O cooperativismo brasileiro vive atualmente uma polarização ideológica entre duas vertentes. A partir da década de 1990, começa a se configurar uma nova vertente – a da Economia Solidária - que traz no seu bojo a reivindicação da urgente democratização das relações de trabalho. Com esse postulado, contrapõe-se ao sistema da Organização das Cooperativas Brasileiras (OCB), fundado em 1970, que defende uma concepção de cooperativismo focada na eficiência econômica. O embate encontra também sua tradução no plano associativo no qual o monopólio de representação da OCB é contestado de facto pelo surgimento de entidades de representação de cooperativas solidárias. O presente trabalho parte desse contexto para analisar os mecanismos institucionais que a nova vertente constrói no que se refere à representação política das cooperativas. Como objeto de análise foram selecionadas duas entidades dos campos que se opõem: a Organização das Cooperativas do Estado de São Paulo (OCESP), que faz parte do sistema OCB, e a União e Solidariedade das Cooperativas e Empreendimentos de Economia Social do Brasil (UNISOL/Brasil), da Economia Solidária. A análise comparativa dos mecanismos internos de representação apontou para uma diferença pouco expressiva entre as entidades. / Brazilian co-operativism is currently facing a polarization among two ideological trends. Early in the 90’s a new trend begun to take shape, i.e., the Solidary Economy, that brought along a demand for mandatory democratization of the work relations. This postulate is in opposition to the ‘system of Brazilian Organization of Co-operatives’ (OCB) which has been established in 1970 and defends a concept of co-operativism aiming at economic efficiency. The clash is also meant by association when the OCB’s monopoly for representation is contested de facto, because of the fact, that entities representing solidary co-operatives are appearing. The present work takes this context to query what kind of institutional and innovative mechanisms the new trend is up to build, regarding the political representation of the co-operatives. Two entities from opposite sides have been chosen to serve as object for analysis: the Organization of Co-operatives in São Paulo State (OCESP) which is integrated with the system OCB and the Union and Solidarity of Co-operatives and Enterprising of Social Economy in Brazil (UNISOL/Brasil), from the Solidary Economy trend. A comparative analysis of its internal mechanisms of representation pointed out to a less substantial differentiation between them.

Nos últimos anos, o tema da representação política no contexto brasileiro adquiriu maior relevância na pauta nacional a partir das manifestações de rua que eclodiram por todo o Brasil em junho de 2013. A presente dissertação tem os objetivos de analisar o dever dos partidos de assegurar a autenticidade do sistema representativo sob a perspectiva intrapartidária e de verificar o significado da expressão “igualdade de oportunidades” no direito eleitoral e partidário brasileiro e sua aplicação. A metodologia adotada consiste em pesquisa qualitativa, por meio do método lógicodedutivo de abordagem. A coleta dos documentos e bibliografias foi realizada por meio de pesquisa em livros, periódicos, jurisprudências e artigos armazenados em arquivos públicos, bibliotecas e sites eletrônicos na Internet. O estudo mostra-se relevante em face da perda de confiança nos partidos políticos para a melhoria da democracia representativa brasileira, bem como a intervenção do Supremo Tribunal Federal na legislação eleitoral em nome de um chamado equilíbrio da igualdade política. Nesse contexto, resta à ciência investigar as causas da falha dos partidos políticos no cumprimento do dever de assegurar a autenticidade do sistema representativo e verificar o que se entende pela expressão “igualdade política”. O trabalho foi dividido em quatro capítulos. O primeiro capítulo tem a função de delimitar o horizonte de compreensão a respeito de conceitos e questões fundamentais ao tema. O segundo capítulo tem o escopo de analisar o dever dos partidos de assegurar o sistema representativo sob a perspectiva do princípio da democracia intrapartidária. O terceiro capítulo se ocupa em verificar o significado da expressão “igualdade de oportunidades” no direito eleitoral e partidário brasileiro e sua aplicação. O quarto capítulo trata da análise do conteúdo da última reforma eleitoral realizada em 2015, bem como a PEC do Senado Federal nº 36/2016. / In recent years, the theme of political representation in the Brazilian context has become more relevant in the national agenda, based on the street demonstrations that broke out across Brazil in June 2013. The present dissertation aims to analyze the parties' duty to ensure Authenticity of the representative system from an intraparty perspective and to verify the meaning of the term "equal opportunities" in Brazilian electoral and party law and its application. The Methodology consists of qualitative research, through the logical-deductive method of approach. The collection of documents and bibliographies was conducted through research in books, journals, case law and articles stored in public archives, libraries and electronic websites. The study is relevant in the face of the loss of confidence in political parties to improve representative Brazilian democracy, as well as the intervention of the Federal Supreme Court in electoral legislation in the name of a socalled balance of political equality. In this context, it remains for science to investigate the causes of the failure of political parties to fulfill the duty of ensuring the authenticity of the representative system and to verify what is meant by the term "political equality". The work was divided into four chapters. The first chapter has the function of delimiting the horizon of understanding about concepts and questions fundamental to the theme. The second chapter has the scope of analyzing the duty of the parties to secure the representative system from the perspective of intraparty democracy principle. The third chapter is concerned with verifying the meaning of the term "equal opportunities" in Brazilian electoral and party law and its application. The fourth chapter deals with the analysis of the content of the last electoral reform carried out in 2015, as well as PEC from the Federal Senate nº 36/2016.

A presente tese examina a disputa no interior da teoria democrática contemporânea entre as concepções agregativas de inspiração economicista e os modelos deliberativos. Argumenta-se que as concepções economicistas são incapazes de apreender adequadamente a dimensão coletiva da comunidade política, cuja natureza, na modernidade, é constitutivamente representativa. Nesse sentido, após a exposição crítica dos modelos agregativos, duas tarefas são levadas a cabo: (i) o escrutínio dos sentidos da representação e (ii) o exame das teorias deliberativas. O ponto de encontro dessas duas dimensões pretende revelar em que medida somente a partir duma concepção deliberativa é possível captarmos o processo de constituição da comunidade política a ser permanentemente recriada e representada através dos processos políticos. Nesse itinerário, distinguimos dois pares conceituais em torno dos quais se organizam os eixos centrais da pesquisa. Em primeiro lugar, para opor teorias economicistas e deliberativas, investigamos as definições de barganha e argumentação pública como princípios que organizam instituições, processos de formação de interesses, vontades e preferências cujo objetivo, no limite, é a promoção de decisões coletiva encerradas, em geral, pelo voto como mecanismo de fechamento dos procedimentos decisórios. Em segundo, examinamos o estatuto da representação a partir do par figuração simbólica e mandato. Por fim, demonstra-se como somente uma arquitetônica deliberativa é capaz de engendrar um processo de figuração da comunidade política que perpassa os mecanismos do governo representativo e as estruturas de participação política na esfera pública. / This dissertation aims to examine the controversy in the contemporary democratic theory between the aggregative conceptions of economic theory of democracy and the deliberative models. It argues that the economic conceptions are incapable of adequately apprehend the collective dimension of political community, whose nature, in modernity, is constitutively representative. In this sense, after the critical exposition of the aggregative models, two tasks are carried out: (i) the scrutiny of the senses of representation and (ii) the examination of deliberative theories. The concurrence t of these dimensions intend to reveal to what extent we depend only on a deliberative conception to be able to capture the constitutional process of a political community as being constantly recreated and represented through political processes. In this itinerary, we distinguish two conceptual pairs that will serve as a center around which the research revolves.. First, in order to oppose economicists and deliberative theories, we investigate the definitions of bargaining and public deliberation understood as principles organizing institutions, and process of formation of interests, will and preferences whose objective is, at minimum, the promotion of collective decisions constrained, in general, by voting as a mechanism of closing the decision-making procedures. Second, we examine the statute of representation from the perspective of the pair symbolic figuration and mandate. Finally, we demonstrate how only a deliberative frameworks able to generate a process of figuration of a political community that supasses the mechanisms of government political participation in the public sphere.

Women’s political representation is often investigated through cross-national comparisons. Such studies generally focus on women’s political representation at the national level, assuming that countries are homogenous units. However, structural and cultural differences are many times just as large within countries as they are between them. Modernization theory suggests that women’s political representation will increase with development, something that a number of previous studies on primarily Western countries find support for. In order to see if this theory is applicable also on a developing country like Brazil, this quantitative study compares the aggregated share of locally elected women (dependent variable) in 136 Brazilian regions in the 2012 municipal elections with levels of log GDP per capita, population density and female labor force participation (independent variables). In contrast to previous studies on Western countries, the results of this study find no support for the ideas of modernization theory. With moderate correlation, this study actually indicates that higher values of GDP per capita and female labor force participation have negative effects on women’s political representation at the local level in the compared Brazilian regions. Population density was not found to have any substantial effect on women’s political representation.

<p>This is a Minor Field Study (MFS) which is a scholarship financed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). It was conducted in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa in 2007/2008. The purpose of this study is to understand the role of the political representative in the system of political representation and it will test the different theories of political representation based on interests or identity. This study is concerned with the function of the political representatives as they are the link between the system of representation and the electorate. Since the election system is designed for political representation based on interest and the voting in South Africa suggests voting based on identity/race the representatives must balance these different signals.</p>

<p>The purpose of this study is to map out and to analyze the spatial variation of female representation at the national level in established democracies. The aim is also to explain the variation in the female representation. The main questions that the paper tries to answer are:</p><p>1.How does women representation in established democratic parliaments vary?</p><p>2.Why does women representation in established democratic parliaments vary?</p><p>This study is a comparative and statistic study, i.e. a study that includes a bigger number of countries and where quantitative analysis methods are used in order to achieve comparative analyses. This study is both a descriptive and an explanatory study. The statistical method that is used in this study is mainly bivariat analysis and multivariat regression.</p><p>The results show that the variation in female representation in the established democracies is quite considerable. Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Netherlands feature high female representation at the national level during the period 1995-2005. The result also implies that the proportion of women in parliament increases during the current period. The result also shows that political institutions, socio-economic -and cultural factors, are important and necessary in order to explain the variation in female representation. The overall standards that can be discerned of the statistical analyses is that the proportion of women in parliament is higher in countries with a proportional electoral system, high number of parliament members, high socio-economic development (high HDI, GDI and GNP per capita) contemporary as the country introduced female suffrage in an early stage and have a more positive attitude toward female leadership.</p>

Cette recherche doctorale propose de discuter le concept de représentation politique afin de pouvoir le mobiliser dans l’examen empirique de la dynamique d’institutionnalisation du féminisme au Chili. La thèse défendue est que les organisations féministes institutionnalisées « font » de la représentation politique bien qu’elles n’appartiennent pas à l’espace politique formel défini par les élections et qu’elles ne sont pas impliquées dans une relation d’autorisation et de reddition des comptes avec les personnes qu’elles entendent représenter. Il s’agira donc de combler l’approche conventionnelle de la représentation politique, ancrée dans l’histoire du gouvernement démocratique libéral, et qui ne permet pas de rendre compte d’un pan de la représentation politique : celle qui ne s’articule pas autour des élections et qui est le fait d’acteurs évoluant en dehors de l’espace politique formel. L’étude du cas chilien, selon une démarche de sociologie historique du politique, permettra de tester cette hypothèse.

This paper investigates political representation by exploring the relationship between citizens' preferences and the preferences of their elected representatives. Using Swedish survey data, the empirical analysis shows that voters and politicians have significantly different preferences for local welfare services, implying that voters do not elect representatives with the same preferences as their own. The results show that when comparing a politician of a certain age, gender, educational level and marital status, with a voter with identical characteristics, the politician still has preferences for a significantly higher level of spending on the locally provided services. Hence our results indicate that the representation of different socio-economic groups does not necessarily lead to a larger degree of representation of these groups' agendas. Moreover, we find the observed difference to be largest for the least salient expenditure item. We do, however, not find any evidence for differences in preferences between the two groups being associated with a decline in trust for politicians among voters

<p>Abstract</p><p>The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the Swedish political parties have been discussing gender politics since 1970 to nowadays, in order to see which problems and solutions that have been suggested by the parties to increase the representation of women and the equality between the sexes. The theoretical framework is constructed by theories of women´s representation, gender politics and women’s interest.</p><p>To describe how the discussions about gender politics have been between the different parties, the methodological foundation consists of an ideology critical textual analysis of the political programs from the Swedish parties.</p><p>The analysis confirms that the discussions about gender politics and the political representation of women increase over time. The most important issue of equality is the lack of women´s rights and possibilities in the labor market as a consequence of women´s responsibility of home and childcare. The analysis also shows that parties which discuss women as a category and the underrepresentation of women also point out the importance to increase equality between men and women.</p>

This thesis studies women politicians’ journey along the path from candidates to elected representatives in party list proportional representation (PR list) systems. While past literature provides sufficient evidence that more women are elected in proportional electoral systems than in majority / plurality systems, there is limited research explaining the differences in women’s representation across varying types of PR list systems. This thesis aims to fill that gap, by focusing primarily on the election of women across preferential (open and ordered list systems) and non-preferential (closed list systems) PR list voting systems. Moreover, unlike the vast majority of previous research, which has relied on aggregate level data only, this research investigates the election of women at the individual candidate level. Such an approach allows the present thesis to consider, next to traditional aggregate level predictors, how party gatekeepers and the news media may either support or hinder women in progressing from candidates to elected representatives. Since the focus is set on the 2009 European Parliament elections, this thesis investigates the process of electing women cross-nationally. The results show that female candidates have a higher likelihood of being elected in non-preferential closed list voting systems than in preferential ordered list voting systems. The results suggest that this is the case because, first, party gatekeepers in ordered list systems place women in less viable electoral list positions than party gatekeepers in closed list systems; second, media cover female candidates less in ordered list systems compared to closed list systems; and finally, female candidates in ordered list systems fail to make up their less competitive starting position with preference votes because preference votes in ordered list systems do not significantly alter the initial party list rankings.