Corporativismo à Brasileira: Entre o autoritarismo e a democracia

Abstract

This article analyzes the relation between corporatism and democracy, in a historic perspective. In general, the literature about this subject points out that despite being the corporatism’s origins associated with authoritarian contexts, the corporate forms to intermediate interests have adapted to democratic situations. In the Brazilian case, although the corporatism genesis was linked to a state control over the social conflicts in the Vargas government, its development matches the last years of the ‘Estado Novo’. Since then, corporatism has crossed different political systems in Brazil, and still has important mechanisms working today. On the other side, despite being a frequent target of critics from the left and the right, none of the critics showed a strong preference to overcome this model. This point leads questions about the relevance of the propositions to remove it, or to postulate improvements in this policy, looking forward to also improve the democratic state.