Democracia brasileira: discurso, possibilidades e responsabilidade na Constituição Federal de 1988

Abstract

The historical course of formation and construction of Brazilian democracy has produced effects on the practice and consolidation of democratic institutions in the country, predominating the popular dumping of political decision centers along with the historical preponderance of social rights, to the detriment of political rights. The data analyzed during the elaboration of this thesis demonstrate that the typical mechanisms of democratic engagement are underutilized by Brazilian citizens. Given this scenario, it is important to remember that the social pact that enabled the enactment of the 1988 Federal Constitution articulated distributive justice, recognition, participation and free initiative as vectors of humanism. And to carry out these commandments, the interest and the engagement of the people in the political life of the state are indispensable. In this context, considering the Brazilian normative framework, the following problem-theme was outlined: it is possible, from and within the limits of the 1988 Constitution, to politically and legally hold the Brazilian citizen accountable for the errors and injustices perpetrated by the state whereas the normative source that it has to at least try to change state actions and omissions? The purpose of this thesis is to propose, with the Constitution in 1988, that Brazilian democracy be understood as a contemporary social pact, aimed at responsible sharing of dialogue and political decisions in a democracy allegedly based on diversity value. The thesis acquires academic and social relevance, because in a serious moment of crisis of representativeness and democratic efficiency, permeated by a dangerous and closed political-social polarization, it is necessary to point out ways that strengthen the belief in Brazilian democracy and its institutions and, still, to emphasize the special responsible position of the citizen in the destinies of the State. Thus, it analyzes democracy from a triad: discourse, possibilities and responsibility. As for the methodological procedure, the thesis belongs to the juridicalsociological side, and the line of dialectical reasoning is adopted, through an investigation of a juridical-comprehensive and juridical-propositional nature. The first chapter, initially, traces a historical panorama, from the eighteenth century, on the trajectory of democracy, in the context of political representation, relating the historical and legal construction of the Brazilian State of Law with some current difficulties of democratic consolidation. Next, the theory of Discourse Ethics advocated by Karl-Otto Apel (1992) is presented, presenting it as an ethical substrate for the exercise of deliberative democracy, in addition to articulating it with a representative and participatory perspective. In this point, the political-juridical instruments provided for in the Federal Constitution of 1988 were also pointed out, which make it possible to apply that theory to the Brazilian context. In the second chapter, data about the Brazilian citizen's use of the following typical institutional mechanisms for participation and democratic deliberation were collated and analyzed: (i) participation in general elections; (Ii) popular initiative bills; (Iii) participation in referenda and plebiscites; (Iv) participation in National Conferences on Public Policies. Based on the analysis of the data, the thesis supports that to the elements of responsibility, solidarity and argumentative discourse must be added the perspective of democratic responsibility regarding the rupture of the citizen's ties with the errors and the injustices practiced by the State, as advocated by Eric Beerbohm (2012), in his Ethics of Democracy. It is also supported the application of this last theory to the Brazilian political-juridical reality, through the same democratic instruments - typical and atypical - that allow the application of the Discourse Ethics theory. The last chapter, in turn, seeks to outline answers to the problem formulated in this thesis, with the premise that the possibility of democratic accountability of the people should be settled in the bases of the Brazilian Democratic State of Law, in order to avoid a theoretical voluntarism or a generic and indiscriminate accountability, that would not find support in that normative referential. In this way, the Brazilian citizen can perceive himself as a democratic partner responsible for the institutional construction of a shared destiny, which takes into account the different perspectives and historical-cultural contingencies of self-determination, which will be balanced from the ethical exercise of the discourse, attentive to the bonds of complicity that the citizen can bear with the errors and with the injustices perpetrated by the State.