts in PT governments. Campinas: Unicamp; São Paulo: Unesp, 2018.

FARIA, RO Parliamentary amendments and the budget process in coalition presidentialism. 2023. Thesis (Doctorate in Law) – Postgraduate Program in Economic, Financial and Tax Law at the University of São Paulo.

TOLLINI, HM Improving relations between the Executive Branch and the National Congress in the budget preparation and execution processes. ASLEGIS Notebooks, no. 34, 2008, p. 213-236.

ECONOMIC VALUE,12\07\2019.

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