Iniquidade política na representação proporcional: uma análise da "constituency" eleitoral do estado de Minas Gerais

• Ano de defesa: 2023
• Autor(a) principal: Gabriel Augusto Mendes Borges
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
• Palavras-chave em Português: Direito constitucional; Direito eleitoral; Representação proporcional; Eleições; Partidos políticos
• Link de acesso: https://hdl.handle.net/1843/62470

This doctoral thesis pertains to research conducted within the Graduate Program of the Law Faculty at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, focusing on the field of “Political Law”. Through the lens of electoral constituency studies as theorized by Rehfeld (2005) and James (2015) this research examines the influence of regional inequalities on the allocation of proportional seats. The study of constituencies in proportional representation models (MMD) remains an academic gap, as majority of studies is directed towards plurality representation. The majoritarian system is consistently prevalent in Western democracies. Thus, this study aims to assess the Brazilian political system with a focus on the state of Minas Gerais. It does not seek to provide a prescriptive solution even though the issues raised here may be beneficial for future studies in this area. Based on the stated objective, the hypothetical-deductive method was adopted intending to formulate the primary hypothesis. This suggests that the wide-district proportional system on the one hand leads to the overrepresentation of certain regions due to their higher socioeconomic development, integration of communication processes, and mastery of scientific-informational techniques. On the other hand leads to underrepresenting regions that are less developed in these criteria. To verify this distortion, two secondary hypotheses were analyzed and tested. The first posits that the state of Minas Gerais provides a representative snapshot of the Brazilian political system. Not only is it governed by the strict rules of the Republic's Constitution (Brasil, 1988), but it is also a federal entity marked by profound socio-economic disparities. It faces common challenges in both metropolitan regions and rural areas and engages with various realities of Brazil due to its central geographical location and boundaries with different states and macro-regions. The second hypothesis suggests that, within Minas Gerais, the Brazilian political system has resulted in vague ideological associations in subjective constituencies between representatives and voters. It is concluded that, within the context of Minas Gerais, the Brazilian political system has become segregative in favor of relatively more developed urban centers in terms of socioeconomic aspects. This is evident because it combines incongruent and personalistic electoral constituencies, which do not adequately represent minorities neither local communities.