This chapter discusses corruption in Brazil. I provide a comprehensive overview of relevant facts, with a focus on the economy and the distribution of economic resources. This understanding will be crucial in examining the role of corruption in the political landscape of Brazilian society, which is marked by pronounced inequality. Brazil shares similarities and differences with Russia. In both countries, there is a close, often corrupt relationship between political power and state-controlled enterprises. In contrast to Brazil, the anti-corruption movement in Russia has not only failed to seriously challenge the government, but also has been confronted by brutal repression. Unlike in Russia, Brazil’s judiciary has been highly proactive. Moreover, the Brazilian government participated actively to the anti-corruption global regime, while Russia mostly pays lip service to it.

This chapter provides an introduction to the book. A focus on the social construction of corruption leads to the two main conclusions. First, corruption is a tool of government, because it offers reasons for elites to remain cohesive. These incentives may be in the form of both benefits and punishments. To the first type belong the enticements of corruption, and they are reinforced whenever the ruler has the possibility to assign at will the label “corrupt” and the ensuing punishments. This helps rulers solve a problem of control, which is a prerequisite for political order and a vital necessity of any political system. However, corruption as a tool of government has fundamental flaws. The second broad conclusion is that anti-corruption is a tool of politics, because it can be used to pursue a political agenda. Additionally, corruption is a tool of politics which is available more widely, because it is a powerful “valence issue,” that is, one of those issues on which most people agree, either negatively (as for corruption) or positively (as it would be, e.g., for “competence”). However, as a tool of politics anti-corruption has many shortcomings.

The chapter finds that satisfaction with the investigation in Peru correlates with positive emotions and optimistic prognoses about the future. Different emotional reactions are further associated with voters’ varying propensities to tolerate corruption: positive emotions are linked to severity and negative ones to cynicism. A conjoint experiment shows that the taskforce indeed induces voters to impose greater penalties on politicians than other sources of corruption allegations. The chapter leverages another conjoint to document how voters respond to trade-offs at the heart of prosecutorial efforts, and thus better understand why such investigative choices eventually complicate citizens’ relationship with crusades. The conjoint reveals that Peruvians are reluctant to endorse leniency agreements at the heart of the investigative strategy. Together with additional descriptive survey statistics measuring reactions to other controversies triggered by Lava Jato, the experimental results underscore how hard it is for prosecutors to cement hope in anti-corruption.

Chapter 4 relies on secondary sources, official documentation, and interviews to take readers further afield and explore how Lava Jato unfolded under different political conditions than in Peru, where defendants were relatively weak. Ecuador, another positive case, shows the heuristic value of the model when defendants are stronger. In particular, it further demonstrates the critical role that taskforce creation plays in engineering crusades. Mexico and Argentina are the negative cases. They both lack the type of autonomy-building reforms seen in Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador. One consequence of a deficient reform process is that investigations rarely fall in expert hands and become politicised. In particular, the Argentine case suggests that without the synergies associated with teamwork in taskforces, prosecutors are unable to investigate effectively. For this reason, the Argentine inquiry failed to gain momentum despite initially benefiting from a generous window of political opportunity.

The chapter shows that Brazilians’ attitudes towards Lava Jato became increasingly divided and more negative over time. Attitudes towards the crusade are sensitive to partisan preferences, especially affect for the Workers’ Party. Results thus point to the precarity of optimism and the importance of voters’ priors in assessing prosecutorial zeal. The chapter also relies on an experiment to investigate whether putting crusades at the forefront of narratives of Brazilian corruption elicits optimism, compared to narratives that focus exclusively on corruption. The results show that when voters fixate on the crimes they are more likely to experience negative emotions and more likely to be dissatisfied with democracy. However,the crime-oriented narrative also increases respondents’ external efficacy, whereas the investigation-oriented one has the opposite effect. This suggests that the attitudinal impact of Lava Jato is far from being uniformly in line with the optimistic story. Under certain conditions, pessimists might be right in warning that crusaders’ anti-political message does more harm than good to the view that politics is redeemable.

What leads prosecutors to become crusaders in contexts where there are few precedents of Hollywood-style “prosecutor-heroes,” evidence is thin and risks high? Combining theories of the drivers of bureaucratic autonomy with analyses of crusades in Brazil and Italy, the chapter locates the origins of zealous prosecutorial role-conceptions in processes of institutional change and three “moments” (serendipity, agency, and backlash), blending structural and agentic factors. That prosecutors challenge the establishment, triggering a cascade of evidence with unorthodox tactics, is a function of institutional autonomy, criminal law reforms, and bureaucratic differentiation. Inquiries are also shaped by tactical choices, in particular, whether prosecutors form taskforces. Based on research in economics and psychology, the chapter shows that small groups are conducive to evidentiary economies of scale, legal innovation, and defensive strategies. The argument thus specifies the incentives guiding prosecutors, with attention to the organisations within which they operate. It also shows why zeal is both the engine of crusades but also the likely source of their undoing.

The chapter argues that anti-corruption crusades are characterised by extraordinary levels of prosecutorial zeal and reliance on aggressive tactics; high degrees of coordination between law enforcement agencies; evidentiary snowball effects leading to protracted and uncertain inquiries; and disruptive consequences beyond the courtroom. With this in mind, the chapter introduces two research questions. First, under what conditions are corruption probes more likely to evolve into crusades? Second, the stated objective of crusades is relatively uncontroversial, but their aggressive methods, choice of targets, and the intricacies of the legal process are not. Moreover, results often stand on precarious grounds. Given their provocative, disruptive, and uncertain nature, how do crusades impact attitudes and emotions towards politics and corruption? Do voters become more cynical or hopeful about the future of politics? After summarising our argument about the causes and consequences of crusades, and describing the books’ empirical strategy, the chapter discusses the main contributions to the study of anti-corruption, judicial politics, and political behaviour.

The chapter maps conversations around Lava Jato in Brazil and Peru using focus groups, especially whether voters associate Lava Jato with the problem of corruption or its solution. Peruvians focus mainly on the crimes, the “cockroaches.” Brazilians are divided, with some seeing “superheroes.” This leads Peruvians to voice negative emotions and cynicism. Attitudes in Brazil are more mixed. Analysis of newspapers as well as survey data suggest these differences could be due to contrasting media environments and baseline attitudes towards judicial institutions. The chapter then explores fairness and effectiveness evaluations. The debate is more intense in Brazil due to partisan polarisation. Supporters of the Workers’ Party feel victimised; their rivals passionately defend Lava Jato. This separates those who find reasons for hope from those who derive no satisfaction from the crusade. By contrast, in Peru participants do not see prosecutorial efforts through partisan lenses. They cannot, however, get past their cynicism, and remain deeply sceptical. A citizenry that is hopelessly cynical is prone to stick to its priors about the irredeemably crass nature of politics.

Using official documents, institutional analysis, and interviews, the chapter traces Peru’s Lava Jato, the most ambitious branch of the inquiry outside Brazil. A sequence of organisational changes within the prosecution services created a more hospitable environment for proficient and innovative anti-corruption efforts. A process of bureaucratic differentiation nurtured interstices of investigative capacity, despite enduring corruption at the top of the institution. However, Lava Jato struggled to take off until all lines of inquiry were placed under the purview of a taskforce. Within case variation in this aspect of the investigative strategy shows the benefits of teamwork , as well as the role of individual personalities and professional role conceptions in determining the outcome of corruption probes. One consequence of the decision to pool investigative resources was a more aggressive and coordinated fact-finding approach. Finally, the case study shows that while prosecutorial zeal was critical for the progress of the case, it also invited backlash and risked jeopardising the legitimacy and effectiveness of the inquiry at various stages.

The Lava Jato (or “Car Wash”) corruption investigation offers an important case study of the evolution of legal accountability in consolidating democracies. This chapter evaluates the origins of the investigation and the early successes of prosecutors, analyzes why Lava Jato initially succeeded where numerous previous cases had floundered, discusses the causes and likely consequences of the investigation’s declining effectiveness and ultimate neutering, and reflects on what this experience suggests about legal accountability in Brazil and other democracies facing long-festering patterns of elite collusion, corruption and impunity.

Peru’s Lava Jato stretched its tentacles widely and ravaged the political establishment. Grand corruption cases present a series of challenges related to how to secure evidence in information-poor and politically hostile environments. Overcoming these challenges without jeopardizing the integrity of the inquiry is no small feat. The tools that prosecutors rely on generate controversy, as well as tensions between effectiveness and due process that are difficult to resolve. Success therefore calls for clever and skillful prosecutors. The analysis digs deep into the dynamics of Peru’s Lava Jato to discuss the nature of these challenges and how prosecutors dealt with them. Contingent choices often determined whether enough evidence came to light, thus widening the window for ambitious investigative efforts. The chapter further looks at the backlash that ensued, how this conditioned prosecutorial efforts, and why investigators were able to mitigate its impact. One interesting feature of Peru’s Lava Jato is that prosecutors not only had to deal with an obstructionist political class, but also with networks of judicial clientelism commanded by senior officials. The chapter traces how rank-and-file prosecutors negotiated such bureaucratic pathologies to protect the inquiry, and discusses the likely impact of these struggles on the future of the case.

Lava Jato (Car Wash) was one of the largest corruption trials in the world. The Lava Jato taskforce launched a battle against powerful political actors using legal tools creatively and sought to garner public support by resorting to the media. The chapter examines three examples that illustrate these two strategies and unpacks their legal dimensions. It focuses on three decisions by Sergio Moro, Lava Jato’s most prominent judge: ordering the police to bring former president and 2018 presidential candidate Lula Da Silva in for questioning without a previous request, disclosing a recorded conversation obtained during an investigation against Lula, and making public a plea bargain agreement that incriminated Lula. The chapter outlines the political impact of Moro’s actions and examines them in light of current Brazilian legislation on transparency and accountability for judges’ behaviour. It finds that while transparency is a principle that informs criminal trials in Brazil, Moro pushed the existing rules to their limits to gain public support. At the same time, he attempted to influence public opinion by taking advantage of the discretion the Brazilian inquisitorial criminal system provides judges. The chapter also analyses the limitations of Brazilian legislation to prevent this kind of behaviour and points to the challenges of reforming it. It concludes that while courts’ mobilization of the media and creative use of legal tools may increase anti-corruption accountability, the costs of this strategy outweigh its benefits.

This chapter investigates affinities between Bolsonarismo (the discourse of groups supporting Jair Bolsonaro’s government and ideas) and Lavajatismo (the discourse of groups supporting the Lava Jato investigation) both online and offline from 2015 to 2019. The analysis shows the links between the denial of rights, the push for accountability through the courts, and the far right, combining two original data sources. First, semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the so-called verde e amarelos (“green and yellow”) during mass anti-corruption demonstrations in 2015 and 2017. Participants at these rallies were characterized by the use of the Brazilian yellow jersey as a symbol of nationalism, “anti-communism,” and anti-corruption. Second, the results are presented of a lexical analysis of 13,800 posts on Facebook pages supporting Lava Jato, between April 2016 to February 2019. This period included former President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, former President Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva’s imprisonment, and Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to power.