A (in)efetividade do controle da improbidade administrativa após a Lei nº 14.230/2021: uma análise da accountability horizontal a partir dos dados do CNJ (2020-2025) com ênfase no estado do Maranhão

Abstract

This undergraduate thesis examines the impacts of Law No. 14,230/2021 on the effectiveness of administrative misconduct control in Brazil, focusing on the introduction of a specific intent (dolo específico) requirement and the elimination of the negligence-based modality (modalidade culposa) as new parameters of accountability. Drawing on Guillermo O'Donnell's theoretical framework of horizontal accountability and Ronald Dworkin's test of normative integrity, the study investigates the extent to which the legislative reform, ostensibly aimed at rationalizing the sanctioning system and curbing the phenomenon known as the "pen freeze" (apagão das canetas), undermined the capacity of oversight agencies - particularly the Public Prosecutor's Office - to investigate and sanction dishonest public officials. The research adopts a qualitative approach, with secondary analysis of quantitative data, of an exploratory- descriptive nature and a hypothetical-deductive method, combining bibliographic research, documentary analysis, and descriptive statistical analysis of data extracted from the National Council of Justice's Judiciary Statistics Panel, covering the period from 2020 to 2025. The results reveal a 67.5% decline in the national volume of new administrative misconduct lawsuits between 2021 and 2024, a trend that the multiscale analysis - national, regional, state, and municipal — associates not with a qualitative filtering of claims, but with a process of control erosion, with effects disproportionately concentrated in jurisdictions with lower institutional capacity, such as the state of Maranhão and its interior judicial districts. The study concludes that Law No. 14,230/2021, by uniformly raising the evidentiary standard without providing institutional countermeasures for the most vulnerable oversight agencies, deepened federative inequalities in the protection of administrative probity and compromised the reform's coherence with the constitutional principles it claimed to uphold, thus representing a setback in the republican dimension of Brazilian horizontal accountability.