page_title: Politics of the Empire of Brazil
section_title: Emperor's role
hierarchical_section_title: Politics of the Empire of Brazil / Government of the Empire of Brazil / Moderating branch / Emperor's role
caption_attribution_description: Modified version of Google Art Project file to imitate the photographs at here and here.
context_page_description: Politics of the Empire of Brazil took place in a framework of a quasi-federal parliamentary representative democratic monarchy, whereby the Emperor of Brazil was the head of state and nominally head of government although the President of the Council of Ministers was effectively the de facto head, and of a multi-party system. Executive power was exercised by the government. Legislative power was vested in both the government and the two chambers of the General Assembly. The Judiciary was independent of the Executive and the Legislative. The Empire of Brazil was divided into 20 provinces and the Neutral City, capital of the country.
context_section_description: The role of the emperor of Brazil was to represent the nation. He represented that which the nation had "of oneness, of permanence, of stability. He represented the legal order, the unity of all Brazilians, as well as the variations of region, class, party, race, represented the nation in its totality." The monarch was in reality a type of "minister of a republic", in the philosophical sense of that last word, from res publica, and not a sovereign by divine right. His function as a representative of the nation, of its legitimacy, derived not from being elected, but acclaimed, as had traditionally happened for centuries after the death of the previous monarch in homage to his successor. Acclamation was a popular designation that legitimated the role of the monarchy as representative of the Brazilian people. This in fact occurred at three distinct historic moments during the monarchical era: in 1822, when Pedro I was acclaimed, in 1831 and finally in 1840, when it was the turn of Pedro II be acclaimed in all the provinces. Acclamation was, in a certain way, a type of symbolic vote, equivalent to an informal plebiscite. It was popular acceptance that granted the legitimacy to Brazilian monarchs as representatives of the Nation.
  Following the standard dictated by liberalism of the nineteenth century, the Constitution of 1824 granted the monarchy protection under a representative system and protected by the most important, innovative and original item in the constitutional text: the Moderating Power (Portuguese: Poder Moderador). This fourth power was personal to the Emperor, acting as a "mechanism to absorb friction between the legislative and executive powers" and his role as the one who would maintain the balance between both powers would allow Pedro II throughout his reign the "worthy position that he exercised with so much pleasure and peace."Tobias Barreto has analyzed the Moderating Power and the parliamentary government, explained as the reason for its adoption both the fact that "institutions that are not the daughters of custom, but only the product of theories, do not hold themselves for much longer against reality and they will soon ruin themselves when faced by facts." It would not matter if there were laws that would follow the customs and traditions of other nations (other than the Brazilians) that would be admirable in theory, but in practice, would become counterproductive to the point of creating cracks that over time would collapse the edifice of the country's constitutional order. Thus, thanks to the Moderating Power, Brazil was able to "open a valve through which parliamentary anarchy could escape", in other words, it would minimize eventual damage caused by disputes between rival political factions.
  According to João Camillo Torres the idea behind the Moderating Power was "that a monarch, by virtue of dynastic continuity, took no part in factions, classes, had no regional links, did not owe his power to economic groups, did not have to fulfill electoral promises, did not need to think of his own future — the future of his family was guaranteed by the preservation of peace and national greatness — he was not subject to the temptation of taking advantage of a brief passage through the government to grant benefits and advantages for himself only at the cost of the nation´s welfare and leaving the onus to his successors" as he knows that his "successor will be his own son, knowing that history, many times, charges grandchildren with the crimes of their grandparents".
caption: Emperor Pedro I which granted the constitution of 1824 was the creator of the moderating power
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