Tocqueville, a Providência e a História

The article contends that for Tocqueville the notion of Providence was an important tool in dealing with problems he encountered both in explaining the emergence of democratic equality as a universal phenomenon and in defining possible lines of action for those who, like him, advocated a liberal solution to the challenges brought by modernity. Specifically, it is argued that the notion of Providence played three roles in the construction of Tocqueville?s arguments: a rhetorical role (convincing his peers that a return to the Old Regime was unfeasible); a cognitive role (lending meaning to the long-term process without reinforcing materialist views regarding either chance or the causality immanent to history); and an ethical-political role (determining the role of responsible human action within the contemporary world)

El problema del despotismo

Fil: Gantus Jasmin, Marcelo. Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro; Brasil.En la introducción de L’Ancien Régime el futuro vislumbrado es, sin lugar a dudas, sombrío. Democracia y despotismo aparecen articulados por una especie de adecuación circular: los vicios de la democracia, derivados del proceso no educado de igualación, facilitan el establecimiento del despotismo; éste, a su vez, acentúa las inclinaciones “naturales” de la igualdad, sus vicios. Esta perspectiva de un futuro marcado por la asociación entre igualdad y servidumbre no es fruto de la imaginación profética de un porvenir remoto. Como revela el texto, “son verdades muy claras” del presente, observables en “nuestros días”, que constituyen el fundamento de la imagen prospectiva. La previsión sombría se origina en la consideración del movimiento evolutivo de las costumbres actuales, de las tendencias preponderantes en el estado social contemporáneo a Tocqueville y en la proyección de sus regularidades, como continuidades, para el de venir

Do despotismo da gentalha à democracia da gravata lavada: história do conceito de democracia no Brasil (1770-1870)

The voting rate in Brazil only reached 40% (considered consistent with a modern democracy) in the 1980s. However, the bibliography always refers to the 1986, 1945, and 1933 elections as moments of "re-democratization", when explicitly or implicitly the original "democracy" could only have existed during the fraudulent and oligarchic First Republic (1889-1930). This article focuses on the process by which the 19th century Brazilian elites slowly forged this purely liberal-institutional concept of democracy, with extensive repercussions during the following century. The concept found its symbol in the "starched collar democracy" to which Teófilo Ottoni referred in his campaign in 1860, limited to the educated and moneyed stratum of the population, and reclaimed by the UDN party in the 1945 presidential campaign