O desafio das políticas de redistribuição à luz do continuum clientelismo-cidadania: alguns parâmetros para um equilíbrio entre direitos sociais e direitos políticos

Abstract

The ideal of effectiveness of the Brazilian Federal Constitution nowadays is the assurance of the social rights it frames. However, in order to ensure social rights that are essential to the consolidation of material equality, capable of reducing social discrepancies, it may corroborate a policy of exchange of favors and deepen the roots of vote clientelism, depending on how public policies are put into practice. The present study aims at analyzing the relationship between the implementation of social rights and the exercise of political rights, considering conditional cash transfer programs developed in recent government mandates, specifically the Bolsa Família. The aim is to verify whether there are any clientelistic relationships by governors when setting up said policies, since they can benefit from economic inequality, civic vulnerability and of the fragility of the democratic institutions of the country as instruments to forge their image as the image of a father, protector of society lacking basic rights. This may end up institutionalizing a subtle model of pervasive patronage that decharacterize individuals as players capable of choosing policies that best implement their interests by preventing the free exercise voting rights. Thus, even the solidification of social rights shall acknowledge that the ideal concept of democracy also includes the furtherance of self-government by citizens, which is why it seems essential that they perceive their participation and interference in the choice of social public policies. The challenge proposed is to use the theoretical and methodological framework of the continuum between clientelism and citizenship to try to propose certain parameters to approximate, to the maximum extent possible, public policies for social rights awareness of an ideal of citizenship.