Political and electoral mini-reforms in 2015 and 2017 on the democratic context of contemporaneity

Abstract

Contemporary democracy cannot be understood just as the election of parliament representatives and as if only those who were elected could debate and decide about the directions of a government, of a State and of the Nation. The expansion of the concept of democracy, with the reinforcement of dialectics and promotion of fundamental rights, was followed by a process of institutional political crisis in many modern democracies. Brazil has passed through one more cycle of political and democratic crisis in the last five years. In order to meet the claims of society, changing the system to reflect more the democratic expectations, the National Congress made laws that would comply with these demands. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the recent political and electoral mini-reforms that happened in Brazil (Laws n. 13.165/2015, 13.487/2017, 13.488/2017 and Constitutional Amendment n. 97, from 2017), both from the perspective of classical political theory and contemporary democratic theories and how they fit in these theories. As theoretical references, we work with Georg Jellinek, Bernard Manin, Giovanni Sartori, Niklas Luhmann and Paulo Bonavides. It is concluded that 2015 and 2017's political and electoral mini-reforms were not effective enough to meet the demand of June 2013 protests, not reaching the democratic value that was intended.