Rui Mesquita Cordeiro | rui@cidadania.org.br
The Hague, The Netherlands, 10 / October / 2005
The Kingdom of the Netherlands is a unique country. Wherever you are, you can feel a strong feeling of liberty and modern relations like in no other place in the world (as far as I know it!). Even in the Parliament, where I could visit a couple of days ago, you feel this climate. Nevertheless, in politics, it seems that the Netherlands is following a very traditional standard of representative democracy, starting form the fact that it is still a kingdom, having as head of the state someone which is not directly elected by people, the Monarch (King or Queen). Her Majesty Queen Beatrix is in power since 30 April 1980, for over 25 years. An entire generation of Netherlanders do not knot what is transition happening over the head of their state. In parallel, the Judiciary branch has its justices nominated for life by the Monarch, composing the Supreme Court, or the Hoge Raad. And the head of government, the Prime Minister, is also not directly elected by people, but indirectly, by elections within the Parliament, among the directly elected parliamentarians of the Second Chamber. It is important to say that the Parliament in the Netherlands is bicameral, but only the Second Chamber, with 150 seats, is directly elected by the people to serve a four years term, while the First Chamber, with 75 seats, is indirectly elected by the country’s 12 provincial councils for another four years term.This somehow establishes a strong vertical relation of power that could be represented in the following scheme:
In Brazil , where I come from, it is different. While the Netherlands is a constitutional parliamentary monarchy, Brazil is a presidential federative republic. Both have a representative democracy system, but in Brazil the vote is used in a larger scale to elect people’s representatives. Brazilians usually vote directly to elect both the legislative and the executive branches. In the executive branch, the head of state and government are at the same persons: the president and the vice-president, directly elected on the same ticket by popular vote for a four years mandate. The Brazilian parliament (the National Congress) is also bicameral, being composed by a Federal Senate, with 81 seats serving an eight years mandate, and the Chamber of Deputies, with 513 seats serving for a four years mandate. All 594 parliamentarians of both houses are elected directly by the people. The judiciary is formed by 11 ministers appointed by the president of the republic, also for life, but their names must be confirmed by the senate to be effective. In my opinion, that configures as a more horizontal system of power with the people. The problem, in comparison with the Dutch system, is that Brazilian system is much more recent, only since 1984, when a military dictatorship stepped down of power, and it still lacks consolidation.
Bellow an attempt to schematise Brazilian political power relation system:
In both systems, media and interest groups play a very import, and even decisive, role for checks and balances between the political system and the people of the country. I would say that the main learning from the visit and such comparison is that we should never stop thinking and rethinking in new and alternative ways to improve democracy and direct people participation, but not only at the national government level, but also, and maybe much more important, at local and international political and government arenas.
Arquivado em: Governança / Gobernanza / Governance, | English
