Impeachment ou recall político à brasileira? Uma análise sistêmica da decisão de crime de responsabilidade da Presidente Dilma Rousseff

Abstract

Following a long period of military dictatorships, Latin America has experienced cycles of political instability through impeachments, depositions, or forced resignations. Since 1990, 17 elected Latin American presidents have failed to complete their terms, with eight undergoing impeachment. This research aims to analyze the construction of legal meaning based on the legal argumentation in the Federal Senate's decision that condemned President Dilma Rousseff for a crime of responsibility. This study seeks to contribute to the debate by investigating whether the 2016 impeachment process can be considered a case of systemic corruption. This analysis involves mapping out the communicated argumentation to determine if it is linked to justification, validation, and the statements used to dismiss the President. Employing Niklas Luhmann's Social Systems Theory as the theoretical framework, this study aims to understand the extent to which the operation of structural coupling between the legal and political subsystems has influenced the construction of legal meaning in the investigation of presidential responsibility crimes in Brazil. The methodology involves a qualitative approach with descriptive-explanatory research techniques. Data collection includes an interdisciplinary documentary analysis of books, newspaper and magazine news for contextualizing background and relevant extralegal factors (external viewpoint), as well as oral records from the Federal Senate sessions, the adjudicating body of the impeachment procedure (internal viewpoint). The central analysis focused on the institutional communications of the Federal Senate from August 25 to 31, 2016, during the 55th Legislature, in the 2nd Ordinary Legislative Session, specifically in the 133rd Extraordinary Deliberative Session. This material encompassed approximately 320 hours of work, including 109 hours in the Plenary and 211 in the Special Impeachment Committee. These data were analyzed from a communicative theoretical-methodological perspective, enriched by the contribution of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The relevance of this study lies in analyzing how the decision-making in the impeachment process was communicated, whether it was predominantly based on the binary legality/illegality relationship or if there was a primarily political construction of meaning based on the government/opposition dichotomy. This work aims to identify Brazilian peculiarities in the studied constitutional phenomenon, aiming to enhance the democratic system.