Presidential Decrees and Statutory Legislation in the Making and Dismantling of Brazilian Environmental Policy

ABSTRACT The paper analyzes the use of presidential decrees and statutory legislation in Brazilian forestry policies, focusing on the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm). Drawing on documental sources and semi-structured interviews, the paper answers (1) why some instruments of PPCDAm became law and others were enacted by decree, and (2) how design choices impacted the policy’s resilience against dismantling. The challenges faced by PPCDAm’s architects to institutionalize its governance structure and instruments during the Workers Party governments (2003-2016) reflect the heterogeneity of interests within governing coalitions, the overrepresentation of the ruralist caucus in parliament, and the limit of the executive’s agenda power. The low institutionalization of anti-deforestation policies, resulting therefrom, enabled their dismantling via executive orders, later carried out under the government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).