The Revista de Direito Econômico e Socioambiental (PUCPR), in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and as part of the ICCAL Lab project, is calling for submissions for the special issue “Democratic Resilience in Brazil”.

In recent years, Brazil has faced a variety of challenges: tensions among public authorities, questions regarding electoral integrity, digital disinformation, and pressure on oversight institutions, among others. These experiences offer a particularly relevant opportunity to study democratic resilience in action: not as an abstract category, but through concrete cases in which institutions and actors have had to respond to sudden threats or gradual processes of democratic erosion.

The special issue seeks to bring together research that helps identify what threats the democratic system faced, what elements were put at risk, how institutions responded, and what we can learn from those responses.

From Brazil toward a comparative Discussion

The purpose of this dossier goes beyond describing the Brazilian case. It seeks to build a repository of concrete examples of democratic resilience, identifying practices, mechanisms, and institutional innovations that provide a better understanding of how democracies cope with processes of erosion.

The contributions will thus enrich both the Brazilian debate and a comparative discussion on the protection of democracy and the rule of law in Latin America and other regional contexts.

What kind of contributions are we looking for?

The call for papers invites submissions focused on specific cases or particular dimensions of democratic resilience in Brazil, including, among other topics: To facilitate dialogue among the various contributions, articles should address four common analytical dimensions:

• judicial independence;
• electoral integrity;
• constitutional courts;
• legislative oversight;
• freedom of expression;
• regulation of digital platforms;
• misinformation;
• citizen participation;
• relations between the armed forces and civilian authorities.
  
  To facilitate dialogue among the various contributions, the articles should address four common analytical dimensions:

1. Threats: What risk, crisis, or process of democratic erosion does the case study analyze?

2. Elements affected: Which components of democracy or the rule of law are impaired?

3. Institutional response: How did institutions react to these threats?

4. Resilience: To what extent did these responses contribute to the resilience, adaptation, or transformation of the democratic system?

Practical Information

• Deadline: October 30, 2026.
• Languages: Portuguese, English, or Spanish.
• Eligibility: This call for papers is open to researchers with a Ph.D.
• Guidelines and Submission of Papers: See the call for papers guidelines.

To learn more about the work of the ICCAL Lab on democratic resilience in Europe and Latin America, visit our website.