"The crisis and the Challenges of Democracy" Organização Alfredo Ramos Priscila Delgado de Carvalho Leonardo Avritzer Giovanni Allegretti Nº 27 Setembro, 2020 1 Propriedade e Edição/Property and Edition Centro de Estudos Sociais/Centre for Social Studies Laboratório Associado/Associate Laboratory Universidade de Coimbra/University of Coimbra www.ces.uc.pt Colégio de S. Jerónimo, Apartado 3087 3000-995 Coimbra - Portugal E-mail: [email protected] Tel: +351 239 855573 Fax: +351 239 855589 Comissão Editorial/Editorial Board Coordenação/Coordination: Ana Raquel Matos e Antonieta Reis Leite ISSN 2182-908X © Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra, 2020 Informações sobre o evento A presente publicação decorre do workshop “The Crisis and the Challenges of Democracy”, realizado de 4 a 6 de novembro de 2019, na Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra. Financiamento O evento que enquadra esta publicação foi financiado pelo Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), pela Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), pela Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (Fapemig), financiadores do Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia – Democracia e Democratização da Comunicação (INCT – IDDC). Contou ainda com financiamento da Emenda Parlamentar – Deputado Patrus Ananias – PT e com cofinanciamento da Fondazione Innovazione Urbana, Bolonha, no âmbito do projeto sobre Inovações Urbanas e Participação Cívica. Organização A presente publicação decorre de um evento coorganizado pelo programa de doutoramento “Democracia no Século XXI”, do centro de Estudos Sociais e Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra, e pelo Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia – Democracia e Democratização da Comunicação (INCT – IDDC). Oradores/as André Freire, ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra Fernando Pindado, Institute of Government and Public Policy, IGOP-Barcelona Gonçalo Canto Moniz, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra José Manuel Ribeiro, Presidente da Câmara de Valongo e Presidente da Rede Portuguesa de Autarquias Participativas Maria Paula Meneses, Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra Marisa von Bülow, Universidade de Brasília Stefania Barca, Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra e Universidade de Lund Teresa Cravo, Centro de Estudos Sociais e Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra Índice Alfredo Ramos, Priscila D. Carvalho, Leonardo Avritzer, Giovanni Allegretti Introduction: The Crisis and the Challenges of Democracy ................................................... 03 Emma Rose Álvarez Cronin Social citizenship and the crisis of democracy. Welfare state reform from a radically democratic perspective ............................................................................................................................... 15 Teógenes Moura, Alexandre Gomes, Max Stabile, Marisa von Bülow, Alexandre Arns Gonzales, Alana Karoline Fontenelle Valente, Lorena Vilarins, Beatriz Delgado Val Franco Google it: Brazil's 2018 election ............................................................................................. 30 Pedro Abelin The crisis of liberal democracy and New Technologies: A case study of the Free Brazil Movement ............................................................................................................................... 53 Alem Asmelash Werede Resignation: A new strategy by dominant political parties in Africa to maintain power? ..... 85 Luiza Nunes de Lima Discussing gender issues in indigenous social movements in Brazil: An overview of the current challenges to the realization of indigenous women’s rights ................................................. 104 Elisa de Jesus Garcia Practices in motion: The dynamics of Family Farmers organizations and the new interactions between social movements and the State ............................................................................. 131 Bruno Dias Magalhães, Gabriel Mattos Ornelas, Flávia de Paula Duque Brasil 2 Democratic deconstructions and resistances: The struggle over participatory institutional legal frameworks in contemporary Brazil ..................................................................................... 142 Giulia Malavasi Ecological and democratic crises in the history of Manfredonia, Italy ................................ 164 Introduction: The Crisis and the Challenges of Democracy Alfredo Ramos,1 INCT-IDCC – Institute of Democracy Priscila D. Carvalho,2 INCT-IDCC – Institute of Democracy Giovanni Allegretti,3 Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra Leonardo Avritzer,4 Federal University of Minas Gerais and INCT-IDCC – Institute of Democracy This new issue of Cescontexto-Debates discusses the current crisis of democracy and how it intersects with the long-lasting challenges of contemporary democracies. Democracy is still a highly contested phenomenon, and those who thought that liberal democracy had prevailed overall are being proved mistaken. Nowadays, we can observe elements of a crisis both in the older democracies and in younger regimes, of the third and fourth waves of democratization. Assessing the current crisis requires understanding regional traits and what is old and what is new when compared to the previous crisis. It also requires discussing how this crisis affects core democratic features such as representation and participation, along with pressing issues such as inequality, communication technologies, and the planetary climate crisis. Moreover, it is worth wondering if forms of civic participation can respond to the challenges posed by the current crisis of democracy. This question is connected to the genesis of the workshop “The Crisis and the Challenges of Democracy”, held in CES-Coimbra at the beginning of November 2019. The workshop was organized by the Ph.D. program “Democracy in the Twenty-First Century” and by the Brazilian INCT - Institute of Democracy. As the doctoral course puts a strong emphasis on participatory and democratic innovations, it offers a good standpoint for discussing the connections between citizens’ participation and the crisis of democracy. Additionally, the workshop has been conceived as part of a gradual readjustment of this Ph.D. program’s focus, by including, within its concerns, new standpoints on the democratic crisis, as well as the rise of theories related to the expansion of technopolitics, and new critical perspectives on theoretical models that are excessively tied to an Anthropocene-centric vision. Each paper of the issue engages in the abovementioned concerns from different theoretical, empirical, and methodological standpoints. These papers were selected among 21 presentations at 5 workshop sessions. All papers were discussed by keynote speakers and contributed to set up a rich approach about the multiple layers of the current democratic crisis. Selected authors submitted a second revised draft, which later received a blind peer-review. The papers included in this volumeare, thus, the result of a double process of peer-reviewing. 3 1 Associate researcher at the INCT-IDCC – Institute of Democracy. 2 Post-doctoral researcher at the INCT-IDDC - Institute of Democracy. 3 Senior researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the Coimbra University, Portugal. Coordinator of "PEOPLEs' Observatory: Participation, Innovation and Local Powers". 4 Full professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Coordinator of the INCT-IDDC – Institute of Democracy. Assessing the features of the current democratic crisis: an overview of the workshop Critical democratic theory from a participatory standpoint and the potential ways for deepening democracy are both key concerns of those involved in the workshop. There is an ongoing dispute between two types of democracy. On the one hand, there are low-intensity democracies, which do not guarantee conditions of political equality, reduce participation to the electoral vote, and tend to only recognize individual identities, while denying the importance of collective ones. This is typical of the hegemonic canon of democracy, which reduces the capacities of citizens to elect their leaders and perpetuates a tense relation between mobilization and institutionalization. On the other hand, there are high-intensity democracies, which seek to reverse this framework. The construction of public spaces that, based on an increased role for participation and deliberation, incorporate citizens into the elaboration of public policies and the control of governments, is one of the fundamental characteristics of this second type of democracy (Avritzer and Santos, 2002). Under this framework, the workshop participants drew a vivid narrative of the current democratic crisis and the urgent research agenda it fosters. This crisis connects institutional and economic features. Classic representative institutions have been facing problems of legitimacy for a while now, but these problems multiply as democratic institutions no longer offer a counterweight to neoliberal economy - especially in its global financialized form. In some world regions, welfare systems (often incomplete ones) are threatened by the disembedment of economy and politics, while, in others, the commodification of life seems to have no limits, reaching land, water and the environment in a newly disruptive level. In this scenario, populism has emerged as a