Democracia e eficiência: a difícil relação entre política e economia no debate contemporâneo

Democracy and efficiency: hard relations between politics and economy. Many economists see politics as an irrational activity. They also think state action usually generates market inefficiencies and democratic institutions, such as elections, often work as obstacles to sound economic measures. Showing that vision has been embedded into the main currents of economic thought since the last century, we also argue those ideas are exported to great part of contemporary political science, including the area of public policies. Examining the literature, we show that rational choice political scientists, as the economists, claim governability and effective decisions will be guaranteed mainly through concentrated arenas or through insulated arrangements able to protect policy makers from political interference. In other words, governability depends on the reduction of the political arenas. On the contrary, we reject this technocratic solution of splitting politics from economy. With the support of classical pluralist thinkers, we stand another conception, arguing politics is the privileged social space for building interests and values in an institutionalized way. The difficulties to surpass current international crises since 2008 reveal this is a crucial problem: reducing politics would prevent societies from improving institutional solutions which are the only ones able to give space to emerging conflicts and, then, reach eventual consensus around them.

Democracia consolidada e tamanho do Estado

Consolidated democracy and size of the State. Common sense suggests that the more consolidated democracies and advanced economies tend to be more efficient and produce smaller States. What is observed in practice, however, is a positive correlation between "democratic consolidation" and "tax burden" (as a proxy for"size of Government"). This finding, while not expressing any causal relationship between the two variables, is an evidence that a more republican and democratic State, as defined in Bresser-Pereira, must be able to provide, effectively and efficiently, broader public services with better quality. This is, in consolidated democracies, the State should not be small.

Rosa Luxemburg: revolução e democracia

Revolução e Terror andaram sempre de braços dados? Uma parcela significativa do que foi outrora a esquerda acredita que sim e propõe o fortalecimento da democracia como alternativa à revolução, vista como fonte do totalitarismo. Este artigo procura contribuir para esse debate, mostrando a alternativa revolucionária e democrática apresentada por Rosa Luxemburg. Para ela, a democracia não é um valor universal abstrato, mas justamente o resultado de um processo revolucionário em que as massas proletárias, atuando com irrestrita liberdade, lançam os fundamentos de uma "nova época". Entretanto, a revolução alemã, em que Rosa Luxemburg e Karl Liebknecht tiveram um papel central, fracassa e ambos são assassinados. Derrota que traça, de certa forma, o destino da Alemanha contemporânea.

Paixão, democracia e deliberação em Hobbes e Walzer

O artigo examina a relação entre paixão, democracia e deliberação no pensamento de Hobbes e no de Walzer. São apresentadas as razões pelas quais esses dois pensadores posicionam-se de forma crítica no concernente às deliberações no âmbito de governos democráticos. A relação entre razão e paixão é também examinada no interior do problema central de nosso estudo comparativo.