COALITION PRESIDENCIALISM AND THE POLITICAL FORMAL PRINCIPLE OF REPRESENTATION:

Carl Schmitt’s thoughts in “Constitution Theory” as a tool to rethink the brazilian institutional arrengement

Abstract

This article analise the representative crisis in contemporary brazilian democracy, marked by strutural tensions since at least 2013 and agraveted by events like fake news dissemination and an attempted coup d’etat in january 2023. The coalition presidencialism, as practiced in Brazil, characterized by partidary fragmentation and physiological negotiation/trading logic, might compromise legitimacy of the political representation and contributes for creating distance between representatives and represented. From the Carl Schmitt’s work Theory of Constitution (1928), the present article proposes a critical reflection about the limits of the representative liberal model. The study uses the Schmittian framework to put in evidence the paradox of the brazilian political system, sugesting that the overcoming of the crisis demands the reconstruction of the symbolical bond between people and institutions, without renouncing to the democratic values of plurality, liberty and popular sovereignty. Thus, the objective of the present article is to propose a critical reflection about the coalition presidencialism model and its compatibility with the political-formal principle of representation, from the Carl Schmitt’s theoretical framework, especially through the central elements contained in his work Theory of the Constitution, writen in 1928. This work will seek to understand to what extent the current brazilian institutional arrangement contributes to the emptying of politics as a space for public deliberation and the construction of unity, encouraging the reader to consider how brazilian democracy can be strengthened from its own contradictions, incorporating the lessons of a radical theoretical critique without, however, abdicating its commitments to plurality, freedom and popular sovereignty.