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Mota Prado, Mariana --- "Presidential Dominance from a Comparative Perspective: The Relationship between the Executive Branch and Regulatory Agencies in Brazil" [2010] ELECD 816; in Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lindseth, L. Peter (eds), "Comparative Administrative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Comparative Administrative Law

Editor(s): Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lindseth, L. Peter

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848446359

Section: Chapter 14

Section Title: Presidential Dominance from a Comparative Perspective: The Relationship between the Executive Branch and Regulatory Agencies in Brazil

Author(s): Mota Prado, Mariana

Number of pages: 21

Extract:

14 Presidential dominance from a comparative
perspective: the relationship between the executive
branch and regulatory agencies in Brazil
Mariana Mota Prado*


National legal systems appear increasingly similar, largely due to the wholesale trans-
plantation of legal principles and institutional arrangements across national borders.
However, although these transplanted institutions might initially look similar, con-
siderable differences emerge as they operate in practice. By definition, transplanted
institutions function within a different political system. Immersed in a new political
environment, these institutions will not always mimic their counterparts in the country of
origin. The effectiveness of transplanted laws, and, therefore, the institutions created by
them, depends on their consistency with or their adaptation to the preexisting legal order
in the receiving country (Berkowitz et al. 2003). For comparative law scholars, the dif-
ferent operation of original and transplanted institutions suggests that transplanted aca-
demic theories, based on the country of origin, cannot be uncritically applied to analyze
these new institutions. To illustrate this, I shall discuss the case of regulatory agencies.
In the last two decades, independent agencies have become the primary means of regu-
lating infrastructure industries worldwide (Gilardi 2008). This is especially true in Latin
America (Jordana and Levi Faur 2005). The United States independent agency model
served as a blueprint in most cases. Despite these institutional similarities, there is one
important difference: Latin American agencies operate within presidential systems that
differ significantly from the US system. For example, the Brazilian President is substan-
tially more powerful vis-à-vis the Brazilian ...