Rights and Citizenship in Brazil: The Challenges for Civil Society (original) (raw)

Critical Considerations on Collective Empowerment: Class, Civil Society and the State

Eleven years after its first publication (in 2002), John Holloway's Change the World Without Taking Power remains one of the most contested and controversial books of contemporary Marxist theory, having been translated into ten languages and seen three English editions in 2002 , 2005. In response to a series of critiques to the first edition of his book, namely on how can we advance the struggle for society's self-determination-or Communism-without taking state power, the 2005 edition presents a new epilogue. Upon continuing controversies, the 2010 edition includes an "extensive" preface, in which Holloway felt it necessary to reassert the timeliness of the book after the waning of the Zapatista movement and Argentine piquetero and neighborhood assembly movements. In his preface, he rather points to the so-called "statecentered developments" (Holloway 2010: xi) in Venezuela and Bolivia, and keeps asking: "how do we stop making capitalism?" (Holloway 2010: xii). He claims that he does not know the answer to this question, while, on the other hand, quite firmly asserting that "the state has no part" in the solution (Holloway 2010: xii).

Human Rights, Citizenship and Inequality: Doing Justice in Democratic but Divided Societies

Argumenta Journal Law, 2007

O presente texto aborda o tema dos direitos humanos, da cidadania e da desigualdade, procura responder a questao: “como fazer para que sociedades democraticas, mas divididas, expandam direitos e beneficios a todos os cidadaos?”. Para tanto, procura-se relacionar exemplos do direito penal, do direito constitucional e das Cartas de Direitos. Discute, ainda, os discursos da Suprema Corte do Canada e as atividades do Ministerio Publico Brasileiro.

Citizenship and Participation in Brazil

Brazil's emergence from two decades of military dictatorship in the mid-1980s gave rise to a flowering of democratic innovation. Experiences during the struggle for democracy shaped the experiments that took place over the years that followed to create new institutions that could ensure accountability and responsiveness. Brazil's participatory institutions have now begun to attract increasing international attention -so much so that attempts have been made to replicate them in other countries. Participatory Budgeting has become perhaps the most famous of these institutions. Its appearance as a "tool" in the World Bank's empowerment manual might suggest that Brazilian models can simply be exported as part of democracy-building packages delivered by aid agencies. But, this paper suggests, the contribution that Brazil's democratic innovations have to deepening democracy, enhancing accountability and engaging citizens lies in more than their institutional design. For each of these institutions has its own history; and within Brazil itself, similar institutions may yield markedly different dynamics and outcomes, depending on configurations of cultures of politics and spaces of power. Drawing together insights from four extended case studies carried out as part of an unusual research process that brought together activists, practitioners and academics in a collaborative study of the meanings and practices of participation and citizenship in Brazil, this paper seeks to set Brazilian experiences of participatory governance in context.

Equity, development and citizenship - Abridged edition

2012

This publication has been produced with the support of the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (Deutsche Gelleschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ)) through a consultancy fund which was used to finance work undertaken by ECLAC in the field of social equity in Latin America and the Caribbean together with other projects funded by Germany and the Netherlands.