There is much talk about a crisis of institutions. The expression appears in everyday conversations, political analyses, legal debates, universities, the press, and social media. Sometimes it is used rigorously; other times, as a venting of frustration. When a decision is displeasing, when a policy fails, when an authority abuses their position, when a corporation protects itself, when a rule is applied selectively, or when public life seems to be overtaken by rudeness, lies, and short-sighted calculation, it is common to conclude that institutions have failed.
"Failure" is a strong word. Perhaps it's excessive if understood as complete collapse. Because institutions continue to function. Courts judge, parliaments vote, governments govern, universities teach, oversight bodies monitor, elections are held, contracts are signed, competitions are conducted, public policies are implemented. There are rituals of normality everywhere. However, the perception of failure doesn't arise from nothing. It expresses something real: the growing feeling that many institutions can no longer generate trust, guide behavior, arbitrate conflicts, contain abuses, and offer responses proportionate to the complexity of contemporary problems.
Institutions matter.
Institutions matter because they are the invisible infrastructure of civilized life. They are in the currency we accept, in the contract we expect to see fulfilled, in the diploma we recognize, in the sentence we respect even when we disagree, in the vote whose result must be accepted, in the public competition that promises impartiality, in the State that should protect rights, and in the market that only functions when there are minimally reliable rules. Without institutions, everything becomes more expensive, more uncertain, more violent, and more arbitrary.
Not by chance, much of the literature on development attributes a central role to institutions. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson popularized, in "Why Nations Fail," the idea that countries prosper or fail according to the quality of their institutions, especially their capacity to include, create opportunities, limit the capture of power by particular groups, and contain predatory forms of economic and political organization. One can discuss simplifications and acknowledge that institutions do not explain everything. But it is difficult to deny the essential point: development does not depend solely on natural resources, capital, technology, or good intentions. It depends on rules, trust, predictability, coordination, and legitimate mechanisms for conflict resolution.
But what exactly are institutions?
The question seems simple, but it is crucial. We often confuse institutions with organizations. Ministries, courts, universities, companies, political parties, regulatory agencies, unions, churches, and international bodies are organizations. Institutions are something broader. In Douglass North's classic formulation, they are the rules of the game in a society: the formal and informal boundaries that shape human interaction.
These rules include laws, constitutions, administrative norms, and contracts, but also customs, values, standards of conduct, shared expectations, unwritten boundaries, reputations, and forms of self-restraint. An institution, therefore, is not only what is codified in law. It is also what people recognize as acceptable, legitimate, expected, or intolerable in a given political community.
This distinction helps to understand the current crisis. An organization can continue to stand even when the institution that should uphold its legitimacy weakens. A court can judge, but lose moral authority. A parliament can vote, but not represent. A university can issue diplomas, but cease to be recognized as a space for education and critical thinking. An agency can produce regulations, but be perceived as captured. The institution does not disappear immediately. It empties itself from within, little by little, generally slowly.
Brazil is well aware of its institutional fragility, but it would be unfair to ignore the progress made in recent decades. The 1988 Constitution opened an important cycle of democratic reconstruction. It consolidated rights, broadened social participation, strengthened the Public Prosecutor's Office, reorganized the justice system, recognized health as a universal right, laid the foundation for the SUS (Unified Health System), stimulated social policies, expanded control and transparency mechanisms, protected civil liberties, and allowed for a much more open political life than that known for much of the 20th century.
There have also been advances beyond the strictly political core. The country has built relevant scientific institutions, high-quality public universities, an internationally recognized agricultural research system, a relatively robust financial system, computerized elections, a free press, statistical agencies, and social protection policies. All of this is imperfect, unequal, incomplete, and frequently captured by vested interests. But it exists. And it cost a great deal to build.
Perhaps that's why the frustration is so great. We are not facing a society without institutions. We are facing a society that has built more complex, more ambitious, and more visible institutions, but has not fully consolidated the behaviors necessary to sustain them. Brazil has advanced in formal design, but stumbles in institutional culture. It has created rights, but not always corresponding duties. It has multiplied controls, but has not always produced accountability. It has expanded judicialization, but not necessarily justice. It has expanded the language of citizenship, but preserved patrimonialist, corporatist, and predatory practices.
The many faces of the perception of institutional failure.
The perception of institutional failure has several facets. The first is ineffectiveness. Institutions promise to protect rights, regulate markets, control abuses, punish deviations, arbitrate conflicts, and offer minimum security to citizens. When they deliver little, late, or erratically, the gap between promise and daily experience erodes trust. The problem lies not only in the poor outcome of a public policy or the delay of a judicial decision. It lies in the repeated experience that the rule exists, but does not produce the expected effects.
The second aspect is selectivity. No institution retains legitimacy when its rules seem harsh for some and lenient for others. Inequality before the law is perhaps one of the most corrosive forms of institutional erosion because it destroys the belief that there is a common ground. The average citizen clearly perceives when the rule weighs heavily on the vulnerable and becomes negotiable for the powerful. From then on, obedience ceases to be an expression of trust and begins to be perceived as imposition.
The third aspect is capture. Many organizations speak in the name of the public interest, but operate to protect specific interests. Corporations defend privileges as if they were universal rights. Bureaucracies confuse institutional stability with self-preservation. Economic groups seek to transform regulation into a barrier against competitors or protection against their own risks. Parties treat the State as an extension of their power strategies. The rule remains written, but its purpose shifts, becomes distorted. What should protect society ends up protecting organized segments of society itself.
The fourth aspect is the excessive judicialization of public life. In complex societies, it is natural for conflicts to reach the courts. The problem arises when politics transfers to the judiciary what should be resolved through negotiation, deliberation, and public accountability. It is even worse when judicial decisions, instead of pacifying conflicts, come to be perceived as part of the dispute itself. Judges are not merely mechanical appliers of the law, but neither can they act as if legal interpretation authorizes any outcome. When a decision deviates too much from the letter of the law, from regular procedure, or from the common sense of impartiality, even when cloaked in technical language, institutional authority is weakened.
Another crucial aspect is the manipulation of the public budget as an instrument of political power. The so-called secret budget is perhaps one of the most serious examples of recent institutional erosion, not only because of the opacity in the allocation of resources, but also because of what it reveals about democratic competition. In a democracy, elections are not merely periodic voting rituals. They depend on minimum conditions of equality among competitors, transparency regarding the use of public resources, and the possibility of control by society. When significant portions of the budget are distributed according to opaque criteria, negotiated through obscure intermediaries, and directed towards specific political bases, the problem ceases to be merely fiscal. It becomes democratic.
The central point is not to deny that parliamentarians can indicate local priorities or advocate for investments in their regions. That is part of representation. The problem arises when the amendment ceases to be a republican instrument for allocating resources and becomes a technology for political loyalty, electoral strengthening, and the reproduction of power. The parliamentarian who controls or influences the allocation of large volumes of public resources arrives at the next election in a very different position from their competitors. They can present public works, transfers, equipment, and favors as proof of personal efficiency, even when operating within an opaque, unequal, and poorly controllable system. Electoral competition, which should be the main arena for democratic renewal, becomes contaminated by the asymmetrical use of the state budget itself.
This is why a secret budget wounds democracy at its core. It reduces transparency, weakens public planning, fragments national policies, encourages the political intermediation of resources, and creates competitive advantages for those already in positions of power. Even more seriously, it normalizes the idea that the public budget can be treated as a private electoral asset. When this happens, the budgetary institution ceases to express publicly deliberated collective priorities and begins to function as a bargaining chip, a mechanism of parliamentary control, and an instrument of political reproduction.
The sixth aspect is corporate impunity. Every civil service career needs safeguards to withstand external pressures. But functional guarantees exist to protect the public function, not to shield misconduct. When serious offenses are punished with comfortable leaves of absence, well-paid retirements, or administrative transfers, the institutional message is devastating. For the average citizen, it is difficult to understand a legal order in which trivial errors can ruin lives, while authorities responsible for serious violations leave the scene preserving income, status, and safety nets. Punishment that resembles a reward erodes the moral authority of the institution that applies it.
The seventh is the loss of territorial control by the State. The case of Rio de Janeiro is perhaps the most dramatic example. It is not just about urban violence, nor just about common crime. It is about a profound institutional crisis, in which factions and militias control territories, regulate economic activities, impose rules, collect fees, define who circulates, who works, and who can live with some security. When millions of people live under armed rule, the problem ceases to be merely a police matter. It is the State itself that appears as an intermittent, insufficient, or captured presence.
Rio also reveals another dimension of the crisis: the persistent erosion of political leadership. The succession of governors arrested, removed from office, impeached, or disqualified from holding office cannot be treated as a coincidence. It suggests a deeper failure in political recruitment, campaign financing, public oversight, and the relationship between business, crime, and power. When the center of state government becomes a recurring target of operations, convictions, and scandals, the population learns to distrust not only a governor but the very capacity of the political system to produce legitimate authority.
The eighth facet is the degradation of public language. Institutions depend on arguments, procedures, and some degree of shared respect. When lying becomes normalized, when rudeness becomes the norm, when suspicion replaces proof, when any disagreement is converted into betrayal, institutional life loses its footing. Formal rules continue to exist, but the symbolic environment that gave them authority crumbles. No court, Parliament, university, press, or technical body functions well in a permanent atmosphere of intimidation, cynicism, and moral warfare.
These perspectives have profound reasons. One is the increasing complexity of contemporary problems. Climate change, technological transformation, new forms of crime, financialization, persistent inequalities, social networks, and political fragmentation challenge institutions designed for more stable, national, and sectoral contexts. Another reason is the acceleration of public time. Institutions need procedure, proof, maturation, and deliberation; connected society demands immediate response, instant punishment, and simplified explanation. The tension between these times produces frustration.
But there is also a more troubling reason: many actors have learned to exploit institutions without feeling responsible for preserving them. They use the law against its spirit, due process against justice, autonomy against accountability, freedom against truth, representation against the represented, stability against the public interest. Institutional erosion does not stem solely from poorly designed rules. It also stems – and perhaps primarily – from the conduct of individuals and groups who have discovered that it is possible to degrade institutions from within while preserving their formal appearance.
Lack of composure
Of all these issues, the most worrying is the loss of public composure. The word may seem old-fashioned, but it remains necessary. Institutions don't survive solely on laws, procedures, and sanctions. They depend on conduct, habits, limits, and examples. They depend on a certain public shame. They depend on the willingness not to say everything, not to do everything, not to use everything, not to push every dispute to the limit simply because it might produce an immediate advantage.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt drew attention to an essential dimension of democracy: the need for mutual tolerance and institutional restraint. In simple terms, this means recognizing adversaries as legitimate and avoiding the abuse of formal powers. Not everything that is permitted should be done. Not every loophole should be exploited. Not every possible victory should be pursued at any cost. Democracy, like other institutions, depends on self-restraint.
Lack of decorum doesn't only appear in public rudeness or verbal violence. It also appears in polite, sophisticated, and socially accepted forms of institutional promiscuity. A dinner, a trip, a gift, a consultancy, a well-paid lecture, an apparently innocent tribute or favor, a friendship cultivated in the right circles – everything can be presented as a private gesture, a personal relationship, or normal interaction among elites. But institutions are not preserved solely by preventing crimes. They also depend on the ability to recognize conflicts of interest, gray areas, ethical constraints, and situations in which the mere appearance of influence is enough to compromise public trust.
The Banco Master case is so disturbing precisely for this reason. More than a financial episode, it exposes a culture of access. A rising banker manages to circulate among authorities from different spheres, get close to politicians, regulators, public agents and magistrates, organize events, finance travel, cultivate relationships and treat everything as part of the normal sociability of power. Perhaps many of these relationships are legally explainable. Perhaps some are formally defensible. But the institutional question is another: what kind of Republic naturalizes such intimacy between those who should be regulated, those who regulate, those who supervise, those who judge and those who decide?
It is in this intermediate zone, between proven crime and acceptable conduct, that many institutions rot. The problem is not just the clandestine envelope, the illegal order, or the explicit fraud. It is the loss of the necessary distance between private interest and public function. It is the conversion of authority into social capital. It is the ease with which doors are opened, phones are answered, meetings are arranged, and justifications are produced in the name of friendship. When friendship becomes institutional safe-conduct, republican impartiality has already been wounded.
This point applies beyond politics. It applies to public authorities, judges, parliamentarians, government officials, businesspeople, university leaders, journalists, teachers, social leaders, and citizens. No institution is solid enough to indefinitely resist the predatory behavior of those who should be preserving it. A rule can establish limits, but it cannot anticipate all forms of abuse. A law can define competencies, but it does not guarantee common sense. A regulation can organize procedures, but it does not, by itself, produce public spirit.
Legality is not enough.
Therefore, legality is indispensable, but it is not enough. A society can become institutionally ill even when many actors claim to be acting within the law. There are formally defensible but institutionally destructive behaviors. There are legal decisions that erode trust. There are legitimate procedural strategies that paralyze justice. There are speeches protected by freedom of expression that degrade the public sphere. There are regular appointments that offend morality. There are legal privileges that offend the minimum sense of equality.
Public morality does not replace the law, but it gives meaning to legality. Without it, the rule becomes an instrument of cunning. What should be a limit becomes an opportunity. What should protect the public interest begins to serve private, corporate, or partisan convenience. Institutional life transforms into a game of shrewdness: the winner is the one who best interprets the loophole, occupies the space first, produces the most efficient narrative, or manipulates the procedure.
It is at this point that the failure of institutions becomes apparent, making a lot of noise. It manifests itself in shouting, rudeness, repeated lies, constant suspicion, the refusal to acknowledge merit in the adversary, the transformation of any disagreement into a moral war, the willingness to destroy reputations, the strategic use of indignation, the spectacularization of authority, and the inability to preserve minimal zones of respect. It is not a silent failure. It is noisy, performative, and everyday.
The problem is that institutions are not automatic machines for producing order. They need to be inhabited by people who understand their purpose. A judge is not just someone who applies rules; they are someone who should protect the idea of justice. A teacher is not just someone who fulfills their teaching hours; they are someone who should preserve confidence in knowledge. A member of parliament is not just someone who votes; they are someone who should represent interests without destroying the possibility of coexistence. A ruler is not just someone who won an election; they are someone who should also govern for those who lost.
When this understanding is lost, what remains is the institutional shell. The positions, the rituals, the buildings, the speeches, the documents, and the ceremonies remain. But what gave meaning to it all weakens: the confidence that the rules apply to everyone, that authority has limits, that power must be accountable, that the public interest is not merely rhetorical ornament.
Rebuilding institutions means rebuilding behaviors.
The solution does not lie in destroying institutions in the name of an impossible purity. Criticism of institutions cannot serve as a pretext for authoritarian voluntarism, for providential leaders, for solutions based on force, or for the fantasy that society would function better without mediation. Complex societies need institutions. They need courts, parliaments, governments, universities, the press, science, regulated markets, public policies, parties, civil organizations, and control mechanisms. The greater the complexity, the greater the need for coordination.
But it's not enough to defend institutions in the abstract. It's necessary to reform them, hold them accountable, and, when necessary, confront them. Defending institutions is not about protecting privileges, accepting corporatism, or confusing stability with inaction. Institutions exist to serve society, not to demand automatic reverence. Their preservation depends on the capacity for correction, public scrutiny, accountability, and a willingness to learn.
The challenge, therefore, is twofold. We need better, more effective, more transparent institutions, less captured and more capable of responding to the real problems of society. But we also need to rebuild the institutional culture that has been eroded: self-restraint, composure, respect for limits, commitment to factual truth, responsibility in the exercise of power, and recognition that adversaries are not enemies to be eliminated.
Perhaps this is the central point of the conversation. The failure of institutions doesn't begin only when rules are abolished, courts closed, or constitutions torn up. It begins earlier, when people cease to feel responsible for preserving that which gives meaning to the rules. It begins when legality becomes cunning, authority becomes private capital, friendship becomes safe passage, disagreement becomes war, and the public interest is reduced to rhetorical ornament.
Its reconstruction also begins there: not only in the design of the rules, but in the way authorities, organizations, and citizens choose to act when the rule allows abuse, the situation encourages radicalization, and immediate advantage recommends forgetting the public interest. Better institutions are indispensable. But no institution will be better than the behaviors we accept as normal within it.
This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Unicamp.
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