Vaccine against Covid-19: arena of the Brazilian federative dispute

Abstract

This essay aims to demonstrate how the Covid-19 vaccine became a center of national political dispute in Brazil, transforming the country’s cooperative federalism into confrontational federalism. This dispute triggered a health tragedy that collapsed public and private health systems. The country’s consolidated nationwide immunization program and well-structured epidemiological surveillance system could not avoid vaccine distribution problems and delays in protecting the population, which worsened the pandemic. The analysis of President Bolsonaro’s speech regarding the Covid-19 pandemic, including preventive measures and vaccination, shows that he privileged the interactions with his followers and sought to delegitimize the opposition and undermine democratic institutions. The consequences for federalism were devastating in relation to the oldfederative coordination mechanisms, but they also fostered innovation by strengthening horizontal coordination mechanisms. Therefore, the debate over combating the pandemic made vaccines the main  political arena for power disputes.