Judicial and electoral accountability: the operation car wash between good governance and institutional grandstanding

Abstract

This article situates the Car Wash Operation as a manifestation of judicial accountability and investigates the reasons for its possible effects on the 2018 parliamentary elections. The research explores the possibility that the Car Wash was a manifestation of “judicialization of politics” and “judicial activism” with the potential to intervene in the electorate’s choices, so it is necessary to start a discussion on possible approaches that allow understanding the political dimension of the judicial system and, more specifically, the Operation Car Wash. The methodology of this article reviews the bibliography on accountability to understand the political nature of Car Wash in the dynamics of fighting corruption. The Car Wash must be well understood as an instrument of horizontal accountability that may have had repercussions on the electoral process, in a dynamic of “institutional hybridization” of judicial and electoral accountability, which requires discussing whether this process took place (and, if it did: in which extent). This article proposes a research agenda that, by admitting that the electoral performance of candidates for public office is affected by a series of correlated conditions, assumes the difficulty imposed on vertical accountability by proportional elections.