Mission: Dedicated to create a reflection that offers basis for the debate of substantive questions of nowadays. It enphasizes its public character in the analysis of public policies, and the position of Brazil in the analysis of the international landscape.
Centro de Estudos da Cultura Contemporânea (CEDEC)
From Political Crisis to Critique of the Present: Constitutional Democracy in the Present Time
This dossier presents a series of articles that examine the current political dynamics within constitutional democracies, addressing unresolved issues and critically problematizing themes, concepts, and theses central to the understanding of democracies and their crises. Each article draws upon a distinct array of theoretical and methodological approaches, offering diverse perspectives for analyzing contemporary questions in constitutional democracy. Topics include the political potential and ambivalences of the digital realm, memory and testimony, political actors, movements and strategies, the interplay between institutional and extra-institutional processes, challenges to the constitutional legal framework, and judicial practices. Featuring contributions from Brazilian and international authors across various disciplines and theoretical backgrounds, this dossier offers both research findings and innovative perspectives. These contributions are particularly aimed at exploring critical limits, identifying new potentials, and provoking political imagination for the years ahead.
Copyright (c) 2025 Andrei Koerner, Raquel Kritsch, Pedro Vasques http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Reading the Far-Right Beyond Self-righteousness. Neoliberalism, Democratic Deficit, and Javier Milei’s Global Leadership
This article invites readers to think about the far-right and its global rise beyond self-righteous. The authors challenge the conventional perception of the far-right as entirely distinct from mainstream politics, arguing instead that there is significant overlap, especially regarding neoliberalism, racism, and patriarchy. However, the right does change and innovate. The second section of the piece argues that some of the most cutting-edge forms of right-wing activism are currently unfolding in the Global South. Argentinian President Javier Milei’s leadership is a noteworthy case as it combines right-wing intersectionality (Ravecca et al., 2022), a conservative version of the critique of elite capture (O. Táíwò, 2023), and the theological dimension of neoliberalism (Kotsko, 2018). The conclusion comes back to the idea that, at multiple significant levels, there is no pure exteriority between the far-right and the rest of us. Even Milei’s ‘new’ rhetoric radicalizes tendencies that were already present in the main corridors of politics and academia.
Copyright (c) 2025 Paulo Ravecca, Emiliano Robaina, Facundo Zannier http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
PERFECCIONISMO LIBERAL NO MODELO DO DESAFIO DE RONALD DWORKIN: A VIDA BOA COMO LIBERDADE
The paper intends to show how Ronald Dworkin's work has changed over the years, no longer defending an anti-perfectionist liberalism, based on neutrality as a principle, to constitute a defense of a liberalism based on equality, which can be interpreted as perfectionist from the perspective of its “challenge model”. For this, it will be initially shown how Dworkin adopted neutrality as a principle. Then, it will be reconstructed the way in which he starts to take equality as a principle, leaving neutrality in the background. Finally, the article intends to suggest that this change, culminating in the challenge model, leads to a position that can be considered perfectionist.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ricardo Corrêa Araujo, gUSTAVO Pierazzo Santos http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Democracy, Political Representation, and Populism in the Age of Digital Technologies
The triumph of informational technology is certainly one of the transformations that challenge democratic arrangements. The result of this ongoing process, which encompasses the fake news and post-truth world, is that we lack reliable tools to take decisions and to act, what leaves us at the mercy of algorithms programming our choices. The collective virtual violence enabled by such machines specialized in utilitarian calculations, as the literature points out, has dire consequences for what we understand as democratic debates. This article aims to highlight how this phenomenon also contributes to: (i) the intensity and simultaneity of populism's occurrence in contemporary constitutional democracies; (ii) operating as a means of weakening traditional representation and/or strengthening direct representation. By addressing the relationships between democracy, digital technologies, populism, and political representation, our intention is to revisit theoretical-conceptual resources that can contribute to analyses of ongoing political phenomena.
Copyright (c) 2025 Raquel Kritsch, Andre Luiz da Silva, Raniery Parra teixeira http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The violation of human rights in Mexico. A reflection of institutional orphanhood
El objetivo de este artículo es mencionar la relación que existe entre la violación de los derechos humanos en México, la desigualdad social, la corrupción, la impunidad y la falta de acceso a la justicia. Para lograr el objetivo se utilizó el concepto de orfanato institucional , resultante del desamparo de las autoridades ante las víctimas involucradas en casos de violaciones a los derechos humanos. Durante décadas, México se ha caracterizado por ser un país donde contextos de corrupción e impunidad permiten generar escenarios de desigualdad social, sin acceso a la justicia y, como resultado, una vulneración sistemática de los derechos de los ciudadanos, provocando daño social y desconfianza. . e incertidumbre en las prácticas de los agentes estatales. Al final se describieron posibles desafíos y obstáculos para erosionar la orfandad institucional y consolidar un Estado social y democrático de Derecho en el país .
acceso a las justicia y a las autoridades
Copyright (c) 2025 Dra. Angélica Cuéllar Vázquez, Analy Loera http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Resiliência Democrática na América Latina: Analisando Crises e Superações
During the last two decades, several Latin American countries have experienced tensions between democratic ideals that have put their regimes to the test. Despite the challenges, most Latin American democracies have been able to react in different ways to these crisis, leading to institutional solutions as examples of resilience. The objective of this article is to analyze the risks and resilience of Latin American democracies in their recent years. The analysis allowed for the organization into three groups: the first, composed of countries that have gone through situations of resilience, such as Bolivia, Brazil Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Guatemala. The second group is composed of countries with current or latent risks that raise some kind of concerns about democracy, such as El Salvador, Mexico, and Argentina. Finally, the two countries with clear signs of rupture, Nicaragua and Venezuela, are analyzed. This classification allows for the different dynamics at play in contemporary democracies and the specific challenges they face.
Copyright (c) 2025 Hugo Borsani, Soraia M. Vieira, Mariele Troiano http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article delves into the complexities of the contemporary crisis in democracy from both analytical and normative perspectives guided by the sense of listening. Our aim is not to debate the existence of a democratic crisis or to define and dispute concepts such as right-wing populism, fascism, or the new right. Instead, we first challenge analyses that overlook nationalism and its relationship with so-called undesirable migrations as significant factors in the democratic crisis. We then highlight the limitations of normative positions on the relationship between democracy and nationalism, arguing that these positions should be critically examined rather than assumed in discussions about exclusion dynamics within the context of democratic degeneration.
Copyright (c) 2025 Raissa Ventura, Guilherme Cardoso de Moraes http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Populism, aesthetic crisis and massification
Este artigo investiga a relação entre transgressão estética e populismos no Brasil, destacando o contraste entre o bolsonarismo, com seu estilo vulgar e frequentemente obsceno, e o lulismo, que assume o papel de defensor da normalidade democrática e do respeito. Analisa-se as implicações desse contraste para a mobilização política, estruturando o texto em três partes: a primeira investiga a conexão entre transgressão estética e populismo, resgatando a noção de "massa" na literatura clássica sobre populismo latino-americano; a segunda parte apresenta uma tipologia das massas no Brasil atual, distinguindo entre subalternos, precários e a ralé; a terceira parte discute como lulismo e bolsonarismo lidam com a transgressão, impactando a mobilização dessas massas. Utilizando uma abordagem crítica e interdisciplinar, o artigo argumenta que, enquanto o bolsonarismo se mantiver como a principal força de transgressão, continuará a ser um potente mobilizador político no país.
Copyright (c) 2025 Thomás Zicman de Barros http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Compreendendo o punitivismo desde um espaço profissional: os agentes de segurança socioeducativa no Rio de Janeiro
The study aims to explore how belonging to a professional group shapes the relationship of socio-educational agents in Rio de Janeiro with politics, influenced by values and worldviews constructed both in personal life and at work. The text analyzes the professional ethos of the agents, highlighting their valorization of individual merit and moral criticism of behaviors considered negative. Their political engagement is reflected in their positions on incarcerated adolescents and socio-educational policy. Despite some social advancement, they maintain ties to their origins, generating feelings of injustice and insecurity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Cadorel Louise http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Bolsonarismo como Convergência, Horizonte, Infraestrutura, Ecologia e Máquina
Is there such a thing as a concept of Bolsonarismo? If so, what does it refer to? In this article, I argue that it is possible to give defined contours to this concept if we understand it as referring not to any particular ideological innovation, or to any specificity of the Brazilian far right in relation to its peers in the rest of the world, or even to any particular trait of the leader who lends it its name; but rather to the conditions of formation and consolidation of a political force originally constituted in the context of the 2018 presidential election. Thus understood, Bolsonarismo can be interpreted as designating at the same time a convergence of different social tendencies; a political horizon; an organisational ecology; an affective infrastructure; and a machine that works by stimulating and containing the excess of its social base.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rodrigo Nunes http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The essay engages in a critical reflection on the Brazilian political experience from 2019 to 2022 through the metaphor of destruction as an analytical framework. It critiques the prevailing conceptual logic of political regimes and, as an alternative, proposes a phenomenology of destruction. This approach aims to identify and articulate the factors contributing to the disfigurement of Brazilian society during this period. The central hypothesis posits that this political experiment exceeded traditional political regime logic, manifesting as a force of social disfigurement.
Copyright (c) 2025 Renato Lessa http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Sistema e antissistema na gênese do bolsonarismo
Bolsonarism, a concept of growing popularity in the Brazilian public and academic debate, is the subject of several works and the subject of important interpretations of contemporary Brazil. This article seeks to analyze the contours and presuppositions of the term based on an analysis of an element often attributed to it: its anti-systemic dimension. To address the debate on the genesis and limits of the phenomenon, we critically analyze two of the most influential books on Bolsonarism, by Marcos Nobre and Rodrigo Nunes, which focus on its fundamental antagonism to the Brazilian political system (and to the “establishment” in general). We argue that the conceptual construction of Bolsonarism around the system-antisystem axis sublimates one of its central elements, the authoritarian radicalization of the traditional right, by presupposing (a) an idealization of June 2013 and its impacts on national politics; (b) a reiteration of the state-society dualism (typical of a long tradition of Brazilian political thought); (c) an overlapping of different actors from the right-wing camp (ultra-right, traditional right, new right, Bolsonaro); and (d) a poorly mediated import of concepts and contexts that are relatively exogenous to the Brazilian case. Finally, we propose a different theoretical path for the concept.
Copyright (c) 2025 Pedro Luiz Lima , Jorge Chaloub http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article explores the interactions between pastors and evangelicals during the 2022 election campaign on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Through interviews and ethnographic observations, I show how the pastor of a small neighbourhood evangelical church introduces political issues into services and tries to shape the electoral preferences of the congregation. I observe that political discourse is limited and regulated by economic concerns and ceremonial norms. I then examine how the faithful and the pastoral team react to the increasing politicisation of sermons and try to convey their own political representations. Finally, I analyse how the support given to candidate Jair Bolsonaro generates conflict and dissension among the congregation, leading some of them to distance themselves and temporarily withdraw from attending worship.
Copyright (c) 2025 Margayx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article discusses the concept of social polarization dividing contemporary Brazil into poles identifying with Lula or Bolsonaro. Based on the hypothesis that the challenges to Brazil's democratic consolidation have an impact on this context, we analyze five historical social processes, taking the founding of the New Republic as a milestone. These are: the constitution and reforms of the institutional political system; the changing national economic context; the structural changes in Brazilian society; the structure of traditional media and the emergence of new information technologies; and the changing international political context. The analysis supports the hypothesis that the Bolsonaro phenomenon is a symptom that deepens, rather than the origin of, contemporary polarization.
Copyright (c) 2025 Adriana Escosteguy-Medronho http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The rodoviarismo in the political gear of redemocratization (1945-56)
The aim of this article is to analyze how rodoviarismo became a crucial element in Brazilian politics as a whole in the first part of the so-called period of redemocratization, between the fall of the Estado Novo, in October 1945, and the end of the provisional government of Nereu Ramos, in 1956. Based in Nunes' theory (1997) of the new political grammars in the relations between State and society from the Estado Novo (1937-45) and in extensive empirical research, it seeks to demonstrate that the political strength acquired by the agents of rodoviarismo depended, on last instance, of the role assumed by the National Department of Highways (DNER), which at all costs sought to maintain a substantial degree of “bureaucratic insulation” in the face of the troubled political situation at the time.
rodoviarismo; redemocratization; new political grammars.
Copyright (c) 2025 Daniel Monteiro Huertas http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
One eye on the priest and another on the mass: notes on the actions of the Catholic Church during the Dictatorship (1964-88)
This article started from some concerns regarding the actions of the Catholic Church during the period of the Dictatorship in Brazil (1964-88). In memories of the Dictatorship, the Catholic Church often appears associated almost exclusively with resistance to the Military Regime. The most recent historiography on the subject sought to reframe this idea by pointing to the existence of different groups within the Catholic Church: conservatives, moderates and progressives, and their different positions in relation to the military regime during the dictatorial period. However, one of the least known aspects of the Catholic Church's performance during the dictatorial period is the understanding of the processes of change and internal restructuring faced by the institution during this period. Therefore, the impacts of events such as the Second Vatican Council, Puebla and Medellin had on the Church in Brazil during the Dictatorship are still poorly understood. However, understanding the restructuring processes of the Catholic Church is fundamental, for example, to understand the process of formation of Base Ecclesiastical Communities and their role in resistance during the Dictatorship. It is proposed here to revisit the theme of the Catholic Church's actions during the Dictatorship based on dialogue with the most recent historiography on the subject and with new historical sources.
Copyright (c) 2025 Renata Meirelles http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
HABERMAS AND THE DEMOCRATIC MODEL OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
The liberal conception of civil disobedience, reinforced by the philosophical merits of John Rawls' approach, has become one of the most influential perspectives on the subject in contemporary political theory. This paper seeks to challenge this hegemonic conception in light of a primarily political and democratically more demanding model, which we will identify as the democratic conception of civil disobedience, prominently expressed in the work of Habermas. Thus, we will argue that democratic civil disobedience offers a potentially more transformative political approach as it allows for the voicing of new emerging demands in civil society, renewed interpretations of justice, a channel for advocating new rights, and an expansion of forms of democratic participation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Guilherme de Moraes http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Multi-Level Analysis on the Impact of International Human Rights Norms and Pressures
This study engages in a multi-level analysis of the impact of international human rights norms and pressures, and offers a critique of the spiral model within International Relations. Investigating beyond state-centric perspectives, we explore three critical dimensions: the social origins of human rights violations, the political-legal intermediation within civil society, and the internal bureaucratic facets of international human rights organizations. While influential, the spiral model falls short in comprehensively addressing these dimensions. In this text, we introduce theoretical and analytical reflections to address these limitations.
Copyright (c) 2025 Bruno Boti Bernardi, João Roriz http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A construção de uma sociedade de iguais. O problema da igualdade na teoria democrática de Pierre Rosanvallon
This article conducts an in-depth examination of the issue of equality within Pierre Rosanvallon's democratic theory. The focus is on his work La Société des égaux, juxtaposed with other theories of justice. Alongside the introduction and conclusion, the article is structured into three distinct sections. The initial section offers an overview of the first three segments of La Société des égaux. Rosanvallon’s arguments to demonstrate (i) the limitations of the Rawlsian theory centered on the concept of “rending of the veil of ignorance”; (ii) the inherent complexities in the theory of radical equal opportunity, influenced by Ronald Dworkin’s ideas; and (iii) the challenges of establishing a conception of justice among theorists operating within a society characterized by widespread competition. The third section elaborates on Rosanvallon’s notion of “equality as relation”. The article contends that Rosanvallon's historical-conceptual approach offers a unique viewpoint on equality, circumventing the limitations of normative theories, thus offering new avenues for contemplating equality in modern democracies.
Copyright (c) 2025 Diogo Cunha http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
As críticas à teoria política de Rawls: uma teoria não política da política?
O artigo tem como ponto de partida o diagnóstico de que a teoria da justiça rawlsiana teria cumprido um importante papel para o revigoramento das discussões na área de Teoria Política. No entanto, apesar deste diagnóstico compartilhado pela literatura, há, também, uma gama de autores, como Jürgen Habermas, Chantal Mouffe e Michael Walzer que formulam críticas substantivas à teoria de Rawls qualificando-a como, essencialmente, não política. A questão geral que embasa nosso artigo é a de analisar as críticas destes autores a fim de compreender por quais razões a teoria de Rawls que é vista como responsável por contribuir para a revitalização da Teoria Política seria, por fim, não política. Dessa forma, buscaremos entender os limites e alcances dessa interpretação crítica. A hipótese argumentativa que se pretende desenvolver é a de que uma interpretação política da teoria rawlsiana é razoavelmente justificável.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lilian Sendretti http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Public Trust Approach to Political Conspiracy Theories
This paper argues that conspiracy theorizing is essentially a question of trust and distrust. Political conspiracy theories are an outcome of generalized political distrust – this is what I call the public trust approach to conspiracy theories (CTs). The causes of political distrust are various and evolve into a generalized perception of untrustworthiness. Critics of the public trust approach are correct to point out that there is nothing epistemically flawed in CTs as such. Dismissing narratives by imputing a conspirational logic can be used by public authorities as a stratagem to undermine valid criticisms. Although this objection is correct, acknowledging it cannot obfuscate the fact that distrust is a major political problem. Following philosophers of trust, I have argued that distrust is a practical problem and the proliferation of CTs a symptom of political failure. The only response to conspiracy theorizing is the reestablishment of the bonds of trust since a deep sense of trust is a requirement to an ethical and democratic political life.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tomas Lima Pimenta http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Meritocracy, its meanings and critique based on the labor structure
Meritocracy is asserted as a principle of justice or criticized as an ideology from different approaches, which focus on certain aspects of modernity and capitalism. This article aims to reconstruct the concept of merit by relying on its context of emergence and the development of forms of labor organization within capitalism, described above all in historical and sociological labor research. To this end, the text discusses the most common critiques of meritocracy and the meanings of the idea of merit in three distinct moments: combating privileges, individual performance, and merit based on results. The text reflects on the importance of grounding the critique of meritocracy not only in its categorical denial as a neoliberal ideology but also based on social research surrounding the labor structure, attempting to reconstruct its conditioning factors in a society of peripheral capitalism like Brazil.
Copyright (c) 2025 Thiago A. Simim http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
PRAGMATISM AND DISCRETION: THE RELATIONS BETWEEN US AND VENEZUELA IN THE BIDEN AND MADURO ADMINISTRATIONS
This article aims to analyze the reestablishment of trade relations and the political distension between Venezuela and the United States in the Biden government, especially from 2022, characterizing this rapprochement as pragmatic movements on both sides. This pragmatism, on the US side, is the result of the need to realign positions and relationships at regional and global levels due to the dispute for hegemony with China. On the Venezuelan side, pragmatism that resumes an old foreign policy tradition of the governments of Caracas, regardless of ideological orientation, of skilfully relating simultaneously with great powers in dispute, in order to optimize and obtain benefits. In this case, the reduction of sanctions, the expansion of trade and the entry of investments.
Copyright (c) 2025 Leonardo Valente Monteiro http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article intends to deal with the perception of the conservative Juarez Távora on the concept and formulation of projects for the development of Brazil in the Republic of 1946. As he was part of a group made up of key actors in the 1964 coup, we will try to understand what were og the political and economic model adopted in the military dictatorship that were already present in this actor's worldview since previous years. From Freeden (2006) we can define the concept of conservatism that we will operationalize in this work as a modern political ideology that has at its core the defense of the primacy of order and that starts from a conception of progress that aims to maintain the characteristics of the social reality that would have been transmitted by history and which are seen as positive. We will enter into a more detailed analysis of Távora's work because he was simultaneously a key figure in national politics and sought to write interpretations of Brazilian politics and society. For us, it is from there that we can understand what this actor's worldview was and how it articulates with his conception of development. Key-words: developmentalism, political ideologies, conservatives, militaries, brazilian coup of 1964
desenvolvimentismo; ideologias políticas; conservadorismo; militares; golpe de 1964
Copyright (c) 2025 Helio Cannone http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Variations and Categories in the Concept of Hegemony in Ernesto Laclau
This article explores the central importance of hegemony in the works of Ernesto Laclau, highlighting its conceptual transformations over time. Laclau adopts an interdisciplinary approach, engaging in dialogues with various theoretical currents, which provides a comprehensive and complex understanding of hegemony. The author does not hesitate to change directions, such as when abandoning the notion of antagonism in favor of the concept of displacement, and incorporating the idea of deconstruction as fundamental to understanding hegemony. The article argues that the conception of hegemony has gone through distinct phases, such as fundamental class, antagonism, lack, displacement, and deconstruction. These variations, along with the fluidity of the categories, underscore the central importance of hegemony in political struggles.
Copyright (c) 2025 Renato Xavier dos Santos http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
O problema da tolerância religiosa no pensamento político de Lutero
In this article I offer an overview of the evolution of Luther´s political thought concerning religious toleration. My hypothesis is that a "tolerantist" political theory --i.e., a political thought which rejects the legitimacy of religious coercion -- makes appearance in the young Luther, specially in his little tract "On secular authority " (1523), before being abandoned in the course of Reformation. As a second step of the article, I try to situate this change in Luther´s broader political thinking and in the changing winds of the Reformation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Júlio Barroso http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Non-mediated public sphere? Habermas, anti-enlightenment and democracy
In 2022, the social theorist Jurgen Habermas wrote an evolution of the now classic argument on the public sphere published in his book “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere”. In this sixty years old evaluation, Habermas links the crisis of democracy to changes at the level of the public sphere and the diminishing role played by the written press and professional journalists. In this article, I establish a dialogue with the German social theorist and try to bridge his analysis of the public sphere to the idea of an anti-enlightenment tradition based on the work of Zeev Sternhell. The last part of the article is an analysis of the Brazilian crisis of democracy from this perspective.
Copyright (c) 2025 Leonardo Avritzer http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Republican internationalism and globalized sovereignty
The article examines the normative model of globalized sovereignty, conceived by Philip Pettit to extend to the international sphere his neo-republican theory of freedom as non-domination, originally designed to promote the freedom of citizens in the domestic sphere. As a tributary of republican internationalism, in addition to being critical of both cosmopolitanism (liberal or republican) and Westphalian non-interventionism, the model of globalized sovereignty represents a promising path for the theoretical treatment of problems of justice and legitimacy in the contemporary global order. However, realizing the model's potential requires overcoming the constraints imposed by its lack of criticism regarding the role of representative states and international institutions, which are problematically portrayed as the sole protagonist agents of republican freedom's global expansion.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ricardo Silva http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The battle for public opinion and the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff
Studies on Dilma Rousseff's impeachment emphasize the role of the media, the behavior of political parties and elites, and the poor performance of democracy in Brazil as explanatory factors for the interruption of the former president's term. Although these analyses are correct, none of them discussed the role of public opinion in the impeachment process. Based on quantitative and qualitative data produced by the Secretariat of Social Communication of the Presidency of the Republic (Secom/PR), such as weekly telephone surveys responsible for monitoring the "pulse" of public opinion in relation to the Federal Government, I argue that the genesis of Dilma Rousseff's collapse is in the first three months of her 2nd government, in 2015. It was during this period when she lost more than 30% of popular support and reached 62% bad and poor evaluation, levels from which she never left until she was removed from office. By losing support to public opinion, the former president also lost one of the most important shields against the interruption of presidential mandates, being held hostage by political elites and parties represented in the National Congress.
Copyright (c) 2025 Pedro Santos Mundim http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
FROM FRAGILE CONSENSUS TO RADICAL DISSENT
Since the beginning of redemocratization, there have been continuities and shifts in disputes over human rights vocabulary and practices that affect the very development of the democratic regime and efforts at inclusion in politics. The paper examines these phenomena in the public sphere between 1990 and 2020 drawing on a huge database of reports, speeches, demonstrations and interviews looking at the publics involved, the behavior of individual and collective actors from one side of the ideological political spectrum to the other. We identified ruptures that allowed us to systematize the period in three distinct moments, from a supposed initial consensus to a radicalization of dissent, with the strengthening of extreme right-wing actors on the board, passing through an intermediate moment that we call disputes between progressives. Two conjugated processes deserve to be highlighted in the analyses: the pink tide in the international arena and the construction -and weakening- of the PNDH-3 in the domestic arena. The periodization contributes to efforts to understand the erosion of democracy in the country and in the region.
Copyright (c) 2025 Otávio Dias de Souza Ferreira http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0