Balance of Powers and the Proximity between Presidentialism and Parliamentarism: The Brazilian Impeachment Case (1988-2016)

In social thought there is one issue that approximates political theory, political science and constitutional law: the balance of powers between Executive and Legislative branches. Whether classical theory of checks and balances has been overcome, or not, the political and constitutional thoughts still struggle on that point. In Western tradition, one can say that Presidentialism and Parliametarism are casual techniques to institutionalize a system of checks and balances, a central reference to Enlightenment philosophy. The main idea in both models is to balance the opportunities, conditions and influences in respect of policy-making and its repercussions on institutional and on constitutional fields. At first sight, Presidentialism seems to fix a separation of powers system and Parliamentarism, on the other hand, a fused-power system. On another institutional level, while the President-centered model is based on the idea that the head of government is not politically accountable to legislature, at the Parliament-centered model, accountability to the Legislative Power appears to limitate the independence of Executive Chief. The article takes the premise that, in both models, one cannot govern without the legislature majority. This majority dependence may be seen in many Western democracies when migration law, economic union or political autonomy are on the line. In Brazil, since de Constitution of 1988, the loss of the legislature majority is one of the elements that might force the president to face an impeachment procedure. Curiously, in less than 3 decades, this kind of political tension was activated at least on two opportunities: Fernando Collor de Mello (1992); and, more recently, Dilma Vana Roussef (2015/2016). The aim of this paper is to identify gray areas between Presidentialism and Parliamentarism concerning to the critical balance of powers. For this analysis, the text initially focus on the theoretical approaches that make possible, or not, to figure out this proximity of models. The second section is addressed to Brazilian presidential institutionalization by the Constitution of 1988, and its public debate on the constitutional modification by Parliament. The final part compares the 2 paradigmatic cases of recent Brazilian Constitucional history: Collor (1992) and Roussef (2015/2016) cases. The argument of the similarity in the majority problem will be developed by nearing other governments, but focusing on the Brazilian case. The reason for this attention is explained by the fact that, although Presidentialism is said to be a non-politically accountable system, in Brazil, the impeachment mechanism is also a type of political judgment, in which one president has been already overthrown (1992) and the actual president might face the same fate. Still, while the Prime Minister has the legislature support, he can enjoy even more stability in power, even with his political accountability. By the perspective of loss of majority in Congress, the central thesis of the paper is that there isn’t a great difference between Presidentialism and Parliamentarism with regard to the need of majority in government and that the legislature is still an interesting key to conceive the balance of powers, specially in recent Brazilian Constitutionalism (1988-2016).