Implications of the concentration of economic power for democracies.

• Grant number: 24/06423-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2024
• End date: April 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Theory
• Principal Investigator: Rúrion Soares Melo
• Grantee: Camila Paiva
• Host Institution: Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 19/22387-0 - Crises of democracy: critical theory and the diagnosis of present time, AP.TEM

Abstract

The concentration of economic power and its consequences are factors to be mobilized in analyzes of current democratic crises. At the same time, this relationship is present in the diagnoses belonging to the distinct generations of Critical Theory, characterized by thematizing the historical present in which it exists, making it an object and seeing itself as absorbed by it, in order to then reflect on the effects and directions that this knowledge can produce in the world.Thus, this scientific initiation research aims to present and summarize the main arguments of the literature regarding the possible impacts of economic concentration on democracy, especially on the structuring of the public sphere. The reconstruction of this relationship will be done through the systematic analysis of the main works of three authors who are linked to the first generation of Critical Theory, namely: Friedrich Pollock, Michal Kalecki and Franz Neumann. Furthermore, a more recent contribution from this tradition, produced by Wolfgang Streeck, will be read to assess its suitability for the contemporary Brazilian case.