Democracy in the periphery: recipes for democratic revitalization in the light of the Brazilian reality.

• Autor(a) principal: Miguel, Luís Felipe
• Data de Publicação: 2003
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Mediações - Revista de Ciências Sociais
• Texto Completo: https://ojs.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/mediacoes/article/view/9080
• topic: Democratic theory; Participative democracy; Participative budget; Teoria democracia; Democracia participativa; Orçamento participativo

Electoral democracy had an extraordinary expansion in the last decades. In Western countries, it was converted into the only political régime able to conquest legitimacy. But most of its problems remain unresolved. The idea of "rule of the people" earns almost universal adhesion, but representative institutions are increasingly discredited. Electoral turnout is lowering, the influence of political parties was eroded and common citizens think they are impotent. Peripheral countries, like Brazil, have additional problems. Brazilian democracy is young and needs "consolidation". Its economic and social politics are being testing, in a world that apparently reduced the space of action for nation-states, especially peripheral ones. This article essays a rereading of recent proposals to revitalize democracy (deliberationism, communitarism, and others), observing the obstacles that political, economic and social conditions of countries like Brazil put to the accomplishment of alternatives thought from the reality of the developed world.