Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016): A Crisis of Governance and Consensus in Brazil

Abstract

This chapter examines the five and a half years in office of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first woman president. Her two terms in office, the second of which was truncated by her impeachment, coincided with the end of a two-decade cycle of post-transition democratic governance dominated politically by two parties (the PSDB and PT) and their presidents (Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva). Her presidencies saw the decay of a political consensus in the liberal center ground, and a fragmentation of the party system that stressed the coalitional governance to breaking point. The capture of the legislative by new socially conservative forces responding to, and reshaping, political culture, threatened some of the progress on gender equality. The chapter explores the role that gender politics and discourses played in this political environment, her election, her government, and her controversial impeachment in 2016.