Mecanismos de democracia semidireta e o estatuto das minorias: entre a busca por participação e a predominância da maioria

Abstract

Aims to examine the implications of the democratic procedures to the status of the social and political minorities, focusing on the mechanisms of semi-direct democracy. The expansion of the adoption and utilization of these instruments in the decision-making process is a relevant trend in the recent evolution of the democratic states. Due to the simultaneous growth of pluralism and the demands for direct participation, the debate about the proper equilibrium between the majority will and the sphere of rights and interests of the minorities is increasingly important. The promotion of popular sovereignty and of a government of the people and for the people, since long ago, was accompanied by questionings on whether the radical application of those aims could corrupt democracy to the detriment of minorities, creating a tyranny of the majority. Hence, analyzes the main theoretical thoughts that shaped the modern notion of democracy in order to identify its fundamentals and the elements that constitute its essence, albeit recognizing the dynamic character of the idea and practice of democracy. With such a basis, studies the development of semi-direct democracy and the main criticisms that national and foreign authors have made about it, with the purpose of identifying its possible advantages and disadvantages in a broad sense and, especially, in relation to the minorities. Besides, examines the results of empirical studies on the effects of semi-direct democracy on minority rights, aiming to extract, if not definitive assertions, evidences which allow one to observe the doctrinal arguments in the light of the reality of democracies and to make a reasoned conclusion about the risks and shortcomings that need to be reduced to secure the stability and legitimacy of democracy. Once demonstrated the tension between the need to protect and integrate the minorities and the realization of the majority will, which lies on a basic democratic norm – the majority principle –, analyzes this one as well as the different perspectives with which classical and contemporaneous authors addressed that problem. Thus, adopts the premise that the harmonization of the majority will with the guarantee of a favorable status to the minorities is indispensable to the perfecting of the democratization process in plural contemporary societies. Based on important democratic theories, concludes that the effective inclusion of the minorities into the benefits of the social cooperation and democratic participation demands the achievement of some primary measures, which lay on the bases of tolerance and the true postulates of democracy: liberty and equality. Hence, drafts three propositions: the constitutional provision of fundamental rights and their crucial protection through judicial review; and the institutionalization, alongside the democratic procedures, of ample means of public deliberation and compromise, in which the minorities should have a fair chance to participate; and the shaping of a legal and political system that doesn’t ignore the plurality and the inequalities and, thus, seeks to secure to people of all groups the same opportunities to exercise their rights, that is, to be equally free.