Dias, V. M., & Schapiro, M. G. (2026). Resisting democratic backsliding from within the state: Environmental politics in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. Policy Studies Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.70101
The article argues that polycentric governance can enable meaningful resistance to democratic backsliding from within the state by fragmenting executive power across multiple institutions with overlapping authority. Focusing on environmental politics under Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Dias and Schapiro show that resistance emerged through three mechanisms—decentralized political discretion, bureaucratic autonomy, and institutional capacity—even among actors without formal environmental mandates. Through a critical event analysis of the Brazilian Central Bank, the Supreme Court, and a consortium of Amazonian governors, the authors demonstrate how each actor constrained Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental and antidemocratic agenda in partial but significant ways: the Central Bank used green financial regulation to discourage environmentally risky investments, the Supreme Court imposed legal defeats that reinstated environmental policies and participation, and subnational governments mobilized regionally and internationally to contest federal inaction. While none of these actors alone fully blocked environmental degradation, their combined actions illustrate how polycentric systems can raise the costs of authoritarian governance and preserve spaces for democratic deliberation even under conditions of democratic erosion.