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Abstract

This article is based on a reflection on the rhetoric of institutional normality in contemporary Brazil, especially following the Bolsonaro administration and the January 8, 2023 attacks. Drawing on Institutional Analysis, the text contrasts the discourse of stability upheld by justices of the Supreme Federal Court with the recognition of a crisis of legitimacy and meaning that runs through democratic institutions. Within this movement, it distinguishes the instituted dimension—comprising the State’s bureaucratic and normative structures—from the instituting dimension, understood as the collective plane of forces and the foundational basis of social practices. It argues that, although the state apparatus remains operative, it has become distanced from the instituting forces that confer vitality upon it, producing a hollowing out of the bond between institutions and society. The crisis is therefore not merely political, but also symbolic and subjective, revealing the predominance of the instituted (its bureaucratizing face) over the instituting. Thus, a socio-analytic reading proposes shifting the focus of analysis from macropolitics to micropolitics, bringing into view collective and self-managed practices as strategies for institutional reinvention and democratic reconstruction. This formulation establishes a direction with regard to action in the field of institutions.