Human Development and Social Support for State Authority in Brazil (original) (raw)
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BRAZIL'S POLITICAL SELF-PORTRAIT
lasa.international.pitt.edu
Political values are currently considered as an abstract part of ethics. But given cultures adapt them, in real life, to their specific set of values. The purpose of this paper is to provide basis for analyzing how present Brazilian culture shapes some democratic issues related to the political system, citizenship, rights and duties, and how strongly it seems to be attached to the democratic political system. Some considerations are added in order to show how Brazilian perceive their own collective personality.
Latin American Human Rights Studies, 2021
Authoritarianism is a pathology of Brazilian democracy. Brazilians opposed to Bolsonarist authoritarianism could deploy human rights as mundane achievements of political action by ordinary people. They could oppose authoritarian democracy in Brazil by promoting liberal democratic constitutionalism committed to human rights, particularly by encouraging education toward rendering citizens better informed and more analytic, sensitive to the power of old identities and the power of new social media; by rendering human rights internal to a community's selfunderstanding as a means to challenge authoritarian democracy; and by championing individual agency and rejecting centralized authority wherever it tramples individual rights. These various methods share a core feature: human rights thinking as a "cognitive style." This feature can be pursued in the context of civic education that encourages citizen participation. Three models deploy this approach in different settings: one for professional activists, one for non-professional community activists, and one for educational use. Português: Como se Opor à Democracia Autoritária no Brasil Sumário: Os brasileiros que se opõem ao autoritarismo bolonarista poderiam implantar os direitos humanos como conquistas mundanas de ação política por pessoas comuns. Eu desenvolvo essa perspectiva prática para a agência política de cidadãos interessados em três etapas. (1) Eu reviso a eleição democrática de Jair Bolsonaro para argumentar que o autoritarismo é uma patologia da democracia brasileira. (2) Os cidadãos poderiam se opor à democracia autoritária no Brasil, promovendo (a) constitucionalismo democrático liberal comprometido com os direitos humanos, (b) particularmente encorajando a educação para tornar os cidadãos mais informados e mais analíticos, (c) sensíveis ao poder de velhas identidades e o poder das novas mídias sociais, (d) tornando os direitos humanos internos para a autocompreensão da comunidade como um meio de desafiar a democracia autoritária, e (e) defendendo a agência individual e rejeitando a autoridade centralizada onde quer que ela atropele os direitos individuais. (3) Todos esses métodos compartilham uma característica central: (a) pensamento de direitos humanos como um "estilo cognitivo", (b) uma abordagem que pode ser perseguida no contexto de um tipo de educação cívica que (c) incentiva a participação do cidadão. (d) Eu ofereço três modelos que implantam essa abordagem em diferentes ambientes: um modelo para ativistas profissionais, um para ativistas comunitários não profissionais e um para implantação educacional. Palavras-chave: democracia autoritária, direitos humanos, cidadāos, Brasil
The Human Values Index: conceptual foundations and evidence from Brazil
Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2013
The dominance of the 'growth fetish' ideology has much contributed to lure societies into believing that people's value judgments are unnecessary for a better life and social justice. The theme 'human values' became the central research topic for the UNDP Human Development Report team in Brazil after the promotion of a nationwide consultation to choose the focus of its 2009/10 report. A new index, named Human Values Index (HVI), was created to tackle the issue of human values as part of development strategies. The main objective of this paper is to introduce this index, showing its features and properties. The HVI is built on an understanding that development is not a value-neutral concept and that from a Human Development perspective welfare indicators should be qualitatively closer to human values focusing on statistics that can be useful to ordinary citizens with the hope that in their hands it might become a useful tool in promoting public reasoning and social justice. Public values allow people opportunities for reflective choice and public reasoning. As such, they are the basis for social justice. The perspective adopted here considers values as the source of human rights' ethical appeal. When human rights are seen beyond what can be legislated, new perspectives for communication and public discussion are brought into question, as argued by Sen (2009) 4 . The theme 'human values' became the central research topic for the UNDP Human Development Report team in Brazil after the promotion of a nationwide consultation 5 to choose the focus of its next report. The consultation revealed that Brazilians believe that human values such as respect, responsibility, tolerance, understanding, etc. are key for a better life. The campaign named Brazil Point-by-Point was organized on the understanding that public reasoning and participation are at the heart of human development. The consultation listened to the views of over half a million people from all corners of Brazil and all social groups. The choice of 'human values' as a crosscutting theme allowed the report to articulate a wide range of issues, such as education, violence, health, etc., around a central idea, namely, that human values are important for the promotion of human development 6 . Several empirical studies on human values were carried out as part of the Brazilian Human Development Report. A new index, named Human Values Index (HVI), was created to tackle the issue of human values as part of development strategies. The main objective of this paper is to introduce this index, showing its features and properties. The HVI is built on an understanding that development is not a value-neutral concept and that from a Human Development perspective welfare indicators should be qualitatively closer to human values focusing on statistics that can be useful to ordinary Economy, vol. 63, no. 2. Comim, F. 2008. Capabilities and Happiness: overcoming the informational apartheid in the assessment of human well-being. In: Bruni, Comim and Pugno. 2008.
Authoritarianism and Right-Wing Voting in Brazil
Latin American Research Review
Mounting evidence shows that authoritarian orientations exert a powerful influence on public opinion attitudes and candidate support. The 2018 Brazilian elections brought to power Jair Bolsonaro, a candidate with an open disregard for democracy and democratic institutions. This study examines Brazilian voters’ differences in authoritarianism and electoral support for a right-wing authoritarian candidate. It employs the AmericasBarometer national survey data to demonstrate that authoritarianism is politically important in Brazil because of its association with attitudes toward the use of force as well as with conservative social and political attitudes. The effect of authoritarianism on the probability of voting for Bolsonaro is as large as that of other relevant political behavior variables such as ideology, negative partisanship, or religiosity, whereas nonauthoritarian voters spread their votes across other candidates. Although these other variables are also relevant to Bolsonaro’...
Authoritarian setback in the current crisis of Brazilian democracy
Tempo e argumento, 2021
The article analyzes the democratic crisis experienced by Brazil from the second decade of the 21st century onwards. The aim is to investigate how this historical period can be characterized. The text asserts that it is inappropriate to understand Brazil without observing its historical distrust of democracy and lack of commitment to the rule of law. The research is based on the assumption that Brazilian modernization in the transition from the 20th to the 21st century was ambiguous but with important achievements. However, the authoritarian mentality and the gap in terms of the quality of political participation are factors of structural permanence. The hypothesis is that Brazil is experiencing a specific moment characterized by the awakening of an authoritarian and conservative mentality that impacts both the State and civil society. The research methodology is based on a bibliographical discussion, with contributions in history, political science, and law. The subjects are discussed in theoretical terms to understand the problems related to the political participation gap, the inequality between citizens, the difficulties of civic culture (mainly in the digital environment), and some inherent weaknesses in democratic performance. Starting from the idea that civic culture influences institutions and these, in turn, impact civic culture, Brazil is currently experiencing a political and cultural setback. Contrary to what could be imagined a few years ago, the process of Brazilian social modernization is threatened in its most important achievements, which implies a danger to the values that sustain democracy.
Shifts in the relationship between the state and civil society in Brazil's recent democracy
2012
List of contents List of figures List of tables List of abbreviations Dedicatory Acknowledgements Author's declaration Introduction The subject of inquiry and the hypotheses of this thesis Methodology Case selection Structure of the chapters Chapter 1 Different concepts and usages of 'Civil Society': a proposal for a relational approach 1.1. Terminology and usages of 'civil society' 1.2. Civil society and the democratisation process in Brazil 1.2.1. First transition: the breakdown of the military regime 1.2.2. Second transition: the challenge of democratic consolidation 1.3. Rejuvenation of the debate and the changing signification of the idea of civil society in Brazil 1.3.1. The authoritarian project 1.3.2. The neoliberal political project and the state reform approach 1.3.3. The democratic-participatory project and the renewal of Left-wing thinking 1.4. The research analytical framework 1.4.1. The analytical categories: apoliticalconsensual and political-conflictual views of civil society 1.4.2. Reflections on the problems of the substantialist approach and arguments for a relational approach 1.4.3 The main hypothesis Chapter 2 Main characteristics of Brazilian civil society and the trajectory of its relationship with the state 2.1. Early stages of Brazilian civil society: the emergence of civil society and its complex relationship with the state and the Church 2.2. Main figures of the Brazilian civil society in recent times 2.2.1. The size of the body and general patterns of growth 2.2.2. Areas of dominance 2.2.3. Sources of funding 2.2.4. Geographic distribution and duration 2.3. Main patterns of change in Brazil's civil society and reflections on the impacts of the Cardoso and Lula governments Final considerations Chapter 3 A discussion on Brazil's democracy and civil society in recent times: Cardoso's and Lula's social agendas and formal relationships with civil society 3.2. Lula's government (2003-2006 and 2007-2010) 3.2.1. The discourse of Lula's government 3.2.2. Confronting the discourse and the practical actions undertaken under Lula's government Final considerations Chapter 4 Looking at participatory initiatives from an agonistic perspective Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning)
A Meta-analysis of Basic Human Values in Brazil: Observed differences within the country
Revista Psicologia Organizações e Trabalho, 2015
análise dos Valores Humanos Básicos no Brasil: Diferenças observadas no país 1 » Cláudio V. TORRES 2 (Universidade de Brasília, Brasil) » Juliana B. PORTO 3 (Universidade de Brasília, Brasil) » Luiza M. VARGAS 4 (Universidade de Brasília, Brasil) » Ronald FISCHER 5 (Universidade Victoria de Wellington, Nova Zelândia)
Challenges of democracy in Brazil
The first aim of this paper is to discuss the current challenges of democracy in Brazil, from a historical perspective. It starts by stating the theoretical standpoint used to approach the subject: power relations stem from, economic, social and cultural features of a given society. In this context, Brazilian society has been characterized from the start by inequalities, patronage and personal relations. The medieval roots of the colonization mixed with modern slavery to produce a society composed by subjects to the king and local potentates from several centuries (1500-1889). The late introduction of such concepts as citizenship and democracy, from the early republican period, 1989 onwards, meant the maintenance of several traditional features of social relations, such as several rights restricted to the elites, clientage, and the continued exclusion of the large majority of the population of political life. From the 1930s, with the emergence of nationalism and the continued struggle of the subaltern, advances such as the female right to vote (1934), were followed by a crypto fascist regime (1937)(1938)(1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945). The struggle against Nazi-fascism in Europe (1942)(1943)(1944)(1945) led to the demise of the dictatorship and the establishment of democracy (1945)(1946)(1947)(1948)(1949)(1950)(1951)(1952)(1953)(1954)(1955)(1956)(1957)(1958)(1959)(1960)(1961)(1962)(1963)(1964). However, in the context of the Cold War , democracy was mired by conflicts and contradictions, with the exclusion of communists and of illiterates of the body politic. At the heyday of the Cold War, long military rule stamped out opposition, several people were killed and many more expelled or internally exiled. The struggle for democracy gained momentum from the 1970s, as the military enacted an amnesty (1979), and elections for state governors and senators (1982).
State power legitimacy in Brazilian democracy
This article debates about resilience principle and the use of this concept to equalize the relationship between State and Civil Society inside de Rule of Law, but not cloistered for it. Under our point of view, Law borns in the middle of the political and official branches, but also it comes from Society too, composing its dual aspect. We do not use classical bibliography about State power for this essay because in this new approach concerning democracy we want to understand the cooperative interaction between official branches and Citizens mediated by Law like a boundary issue, which is marked by the conceptions of “essentiality” and “resilience” of social and political structures. The resilience principle is, for us, a condition to establish a parameter for evaluating the quality of democracy in Brazil nowadays, once it is a way to measure State power legitimacy, which one is measure, in its turn, by the quality of Citizenship. If the Citizens do not have democratic access, if they can not be cooperative with the State in the public discussions, they are not true Citizens, because the boundary between State and Society is stiffened. Resilience is the opposite of that, it represents flexibility with stability in the relationship between State and Society (Citizens), since this principle aims to maintain a balance between the essential elements of Rule of Law and the growing demand by inclusive democracy in Brazil today. In fact, without inclusion of all Citizens, they will become “Sub-citizens”, speechless and the State will not be legitimate. This balance between this two subjects, State and Civil Society (Citizens), are imperative to actual Brazilian democracy.