A social-democracia nos trópicos: a proposta de social-democracia nos documentos de fundação do PSDB (1988-1994)

Abstract

The trajectory of social democracy is marked by the adversities faced by ideas over time. From its emergence in Europe, as a phenomenon adjusted to the political, economic, and social characteristics of the late 19th century - through its expansion and reception in the most different parts of the planet - to the present day its concepts and arguments have been adapted, reconfigured and by sometimes paradoxically changed. It happens because this is a common phenomenon to which political thoughts are subjected and which makes them so challenging to study. In Brazil, the acclimatization of this conceptual framework is even more unique, especially if we accept that our country, because of its historical process and its distinctive capitalist development, has always been a place in which the continental dimensions themselves imposed as a fact a myriad of situations of poverty, exclusion, and marginalization. Here, in a place so different from its birthplace, social democracy did not find, until the end of the 20th century, a favorable environment for it to be established, or even to be thought about. Therefore, the present work aims to study the theoretical and political adaptations used in the reception of the political project of Social Democracy in Brazil (a country on the periphery of capitalism and with a developmentalist tradition), in the period of Redemocratização (1980s). This is an investigation of the reception and adjustments of the social democratic model, distinctive of the end of the 20th century, after the crisis of the 1970s, in the most expressive national party project that claimed it – “Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira” (PSDB) – during the period of its foundation (1988 to 1994). To carry out the research, we analyzed the PSDB's social democracy proposal contained in its founding documents - statement, statute, program, books, theses, among other materials, produced between 1988 and 1994 by the party, it’s think tanks, and main actors. To carry it out, the methodology used consisted of a descriptive-historical analysis that was substantiated using the thematic analysis technique applied to the selected documents. After reading, cataloging, clustering, and classifying the excerpts, they were analyzed based on three main variables/themes: role of the State, vision of democracy and social policies. The main results of the research, in turn, demonstrate: 1) PSDB, as one of the main political actors in the post-1988 republican scene, adjusted the guidelines and alternatives of a third-way social-democratic theoretical model to Brazilian conditions, adapting it to the political context of the end of the national civil-military dictatorship and the new tensions, actors and competing political projects disputing for the design of the New Republic; 2) Its model of social democracy advocated a socially necessary State, a pluralistic democracy with social participation through organized society, and social policies with universalization of opportunities, but with social responsibility; 3) The new social democracy proposed overcoming the weight of the developmentalist, statist and nationalist past, that is, through the defense of liberal democracy it proposed social results as a consequence of overcoming and reforming the developmentalist State.