Gabriel Pinho Brochado

Thank you for visiting! I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, and currently a Visiting Researcher in the Department of Government and the Center for Law and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. My doctoral research is supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), which also funds my current research stay at UT Austin through a Research Internship Abroad (BEPE) scholarship.

My research examines the institutions and political actors that shape democratic competition in Latin America, with a particular focus on Brazil. My dissertation investigates institutional resistance to democratic backsliding during Jair Bolsonaro's presidency (2019–2022). I examine how institutional interests shaped whether courts and legislatures resisted executive aggrandizement and which instruments they mobilized. I also investigate how these confrontations redistributed authority and whether those changes persisted beyond Bolsonaro's presidency.

My research interests include democratic backsliding and resistance, militant democracy, constitutional courts, electoral governance, and the electoral participation of military personnel.

In 2025, I was a Visiting Researcher in the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) at the University of Oxford, UK, and an Associate Member of the William Petre Society at Exeter College. The research stay was funded by the Santander Mobility Scholarship.

I hold a bachelor's degree in Law from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), where I received distinction for my undergraduate thesis. I also serve on the editorial boards of Boletim Lua Nova (BLN) and the journal Leviathan (São Paulo). In 2026, the BLN editorial team received an honorable mention in the sixth edition of the ANPOCS Prize for Science Communication in the Social Sciences.