Adrián Gurza Lavalle

Representação política e organizações civis: novas instâncias de mediação e os desafios da legitimidade

This article examines the new forms of political representation civil organizations have been constructing in their relation with the State, as well as some of the possible consequences for the quality of democracy. There are no historical or theoretical established models of representation which would enable one to explore how civil organizations, in the absence of the mechanisms of elections or formal membership, could construct their political representativeness. That is precisely why political representation by civil organizations has received little attention despite its growing importance. Extensive fieldwork in Sao Paulo has revealed that political representation by civil organizations is closely connected to the dynamics of institutions of representative democracy. Furthermore, it reveals that, alongside notions of representation that are clearly irreconcilable with democratic norms, a new notion of representation has emerged among civil organizations, which is specifically political and compatible to democracy.

Cidadania, igualdade e diferença

O artigo atenta para um aspecto especifico das tendencias recentes de transformacao da cidadania: o avanco do reconhecimento da diferenca combinado com forte regressao no plano da equidade. Para tanto, desenvolve-se uma analise da concepcao tradicional da cidadania, das forcas responsaveis pela sua desestabilizacao, das reacoes na literatura teorica perante tal desestabilizacao e, sobretudo, das diferentes tensoes que, na edificacao da cidadania moderna, caracterizaram a relacao do binomio igualdade/ diferenca ae tensoes tematizadas de forma parcial no debate contemporâneo.

A trama da crítica democrática: da participação à representação e à accountability

In the last decades there has been a surprising conceptual shift between the role of three concepts - political representation, participation and accountability - in the internal criticism of democracy. This article sheds light on that shift by examining the reciprocal redefi nition of meaning between those concepts and the shape of a new conceptual network for democratic critique. Nowadays, internal critique of democracy has been developed from the stand point of representation theories, which used to be traditionally related to the defense of democracy. Participatory democracy models, once the main stand point for criticizing democracy, either lost influence or where integrated to more sophisticated deliberative democratic models. We argue that this state of affairs is due to a conceptual worthy dissociation between representative government and political representation. This dissociation works under democratic and pluralistic assumptions, thus, it is sensible to legitimacy challenges faced by extra-parliamentary political representation. In this scenario, accountability appears as a normative concept useful for dealing with those challenges. We argue as well that the democratic critical leverage of the concept of participation relied on historical circumstances that are not longer in place, rendering standard defi nitions of participation inaccurate for the understanding of ongoing experiences of democratic innovation.

Após a participação: nota introdutória

As pesquisas e os debates teoricos sobre a participacao no Brasil registraram infl exao interessante ao longo da ultima decada, e hoje confi guram um cenario pos-participativo de indagacoes teoricas e empiricas que, em muitos sentidos, encontra-se a frente do estado da arte na literatura internacional. Subjaz a essa infl exao um processo historico de alcance maior que transformou a participacao em uma feicao institucional do Estado no Brasil. Isto e, e independentemente das avaliacoes sobre o resultado desse processo, a participacao, que nos anos 1960 a 1980 condensava a critica dos atores sociais e de parte da academia perante os defi cits de inclusao das instituicoes politicas e do crescimento economico, bem como exprimia um reclamo de autodeterminacao efetiva em face de partidos e intermediarios politicos varios, tornou-se progressivamente, nos anos da pos-transicao, parte da linguagem juridica do Estado e atingiu patamares de institucionalizacao impares nao apenas na historia do pais, mas em outras democracias. A participacao, e claro, nao perdeu seu registro simbolico original, mas adquiriu novo registro dominante porque inserida nos chamados

Protagonistas na Sociedade Civil: Redes e Centralidades de Organizações Civis em São Paulo*

Using network analysis, this article identifies the main leading collective actors within civil society, and especially their different logics of performance and the dynamics of interaction amongst them. The findings of a survey of 202 civil organizations in the city of Sao Paulo showed that NGOs, coordinating bodies and social movements form the group of actors with the greatest capacity for action within the universe of civil organizations. Analyzed in a relational perspective, the three types of actors manifested themselves as the most central and characterized by an accumulation of structural advantages within the universe researched. The article shows that their centrality results from different factors, as well as that they fulfill different roles and differ in importance for other civil organizations which are peripheral or have an intermediate centrality in the network.

Sociedade, representação e a dupla face da Accountability: cidade do México e São Paulo

Organizacoes civis desempenham, de modo crescente, funcoes de representacao politica. A analise das condicoes de legitimidade das novas praticas de representacao e crucial para a inovacao e teoria democraticas. A partir da accountability, assumida como componente sine qua non da representacao democratica e como estrategia de pesquisa, este artigo (i) examina empiricamente (com base em resultados de surveys) as nocoes de representacao existentes no seio das organizacoes civis que assumem funcoes de representacao na Cidade do Mexico e em Sao Paulo, e (ii) avalia seus mecanismos internos de accountability e suas funcoes de controle sobre o poder publico do ponto de vista da teoria democratica.

Waves of Change Within Civil Society in Latin America: Mexico City and Sao Paulo

For the past half a century, Latin American scholars have been pointing toward the emergence of new social actors as agents of social and political democratization. The first wave of actors was characterized by the emergence of novel agents—mainly, new popular movements—of social transformation. At first, the second wave, epitomized by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), was celebrated as the upsurge of a new civil society, but later on, it was the target of harsh criticism. The literature often portrays this development in Latin American civil society as a displacement trend of actors of the first wave by the second wave—“NGOization”—and even denounces new civil society as rootless, depoliticized, and functional to retrenchment. Thus, supposedly, NGOization encumbers social change. The authors argue that NGOization diagnosis is a flawed depiction of change within civil society. Rather than NGOization related to the depoliticization and neoliberalization of civil society, in Mexico City and São Paulo, there has been modernization of organizational ecologies, changes in the functional status of civil society, and interestingly, specialization aimed at shaping public agenda. The authors argue that such specialization, instead of encumbering social change, brings about different repertoires of strategies and skills purposively developed for influencing policy and politics. Their argument relies on comparative systematic evidence. Through network analysis, they examine the organizational ecology of civil society in Mexico City and São Paulo.

Arquitetura da participação e controles democráticos no Brasil e no México

The proliferation of experiences of participation that envisage the widening of social control over policies and politicians has become an important feature of Brazilian political landscape, as it has worldwide. This article suggests a useful analytical framework for comparing the diversity of these innovative democratic mechanisms as participatory designs oriented towards social control. With the help of this framework, we examine the configuration of two contrasting designs of different national origins: Mexico and Mexico and Brazil.

Sociedade civil, Estado e autonomia: argumentos, contra - argumentos e avanços no debate

Resumo: O cenario brasileiro das relacoes entre Estado e sociedade civil tem se reconfigurado ao longo das ultimas tres decadas, suscitando esforcos da literatura especializada para diagnosticar tais mudancas mediante deslocamentos analiticos e revisoes de pressupostos. Em dialogo com um diagnostico recente de conjunto que recoloca algumas teses importantes na literatura e segundo o qual essa reconfiguracao e uma passagem de um periodo historico de autonomia plena dos atores sociais para um momento de interdependencia com o Estado, o artigo desenvolve quatro contra-argumentos amparados em deslocamentos teorico-analiticos e metodologicos que, junto a extensa pesquisa empirica, marcam avancos no debate do pais sobre as relacoes socioestatais. Os contra-argumentos partem do pressuposto da mutua constituicao, ou codeterminacao, entre Estado e sociedade civil e revisam criticamente os argumentos sobre a emergencia tardia da sociedade civil no Brasil, seu nascimento sob o signo de uma nao relacao com o Estado e os partidos politicos, bem como sobre o advento da interdependencia com o Estado no periodo pos-constituinte. No seu todo, o conjunto dos contra-argumentos mostra os ganhos analiticos de uma perspectiva centrada nas interacoes socioestatais e de uma compreensao relacional de autonomia tanto no plano da pratica dos atores quanto no plano da teoria. Palavras-chave: interacoes socioestatais; Estado; sociedade civil; movimentos sociais; autonomia

ATORES PERIFÉRICOS NA SOCIEDADE CIVIL Redes e centralidades de organizações em São Paulo

Based on network analysis, this article identifies the actors in peripheral positions within Sao Paulo civil society and examines their different logics of performance and their relational or interactional strategies towards other actors. Findings of a survey with 202 civil organizations in the city of Sao Paulo show that community and neighborhood associations keep the most peripheral positions, preceded by service non-profits and forums, of middle centrality. Those actors are characterized by the superposition of structural disadvantages. However, this article shows that organizations occupy peripheral and middle centrality positions for distinct reasons and fulfill different functional vocations. It also shows that civil organizations deal with their peripheral and intermediate condition in different ways, even reducing considerably the relational constraints to their capacity for action and decision by establishing selective ties with organizations in highly central positions. Therefore, the article goes beyond the mere identification of positional hierarchies, developing nuanced formulations about the modus operandi of the organizations examined.