Conciliação política e democracia representativa no Brasil: reminiscências de uma história conceitual reacionária

Abstract

The recurring questions about legitimity, relevance and the future of political institutions in the globalized world suggests that the studies about Political Representation calls for urgent review. Universally acknowledged institution, representative democracy or constitucionalpluralist regime (Raymond Aron) gains its peculiarities, both practical and theoretical, in each specific political system it lies upon; apart from its empirical or objective concreteness, it becomes merely an idyllic formula of prestige. Political Theory seeks for communicability between different national political arrangements, either by standardizing concepts and methods, or by comparative efforts. Yet, local elaborations and experiences should not be reduced to wide civilizational abstractions. Focusing on the Luso-Brazilian context, this work argues that the elaboration of political representation has since its 'foundations' been submitted to a paradigmatic strategy of "political conciliation" which has produced, practically and conceptually, an oxymoronal oligarchic democracy. a Through a critical fortune of our national criticism history on conciliation at politics, we seek to bring that notion closer to: i) a more modern concept of representation, ii) the acurate understanding of the impact of the counter-revolutionary moment in which Brazilian independence occurred and, mainly, iii) the Lusitan "consensualist" tradition, which informed our first generation of politicians.