Democracy in Brazil is not a misunderstanding

Abstract

The idea for this work came from the famous phrase of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, in Raízes do Brasil: “Democracy in Brazil has always been an unfortunate misunderstanding.” For the author, inspired by the Weberian ideal types and with a comparative view, Brazil with his cordial man – one who acts more by heart than by reason – and with the predominance of the private space on the public one did not appear as a receptive soil to equal values of democracy. The text suggests that the institutionalization of democratic rules relativizes the weight of culture, without changing its traces in the same rhythm of the rule changes. Brazil, with all the problems arising from an unequal and hierarchical society, is currently located among the more consolidated democracies in Latin America, among those that interact more and which have a willingness to dialogue.