The dismantling of the rural and environmental public policies in Brazil

Abstract

The article deals with the modalities of the recent dismantling of rural and environmental public policies with a hindsight of a few years by mobilizing the examination of several components: land, family farming, rural territorial development, agroecology and the environment. The analysis focuses on the last three governments (Rousseff, Temer and Bolsonaro) based on the approach to dismantling public policies of Bauer et al. (Bauer MW, Jordan A, Green-Pedersen C, Heritier A. 2013. Dismantling public policy: preferences, strategies and effects. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656646.001.0001). The method combines documentary analysis of official texts, statistics on budgets and interviews with decision-makers and managers of these policies conducted within research projects initiated since 2012. The main results show the institutional fragility, including in the cases of policies subject to laws (environment, family farming, food security) or enshrined in the Brazilian federal constitution (land reform). The changes observed suggest the integration of different strategies to dismantle public policies, especially since 2019. Less used during the Rousseff and Temer governments, these mechanisms are particularly implemented in the conservative and belligerent framework of the Bolsonaro government, whose political base responds positively to the destruction of state regulatory mechanisms.