Representação e reforma política no Brasil

Abstract

This work was aimed at analysing whether the Political Reform currently in procedure at the House of Representatives can effectively contribute to the strengthening of the Brazilian democracy. In order to achieve this goal, several democratic models and governmental representative models were analysed, based on those which either were more similar to the Brazilian model or were presented as models to be followed by the political reform; in other words, two major democratic models born out of Modern Age, namely The Liberal Model and Republican Model. The Elitism, of Weber and Schumpeter, and the Rational Choice Theory, of Anthony Downs, derived their models from the classical liberal democracy, whereas the Poliarchy model, of Robert Dahl, and the Social Democracy derived their models from the Republicanism. As for the two political reform proposals currently found in Brazil, one has been strenghtened into a delegating democracy, as it has been built through the language of power, aimed at keeping it, and is geared at changes which often lead to the strengthening of political parties either before society as a whole and before the Executive Body. The other, the Federal Law Council (OAB), approaches the Deliberative Democratic Model of Habermas (1995) and Rawl(2000), as they highlight direct representative models and break away from the self-poietic language of power. Although the proposal by the Law Council appears to be promising as regards representativeness, the House proposal itself can be considered as an attempt to make advancements in the face of society´s dissatisfaction concerning representativeness. Both of them, however, are submitted to the approval of their very players, whose main goal is keeping the power, i.e., they act under the language of power. Thus, any attempt into major changes in the current political system appear to be ineffective. The first step into a thorough political reform is to bear in mind the crisis of the representative system in the face of the social changes either in Brazil and abroad and, devoid of the language of power, make way for representativeness and social participation so that representatives and society are made closer and aware of their rights and duties.