Maquiavel e o paradoxo da inclusão política no governo representativo: a via extraordinária como consequência e direito político no modelo de representação

Abstract

This thesis aims to perform a critical analysis of the representative government based on the thoughts of Machiavelli, especially his reflections presented in Discourses on the first decade of Livy and History of Florence, which include his theories concerning political conflict. It will be shown that the conflicts between social divisions are a political category that ontologically defines all political communities. Truly democratic, political institutions must institutionalize conflict, giving vent to tensions in order to prevent marginalized segments from attempting to reenter the political arena through extraordinary (extra-institutional) ways, since this exposes the polis to a risk of collapse. What determines the existence of a democracy is precisely how institutions deal with the tensions that arise from conflicts. We will show that, despite the considerable expansion of citizenship rights promoted by the emergence of the representative government, this regime has provided no institutional environment where conflicts could generate democratic effects. Therefore, it is periodically open to the extraordinary. A perfect political regime must take into account the imperfections of the real (divisions of the polis, conflicts between interests, possibility of corruption). However, the representative government is ruled by principles that disregard such imperfections (popular sovereignty, which implies that the people is one and should be represented as such; confidence in the electoral process, leading to an aristocratic effect etc.). That means that this regime is oblivious to the imperfections of political life, focusing only on abstractions.