Representative government and Brazilian electoral legislation in the 19th century

Abstract

This project is part of a broader research on the representative government in the 19th century Brazil. Considering the key features of this phenomenon in the 19th century,the main hypothesis in here is that the Brazilian representative model was indeed able towork as a mediator between state and society. This statement challenges the usual explanation the historiography has being working with and it raises new questions to the understanding of the 19th century politics: which would be the Brazilian model´s specificity? Which role the House of Representatives and the Senate played in ruling the Country? Which social strata were represented? Which notions of representation wereunder debate? This project aims to do an in-deep discuss of the representative government fromthe point of view of the electoral process, a key feature for its working. I propose to analyzethe debates around the electoral legislation and the resulting laws approved. The main hypothesis orienting the research is that, even though specific (as such as economic and party oriented) interests prevail, there was an effective effort, coming from some political elite factions, to improve the electoral system in a way to legitimize the political regime and to guarantee the institutionalization of potential intra-elite and intra social groups' conflicts. (AU)