When it was promulgated in 1988, the Brazilian Constitution was celebrated as the charter of redemocratization. Almost four decades later, it has also become one of the greatest obstacles to the country's own development. With more than 250 articles, the 1988 Constitution is one of the longest in the world. It incorporates matters that, in consolidated democracies, are handled by ordinary laws — and that, precisely for that reason, can be adapted more nimbly to economic and social change.

The result of this "hyperconstitutionalization" is a State that is slow to reform and barely responsive to local needs. Any meaningful adjustment to labor, tax, or pension legislation requires a constitutional amendment, approved by a qualified three-fifths majority in Congress. In countries such as the United States, reforms of this kind can be made by a simple majority, since their Constitution contains only seven articles and 27 amendments approved over 237 years of history. Brazilian complexity creates a scenario in which essential changes take years — and frequently never leave the drawing board.

The problem is not only the length of the constitutional text, but also its excessive centralization. States and municipalities, though they have formal autonomy, have no real freedom to adapt labor laws, taxes, criminal legislation, or administrative rules to their economies and priorities.

In the tax arena, the distance between those who collect, those who decide, and those who suffer the consequences of decisions is wide: most of the power is concentrated in Brasília. The farther decisions about taxes are from the citizen, the lower the efficiency of public spending tends to be. This distance also feeds a policy of conditional transfers, which in turn sustains a cycle of clientelism and bargaining over funds.

Constitutional rigidity manifests itself particularly clearly in budget earmarking. The Charter sets minimum percentages of revenue to be applied in areas such as health and education, but without tying that spending to quality or results. This creates a perverse incentive: managers fill in "spreadsheets" to satisfy the law, but do not necessarily improve the service. A state may, for example, build new schools to meet the required percentage, while learning indicators remain stagnant.

The excess of detail also amplifies the judicialization of politics. Since virtually any public policy can be challenged as unconstitutional, the Federal Supreme Court has become the arbiter of administrative decisions that, in other countries, would be resolved in the political arena or in local bodies. At the same time, job security in the public sector, enshrined in the constitutional text itself, hampers performance-based management, making it complex to replace inefficient civil servants.

Institutional rigidity is compounded by the political system. The electoral quotient model, combined with public financing of parties, perpetuates a fragmentation without parallel in the democratic world. Today, more than twenty parties hold seats in Congress, making it unfeasible to form cohesive coalitions. In countries such as Germany, parties must reach at least 5% of the vote to enter Parliament and receive public funds proportional to the votes obtained. Moreover, a good part of the financing comes from the members themselves — which encourages parties to stay relevant to the electorate. In Brazil, the logic is the opposite: parties survive on resources from the public fund, even if they represent irrelevant niches of the electorate.

By promising broad social rights — health, education, assistance — without providing for sustainable sources of financing, the Constitution created a legal framework that guarantees benefits regardless of fiscal capacity. This leads to chronic deficits and pushes governments toward indebtedness, compromising long-term investments. This straitjacket, added to the political instability stemming from party fragmentation, drives away investment, makes Brazil more expensive, and hinders the creation of innovative ecosystems, since states cannot adapt incentive rules or research and development policies.

The 1988 Constitution was a milestone of rights protection and democratic recovery. But, in the effort to shield the country against authoritarian setbacks, we created a rigid and centralized structure, incapable of responding quickly to contemporary challenges. Brazil needs a new constitution for the twenty-first century: one capable of preserving fundamental guarantees, improving the electoral system, restoring flexibility to legislation, and giving more autonomy to states and municipalities. Without this, the elephant in the room — heavy, slow, and hard to move — will continue to occupy the space where Brazilians could move forward.