CORONAVIRUS AND FEDERATIVE CONFLICT

How the management of the pandemic crisis affected the relationship between the union and the federated entities, through authoritary populism, in the peripheral constitutional context of Brazil

Abstract

The present study intends to observe how, during the pandemic period of the new coronavirus, the advance of authoritarian populism in the Brazilian political system produced shocks, to the point of affecting the legal system, especially with regard to the relationship between federated entities and central power. Through the use of concepts, derived from political theory about populism, as well as through the appeal to the theory of autopoietic social systems, applied to constitutional theory, in addition to the application of modern theories about federalism, it is demonstrated that the federative conflict , as a product of the mistakes and divergences between the federal government and the state governors, in the management of the public health crisis, resulting from the contagion and hospital admissions of a pandemic virus, has its basis in populist attacks, under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, as a trace of his way of governing. Such methodological approach is justified by the observation, during the pandemic, of initiatives aimed at a political instrumentalization of the constitutional text, to the point of compromising the effectiveness of the rules that deal with the competences of the federated entities. Therefore, we seek to demonstrate that such a conflict undoubtedly deepens the intensification of the crisis in the Brazilian republic afflicted by a global pandemic, in a context of peripheral constitutional modernity.