FLORESTAN FERNANDES, ANALYST OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS IN REDEMOCRATIZATION (1980-1990): PRODUCTIVE TENSIONS IN BRAZILIAN SOCIAL SCIENCES

Abstract

This article develops three propositions: (1) it problematizes the conception of political science that became predominant in Brazilian social sciences from the 1980s onward, shaped decisively in the discipline’s formation by Bolívar Lamounier, Fábio Wanderley Reis, and Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos; (2) it considers the limits of the model of democracy advanced by these authors in the context of debates at the end of the military dictatorship; (3) and it argues that, at this very moment, another type of political science was emerging—namely, that undertaken by Florestan Fernandes in his interventions analyzing the transition, the constituent assembly, and the democratic institutions taking shape in that period. This research employs, as its analytical method, tools from sociology and the history of intellectuals, drawing to some extent on Bourdieu’s theory of the scientific field. We conclude that Fernandes elaborates a style of studying politics that we designate as sociologically oriented–disrupted political science, insofar as it understands political regimes beyond their institutional manifestations, investigating how society and politics are mutually constituted.