Opinião Pública – Vol. 18, Nº 2 2012
Articles in this issue
Authors: Paolo Ricci e Fabricio Tomio
The Brazilian Provisional Measure (MP) is one of the most powerful legislative instruments in the hands of the President to unilaterally change the status quo. Although the judiciary (STF) has recognized the competence of Governors to establish and adopt the MP only six states attribute the prerogative to edit MP until 2010. This article seeks to explain the non-adoption of this legislative instrument by most states emphasizing the low or marginal relevance that is given to the MP by the Governor in the six cases that adopted it. It is argued here that the Governors, unlike Presidents, do not require another legislative instrument or expanding the delegation of legislative powers to ensure their legislative agenda forward their respective State Legislative Assemblies, because with or without decree power the State Governors would control the limited decisional agenda in the states.
Authors: Marta Mendes da Rocha e Alessandra Costa
The purpose of this article is to discuss the view of literature on the importance and the role of Standing Committees in legislatures in Brazil and to contrast it with the perceptions of state representatives from twelve state assemblies. We attempted to identify points of convergence and divergence between that the literature says and, on the other hand, the perceptions of the representatives in order to contribute to further the understanding about the operation and the importance of Standing Committees in the State Assemblies as well as the obstacles to their participation in the legislative process. Furthermore, the article aims to identify and discuss the aspects and dimensions highlighted by the legislators and not considered in the literature.
Author: Samira Kauchakje
This article discusses values of city councilors of Curitiba–Brazil on social rights, such as: health, education, welfare, labor, social security, food security and nutrition, housing and income transfers. The methodological procedures include interviews, statistical tests and analysis from the parameters of the Constitution of 1988 and from types of solidarity. The types were divided in two groups: political solidarity and gift solidarity. The results indicate that for the case of the rights to the direct monetary transfer and social assistance, the values of city councilors are compatible to the characteristics of the gift solidarity. In the cases of education and health, the values are compatible to the constitutional principles and the political solidarity.
Authors: Joaquim Falcão e Fabiana Luci de Oliveira
The goal is to discuss the public perception regarding the role of the judiciary in the political electoral process and the consequences of this perception to the electoral governance. We explore the Brazilian 2010 elections and the episode of the "clean slate law". Unlike most current studies that focus on perception of the judiciary as a single institution we discuss the specificity of electoral justice as a political power and a public service provider – considering that the electoral judiciary operates, not only resolving electoral disputes but organizing and conducting the electoral process. We add new empirical evidence to an old question: do Brazilians trust or distrust the judiciary? Our argument is that when it comes to the organization and supervision of elections, Brazilians are confident in the judiciary as a guarantor of the fairness of the electoral process. But when it comes to conflict resolution, Brazilians tend to distrust the judiciary - slow, expensive and difficult to use. The educational level is decisive for this perception - the higher the educational level, the more favorable view of the judiciary. The basis for our discussion is given by the results of a survey conducted by FGV Law School a week after the second round of 2010 elections.
Authors: Ludmila Ribeiro, Igor Machado e Klarissa Silva
This article aims to discuss the relation between time and Law. It arises from problems in the methodologies usually applied to measure the length of criminal prosecution in Brazil and it is important because the findings of researches about that subject depend on the methodological procedures chosen for the data construction and handling, showing different results and different phenomena according to the methodologies applied. The article does not offer a final conclusion about what is the best way to analyze time in judicial cases, but aims to contribute with the growing interest in the subject of measurement of Law’s time, highlighting questions and alternatives for those who must deal with the problem of measure time in prosecutions, especially in Brazilian courts.
Author: Leonardo Avritzer
The concept of civil society is essentially contested in its capacity to explain modern societies. It has been re-elaborated during the early nineties and in its renewed version has been employed in Brazil. A few authors defend its analytical use within the new anglo-saxon model provided by Cohen and Arato whereas other authors criticized the idea of social autonomy. In this article I will describe the emergence of civil society in Brazil during the late seventies and will approach its main area of social action during this first stage. I will also approach a second phase in civil society organization in which it moved to a strategy of interdependency with the state.
Authors: Luciana Tatagiba, Stella Zagatto Paterniani e Thiago Aparecido Trindade
This article aims to discuss three common lines that make up the action repertoire of the housing movement of the city of São Paulo: squattings, participation in institucional spheres, (specially the Municipal Housing Council) and the right to the city. We intended to recover part of the history of these practices and routines, and here we present the heterogeneity of the arguments that support and question them. Therefore, we present the housing movement as heterogeneous and plural, whose militants struggle for dignified housing. The article is based on a survey, applied in the 11th State Meeting of Popular Housing, organized by the Union of the Housing Movement, which happenned in São Paulo, in 2009.
Author: Mary Luz Alzate Zuluaga
This article discusses the modalities and strategies that produce collective subjects to deal with violence, from a case study of collective action produced in the context of the Colombian internal armed conflict, characterizing them as forms of political action trying to reverse, transform or alter the power relations through such violence is intended to implement. Ending in the emergence of a new stage of the public, positing the existence of guidelines and forms of action armed opposition to domination and illustrations of a plurality of alternative cultural, political and social civility and democratic.
Author: Paulo Roberto Neves Costa
The aim of this article is to analyze the concept of democracy, the relationship with democratic institutions, the trust placed in them and some aspects of the patterns of political action of the business elite in Brazil nowadays. We use the notion of the business elite, composed by those who are engaged in the direction of representative entities of various sectors of business, therefore, not exactly the criteria of economic power or direction of large companies, as is usual in studies on economic elites, but that of political representation: the leaders who were elected by members of the entities engaged in the business and articulate the interests of their constituents. Data come from interviews with directors of entities from various sectors distinct nature (trade union and associative) and range of action (state or national), checking not only the opinions but also their justifications or rationale, giving a qualitative aspect to data, rarely used in studies of political culture. We realized that the business elite has a strong adherence to democracy higher than the general population, it is favorable to political participation and a high degree of trust and satisfaction with Brazilian democratic institutions.
Authors: Rafael Cardoso Sampaio, Samuel Anderson Rocha Barros e Ricardo Morais
This paper explores the main criteria used in researches in the field of online deliberation. Through an extensive literature review, we selected 59 articles that list indicators to assess discussions in the internet. In these articles were found, altogether, 369 criteria, with an average of 6,25 per item and standard deviation of 2,69. In a second stage, the research effort is made to group these criteria into broad categories and connected to the deliberative principles. The criteria were summarized in eight categories, namely: Justification, Reciprocity, Reflexivity, Respect, Pluralism, Equality, Information and Topic. We conclude that despite the many criteria used, one cannot say there is an excessive dispersion at online deliberation studies. This result is linked to different deliberative democracy approaches, the difficult to operationalize the criterion, the need for specific criterion for different contexts and objects and, in many cases, the mere difference of taxonomy.
Authors: Igor Gastal Grill e Eliana Tavares dos Reis
This article presents partial results of an ample research on the municipal elections in the state of Maranhão in 2008. We focus on the following aspects of the electoral dynamic: 1) the relevance assumed by the so called “judicial battles” in the electoral disputes; 2) the media’s constructive work on “cases” involving possible “cancellation” of candidate registration; 3) the role of lawyers and Law practices specializing in “electoral law” in campaign teams working in specific municipalities in the state; 4) the use made by the members of factions of the processes which were passing through the electoral law courts. The sources of information used were interviews done with lawyers, candidates and campaign managers as well as an analysis of the campaign “coverage” by the newspapers O Estado do Maranhão and Jornal Pequeno during the electoral process.
Authors: Umberto Mignozzetti, Manoel Galdino, Alexandre Landim Felix, Irina Cezar, Maitê Sanches e Rodolpho Bernabel
The aim of this paper is to present the results of an electoral research conducted in the University of São Paulo by the Center of Studies in International Negotiation (CAENI) and the Junior Institute of Social Research (IJPS) during the 2010 Brazilian presidential elections runoff. In this work we discuss the sampling process and its implications on a universe of higher scholarization. We show that the prospective behavior is easier to isolate in situations like these, in comparison with classical surveys over the total Brazilian population.