Brief adjustments to the contribution of historical sociology to Latin-American constitutionalism

The main objective of the article is to present the historical sociology as a method capable of generating innovative approaches to the field of Latin American constitutional law. Considering the logic of long term ( long durée ), the article problematizes the need to overcome the constituent dynamics only as a construction of the future to reach a strategy of unveiling continuities. Based on elements of the Brazilian reality, the article presents two cases in which the potential for applying the method of historical sociology to constitutionalism in the region is indicated. First, the permanence of authoritarian legality through the performance of courts after the democratization of the region. Second, the normative constitutional and infra-constitutional formation of the public administration in Brazil. The methodology used is the analytical essay and its foundation, for indicating the concrete historical problems presented, is the opening of the method of historical sociology to the hybridization of disciplines.


Introduction
The study of constitutionalism takes place, in general, from the foundational experiences of the North, especially those resulting from the bourgeois revolutions (English, North American and French).On the other hand, the two hundred years of constitutionalism in Latin America are usually little considered and studied, for instance, in Brazilian Law Schools.Our foundational process tends to be ignored so naturally that most students reach the end of their courses without even having heard of the Constitution of Cádiz ( 1812) and all its constituent consequences for Latin America.
The Latin American constituent processes played a role different from that of the mentioned bourgeois revolutions.Effectively, instead of contributing to the establishment of a new order, the Latin American foundational moment occurred in order to prevent such ruptures, so that the existing oligarchic structures were maintained. 1 In fact, "la ruptura del orden [fue] producida desde el Estado mismo". 2 In countries like Brazil, for example, the "people" did not take part in the great institutional changes. 3On the one hand, the creation of the State preceded the formation of civil society; on the other hand, the State acted to disaggregate any possibility of its formation.The social stratification existing at the time of state formation in Latin America was decisive for the political constitution of societies structured under the pre-modern logic, which differentiates the Latin American experience from that of the Northern States, where there was "explícita condensación o síntesis de la conflictividad de clases". 4Therefore, the analysis of Ansaldi and Giordano is that in Latin America the State was "un decisivo constructor de la sociedad.Más aun, dicho en otras palabras: en América Latina, la formación de la burguesía y la formación del Estado fueron un proceso simbiótico". 5 recent decades, however, constitutionalism in Latin America has gained a little more notoriety and repercussion in the studies of the New Latin-American Constitutionalism.
Nonetheless, without a sufficiently clear and systematized methodological proposition.
Even though sociological approaches in the field of constitutional law are not an innovation, 6 there is a sociological cut of constitutional processes that is even less explored than this important empirical strand: historical sociology.Such a perspective can bring a series of benefits to the study of constitutional law, especially of Latin American constitutionalism, mainly due to its vocation to allow large comparisons over considerable historical periods, replacing dichotomies such as past/present, universal/private, centralism/regionalism, by trying to understand the formation of state institutions and their relationship with human action over time as a continuous process in constant formation that unveils and identifies persistence, regularities, blocks and potentialities. 7e proposal to build a comparative methodology that integrates the analysis of the theme, deriving from historical sociology, may mean a first step towards the discovery of its own categories, still unexplored in this field, or even the creation of new forms of theoretical analysis of Latin American constitutional law, decisively impacting the current understanding of our crises, as well as the improvement of our diagnoses. 4Ansaldi y Giordano (2012a, t.I), p. 56. 5 Ansaldi y Giordano (2012a, t.I), p. 56. 6They can be seen since the very beginning of the formation of this discipline in classic works that begin with the famous A essência da Constituição by Ferdinand Lassalle (2001), in the 19th century, passing through a more common use in the 20th century, as in Constitución y derecho constitucional by Rudolf Smend (1985), Teoría de la Constitución by Karl Loewenstein (2018) and A força normativa da Constituição by Konrad Hesse (1991), until reaching, in the 21st century, more systematized and defining formulations of a constitutional sociology, such as those of Chris Thornhill in A sociology of Constitutions (2011).In Brazil, constitutional sociology studies are still very incipient and tend to emphasize a specific empirical perspective.Such an approach elects as its focus the social repercussions arising from the application of constitutional law, that is, from the performance of institutions that manage the Constitution.The most common examples are those linked to important analyzes of the decisions of the Federal Supreme Court (STF).In Latin America, Gérman José Bidart Campos, who dedicates one of the six volumes of his work Tratado elemental de derecho constitucional argentino to the debate on the sociología del derecho constitucional (1992), also works with a perspective of analysis of the consequences of the application of constitutional texts, being one of the great theoretical references of the subject. 7Ansaldi y Giordano (2012a, t.I), p.42.The aim of this article, in this sense, is to present historical sociology as a methodology that can contribute to diversified and innovative approaches to research in law, proposing its application to Latin American constitutionalism based on the analysis of some specific situations.
To do so, the article is divided into two parts.In the first part, a historical review of the proposed methodology will be carried out, from its initial recognition in the 1950s, in the United States, through successive "waves" of development.In the second part, we will indicate the potential of contributions from historical sociology to constitutional law in concrete situations that point to possible paths to be followed: (1) the performance of the courts in relation to authoritarian legality and (2) the constitutional and infra-constitutional normative formation of the Brazilian public administration.

Notes on the method of historical sociology
Historical sociology 8 began to be recognized under this name in the late 1950s, in the United States, definitively consolidating itself in the 1970s, as an attempt to recover the classical authors of sociology in the analysis of large-scale political, social and economics transformations. 9 In 2005, Julia Adams, Elisabeth Clemens and Ann Shola Orloff published a book entitled Remaking modernity: politics and processes in historical sociology 10 in which, in the introduction, they formulated an archaeology of historical sociology, dividing it into three phases which the authors called "waves". 11The first wave would be that constituted by the 8 There is a difference in nomenclature that seems to derive more from the origin field of knowledge of the analyst than from differences in practice.We refer to the terms "historical sociology" and "neoinstitutionalism" and, more specifically, to "historical neoinstitutionalism". Indeed, sources from sociology tend to adopt the first name, while those from political science use the second.As an example of the above, it is verified that the authors representing the paradigm identified by each field are the same, as are the cases of Charles Tilly and Theda Skocpol, to mention just two references.Furthermore, according to the classification presented by Adams,  Clemens and Orloff (2005), institutionalism is one of the strands of the third wave.Considering that the most important Latin American references (especially Waldo Ansaldi and Veronica Giordano) employ the expression "historical sociology", it will be privileged in the present work, although the second term may eventually appear eventually in direct citation.In any case, we believe there is no prejudice to an adequate understanding of the central aspects of the methodology. 9Ansaldi y Giordano (2012a, t.I), p. 39. 10 Adams y Clemens y Orloff (2005). 11The classification of the authors is not a consensus among scholars in the area, as Ansaldi and Giordano show: "A propósito de las 'olas' de sociología histórica que proponen Adams, Clemens y Orloff, hay que decir que varios académicos han rechazado la existencia de una 'tercera ola', aduciendo que los trabajos que supuestamente se own "founding fathers" of sociology -in particular Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim and Max Weber -whose central questioning sought to understand the processes according to which the transition from "traditional" societies to recognized "modern" societies took place.The authors draw attention to two necessary observations: the first concerns the fact that the societies studied were, in general, European and, the second, that, of course, the meaning of what was understood as "modern" varied from author to author. 12ter a period in which research in the social sciences was dominated by a-historical analyses, the second wave brought together, between the 1970s and 1980s, a group of theorists nourished by interdisciplinarity and by the dissemination of historical methods, which assumed a "comparative macrosociological" analysis of large state structures contextualized over a long period of time.This wave includes great names in historical sociology such as Barrington Moore Jr., Reinhard Bendix, Neil Smelser, Charles Tilly, and Theda Skocpol.Although not all authors were Marxists -the movement was eclectic -Marxism inspired the definition of research questions: "revolution", "industrialization", "state formation" and "class formation" (among others).Finally, although not all academics that joined this perspective of historical sociology have resorted to the comparative method, it has been consolidated as having great relevance and effectiveness for the purposes of historical sociology of this phase, as it presents alternatives to functionalist and structuralist analysis. 13nally, the third wave, which does not have the same topical and theoretical coherence as the second.At least five "communities" of historical sociologists can be identified: institutionalists (concern about the formation and evolution of political and social institutions), theorists of rational choice (study of the strategic decisions of individuals in relation to the constraints of the political game; in other words, focus on the analysis of decision-making rules by individuals), culturalists (perception of institutions as cultural practices), feminists (inclusion of gender as a dimension of the analysis of institutions) and those linked to colonial and post-colonial studies (extrapolation of the European experience inscriben en ella no se diferencian sustantivamente de los producidos por la 'segunda ola', puesto que no se han acuñado conceptos propios y nuevos de historicidad, cambio histórico o causación" (Ansaldi y Giordano, 2012a, t.I, p. 44).However, we recognize the importance of this systematization.Even without consensus regarding the third wave, the existence of divergence in relation to such classification, together with the absence of another that could replace it, places it as a relevant item in the historical recovery of debates about the method. 12Adams y Clemens y Orloff (2005), p. 03. 13 Adams y Clemens y Orloff (2005), pp.05-08.
from the study of Latin America and the East).14Even given the recognition of all the differences that may exist in the adoption of a comparative methodological perspective such as that of historical sociology, there is a consensus that its choice allows one to escape from dichotomies such as past/present, nomothetic/ideographic, universal/private, structure/action. 15e methodological possibilities for the development of historical sociology can vary widely among scholars who adopt it.Theda Skocpol16 discusses the three most recurrent strategies.The first uses comparison to validate a general theory by applying it to historical cases.Recurrent in the fifties and sixties of the last century -when sociology presumed to be able to formulate a universally applicable general theory of society and when sociologists assumed that history consisted of a group of researchers dedicated to compiling "facts" in the archives that occurred at different times and places in the past -"the application of a general model to one or more historical instances was the kind of historical sociology most likely to be recognized as empirically rigorous and theoretically relevant in mainstream disciplinary circles".17Skocpol uses as an example the book Social change in the industrial revolution, by Neil Smelser,18 in which the author applies the assumptions of his general theory on social transformations to two concrete and distinct situations that occurred in 19th century England, so that, with the help of historiography, the empirical demonstration of its validity became possible.If, on the one hand, this strategy is interesting because it leads the researcher to specify and operationalize what would be, a priori, the adopted theoretical models of interpretation (set of concepts and abstract propositions), on the other hand, it does not rule out the risk that the choice of historical cases ends up being arbitrary and leaves aside important facts that could testify against the assumptions of the general theory put to the test. 19 societies with diversified historical processes, such as Latin America, the use of this The second strategy is one that uses sociological concepts to develop a "meaningful" historical interpretation. 20In general, interpretive historical sociologists are skeptical about the usefulness of applying general theoretical models to history or using a hypothesis-testing approach to establish causal generalizations about large-scale structures and patterns of change.Rather, these scholars seek two-way "meaningful" interpretations of history.First, special attention is given to cultural issues embodied by individual actors or those belonging to groups in the investigated historical configurations.Second, both the topic chosen for historical study and the types of arguments developed about it must have a cultural or political significance in the present; that is, they must be part of a common lexicon for the general public, they must be "meaningful".The aim is, therefore, to preserve as much as possible the sense of historical particularity.
The example used by Skocpol is the work of E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class,21 in which the author consolidates the analysis of the concept of class as a historical phenomenon (in polemic opposition to the deterministic economic view) and, therefore, part of an active process of structural and cultural conditioning.Later, Thompson uses this concept to organize narratives and select events that occurred in the early 19th century in England, proceeding to a historical interpretation through a category that is already significant in the present. 22The big criticism of this strategy is that it runs the risk of always becoming too deterministic.
Finally, the last strategy, which Skocpol takes as his own, along with Barrington Moore Jr., can be defined as the analysis of causal regularities in history.It is an analytical perspective in which researchers visit the past and present analysing historical cases, considering all available opportunities and assuming the validity of alternative hypotheses as a way of helping to recognize or not regularities.The main characteristic of this strategy, according to Skocpol, is that there is no effort to analyse historical facts from the perspective of general models: there is no commitment to one or another theory, but the effort to discover the concrete reasons that explain the relevant historical processes.Alternative hypotheses that contradict a priori the meaning of certain historical facts are always welcome to verify or not causal regularities, since the absence of regularities is also a valid result.
In this sense, one of the great contributions of this strategy is the confrontation that it makes in relation to the dogma of universality, since generalizations can present themselves as relative to some historical event.Unlike interpretive sociologists, concerned with knowing "what happened" (from a meaningful perspective), analytic sociologists, who use this third strategy, seek to know "why it happened". 23For Ansaldi and Giordano, 24 the great advantage of the last two strategies is that they return to analyses that manage to reconcile structure and action or structure and culture, allowing for interpretations not yet considered. 25 Latin America, the consolidation of debates on historical sociology has emerged with the innovative work of Cardoso and Faletto, Dependência e desenvolvimento na América Latina 26 , written in the mid-1960s.The first methodological novelty of the book was to combat the binarism of the concepts of "traditional" and "modern".According to the authors, these concepts "[...] are not broad enough to precisely cover all existing social situations, nor do they allow us to distinguish between them the structural components that define the way of being of the analysed societies [...]". 27Very close to the second wave described by Adams, Clemens and Orloff, 28 Cardoso and Faletto brought as the great innovation for Latin American academia the proposition of a comparison that, far from adopting the functionalist and structuralist criteria in vogue, elected as unit of analysis the Nation-States. 29Skocpol (1984), p. 376. 24Ansaldi y Giordano (2012a, t.Cardoso y Faletto (1975). 27Cardoso y Faletto (1975), p. 17 (our translation). 28Adams y Clemens y Orloff (2005). 29Giordano (2014), p. 24. 30Giordano (2014), p. 27.No se trata de usar la comparación para ilustrar una teoría, sino de usar la comparación para resolver un problema teórico". 31rrently, one of the main Latin American researchers dedicated to deepening the comparative method of historical sociology is the Argentinian Verónica Giordano, whose vast work is of fundamental relevance for the development of historical sociology in the region.
Giordano tries to confront criticisms that have been made to the attempt to link sociology and history through what she calls an "intellectual project of hybridization of disciplines" inspired by Mattei Dogan and Robert Pahre, in Las nuevas ciencias sociales: la marginalidad creadora. 32This project is in full development and, "[...] el estado actual de la sociología histórica, visto desde esta perspectiva, puede ser entonces leído como una incipiente hibridación de la sociología histórica (la de 'segunda ola') con otras áreas como historia cultural, estudios de género, etc". 33 seen above, this comparison is not intended to demonstrate theoretical assumptions, but the existence of theoretical problems to be faced and solved.For this reason, "propone tomar como objeto de estudio a los procesos de cambio social en gran escala y estudiarlos a partir del planteo de problemas históricos concretos, analizando y documentando los hechos 'en la menor escala posible'". 34e approach strategy used by her is analytical, so that the historical analysis considers not only the result of a given social process, but also all the alternatives that were available and that, for some reason, were not successful.The verification of regular causes is permeated, in this sense, by an interpretation that includes non-victorious processes.The adoption of comparison is inevitable, above all, because the analytical strategy proposes to overcome the dichotomy structure and action, considering the two as part of the same process.
In the work of Giordano as a whole, the comparison elects social transformations as its main object and, for this very reason, it is nourished by sociological theories that are dedicated to identifying transformation processes in societies from the two articulating and enabling axes to overcome the dichotomy structure and action: the construction of power 31 Giordano (2014), p. 25. 32 Dogan y Pahre (1993). 33Ansaldi y Giordano (2012a, t.I), p. 45. 34 Giordano (2011), p. 44. and the role of social classes.According to Ansaldi and Giordano, power is constituted in the form of order and [...] el orden se organiza como Estado: el orden y su institucionalidad son los de los vencedores.Su capacidad de dejar abierto un espacio para canalizar los reclamos de los vencidos depende de condiciones históricas variadas y cambiantes, de la combinación de coerción y consenso, dominación y hegemonía.Ese proceso de construcción y conservación del orden, complejo, tortuoso y nunca del todo acabado, incluye tanto las confrontaciones entre bloques de clase dominante como las resistencias y oposiciones -y en algunos casos los proyectos alternativos -de las clases subalternas. 35 already mentioned, one of the characteristic aspects of historical sociology, especially in its Latin American strand, is the hybridization of disciplines, "recombining" their borders in order to launch a new look at the object of study.Indeed, historical sociology "guarda un compromiso con las particularidades teóricas y metodológicas de cada una de las disciplinas, pues comparar lleva siempre consigo un doble trabajo de conocimiento minucioso del hecho histórico concreto y de conceptualización a partir del material histórico". 36Thus, to understand the actions of political actors and overcome the dichotomy between action and structure, it is necessary to identify the historical and cultural context in which the institution originated, maintained and adapted itself. 37After all, "if men want to break the chains of the present, they will have to understand the forces that forged them". 38In our case, this means "remontarse en la historia al proceso mismo de formación de una peculiar modernidad latina, la modernidad del Sur", 39 in which historical sociology allows them to identify "regularidades y singularidades históricas y, a partir de ellas, realizar diagnósticos que eventualmente sirven para decidir con mayor conocimiento de causa, y para orientar la acción colectiva de forma más reflexiva y crítica". 40e methodological proposal presented here adds a third to the two aforementioned disciplines, the law -a sociología histórica de lo jurídico. 41The aim is, therefore, to innovate in the field of study (Latin American constitutionalism), without failing, of course, to respect its own specificities.One does not want, for example, to abandon the analysis of 35 Ansaldi y Giordano (2012a, t.Giordano (2011), p. 44. 37 Sanders (2006), p. 39. 38 Moore Jr. (1957), p. 581. 39 Álvarez-Uría (2015), p. 14. hermeneutics or the relationship between the norm and the implementation of the constitutional text, or even the functioning of constitutional jurisdiction, to think about approaches that have been widespread in recent decades.What we want is to try to do them considering the historical framework of transformations in Latin American States with all their regularities and persistence, in order to try to problematize the legal-constitutional field in a differentiated way, aimed at understanding the concrete reasons that explain the historical processes and, consequently, the constituents.The proposed challenges are, therefore, enormous, but the results can be worth the effort.
The perspective of historical sociology chosen here is the one that, based on the hybridization of disciplines, adopts as a strategy the analytical method of integrated comparison to investigate the processes of transformation of societies over time, having the Nation-State as the basic unit of comparison considered in its two relational axes: the structuring of power and human action (individual or collective).The study of the past not as an academic fetish, but as a process that makes it possible to better understand the shape of the present and the preparation for the future.
Given the picture presented and the understanding of historical sociology as an appropriate methodology to deal with the comparative analysis of large structures, such as that of Nation-States and their institutions, submitted to constant processes of social transformation over a long period of time (so in order to understand the relationship between human action and social organization as something that is built continuously over time), it is possible to make two assumptions for the use of this methodology in the context of Latin-American constitutionalism.
The first is the consideration of constitutionalism as a phenomenon that is not limited to the production of constitutions, but which expands into several other legal and sociological perspectives, presenting all the necessary theoretical conditions to be approached in an innovative way through the method of historical sociology.
The second would be the understanding of the constituent processes in Latin America not so much for their normative results in the strict sense, but for the conditions of production of these "pacts", that is, for the identification of the dynamics, articulations and oppositions of the forces and projects available throughout the process.
It is believed, therefore, that the adoption of the method in the field of Latin-American constitutionalism can contribute to a differentiated analysis of constitutions, conceiving the definitions of the institutional format of the State, and the analysis of the winning theses may indicate ruptures or permanencies, on the other hand, the absence of proposals and alternatives for change by some groups also says something.
The end of an authoritarian period does not necessarily occur with the transition to a democratic regime, understood here as the reestablishment of basic rules for the exercise of a formal democracy, in the sense developed by Anthony Pereira about the existence of constitutionally limited governments. 43Some go further and others not so much.However, identifying political transitions in terms of facing authoritarian legacies with the institutional difficulties of the present in advancing a democratic agenda, both in the field of politics and in the field of guaranteeing rights, may represent a logically acceptable and partially true solution, but incomplete, because it is linked to a dichotomy between past and present that obliterates the processes of transformation as part of the same history.This means not establishing necessary presuppositions between the advances of political transitions in the different Latin American experiences and the level of democratic development of its institutions a posteriori.
An excellent research that analyses transitional processes in an integrative way, surpassing the historical relations of cause and effect, is the thesis of Diego Werneck Arguelhes, Old Courts, new beginnings: judicial continuity and constitutional transformation in Argentina and Brazil. 44Based on the analysis of the transitional processes in Argentina and Brazil, the author concludes that despite the huge differences in the political transitions between the two countries, the courts did not advance in overcoming the historical legacies in a more or less similar way.The identification that Argentina had a much more fruitful transitional process with regard to confrontation of authoritarian ills, achieving important institutional transformations, such as the reformulation of the Supreme Court itself, was not enough to guarantee an action capable of overcoming previous institutional permanencies and regularities.
The transitional processes from authoritarian experiences to formal democratic regimes were decisive to the ways in which the power of the State was structured, which began to indicate the institutional conditions of rupture or continuity of authoritarian patterns.Judicial powers, especially higher courts, play a fundamental role in setting up these 43 Pereira (2010), p. 26. 44 Arguelhes (2014).new institutional mechanisms.However, the existence of new institutional mechanisms is not enough to determine a judicial action that will result in ruptures that indicate advances in the democratic process or in repetitions that, overshadowed by the handling of legal doctrines, could represent structures for the maintenance of practices that could threaten the success of the implementation of a constitutional democracy.
In this scenario, the treatment given by the courts in relation to the authoritarian norms produced before the transitions to democracy can further enrich the amount of elements brought to the analysis of the impact of the actions of the courts for the consolidation of democratization processes of institutions.Indeed, one of the main challenges for transitional experiences is how to deal with the production of legality prior to the establishment of constitutional consensus, since the continued application and submission to norms contrary to the constitutional text is a decisive factor for the weakening of the "normative force of the Constitution" and the cultural permanence of a modus operandi built on the foundations of an authoritarian government.Analysis of this type of action can say a lot about the maintenance of the authoritarian culture, since the choice of how to receive norms prior to redemocratization is an indication about the willingness of the courts to decide on the rupture or continuity of the previous experience.
In this sense, the use of interpretive strategy (the second identified by Skocpol and described in the first part of the text) could be successful in verifying whether the category of authoritarian legality itself has the potential to produce an interpretation that has a culturally relevant meaning (significant interpretation) for the social and institutional dynamics existing today.
Still on the construction of authoritarian legality, another possibility of applying the method that matters to constitutional issues, especially with regard to the execution of its As it is possible to see, the first two reforms were carried out during authoritarian periods (Estado Novo and military dictatorship) and the last one was carried out during the New Republic -demarcated by the current Constitution -and had the most evident result (although it may be debated on the extension of its objectives) the weakening of the role of the State in relation to the realization of social justice -opposing, to some extent, the social pact conceived by the constituent in the Constitution.
As already seen in the previous analysis on the relationship between transitional processes and democratic advances, a deductive and logical inference to the topic would be that this dictatorial role in regulating the production of administrative regulations bequeathed a good dose of authoritarianism to the matter.After all, as Giordano 61 states, the Latin American pattern is "la institucionalización (y bien puede decirse, la política) fue burocrático-autoritaria, esto es, no democrática".
However, there is something that can be perplexing in this analysis: the observation that the periods of exception in Brazilian republican history were especially fertile with regard to the creation and consolidation of many institutes of administrative law and institutions of public administration with a more "progressive" character. 62e fact that these norms were elaborated in authoritarian periods does not imply their automatic rejection.Nohara (2012).From the 1980s on, a movement emerged in countries such as England (under the government of Margareth Thatcher) and the United States of America (under the presidency of Ronald Reagan), in the sense of transferring to the private sector activities considered not essentially state-owned companies.The "movement receives different names" such as "State reform, reduction of the public sector, denationalization, deregulation, privatization" (Medauar, 2013, p. 108).There are several formulas applied, among which Odete Medauar (2013, p. 108) highlights the "breaking of state monopolies, the increase in the number of public service concessions and permissions and the sale of state-owned companies to the private sector".1985 (Public Civil Action Act).With the exception of the last norm -promulgated by the already President José Sarney, although still under the aegis of the authoritarian constitution -all the others were published during non-democratic periods.It is questionable to what extent authoritarianism is not impregnated, although, on the other hand, it is doubtful that, after the 1988 Constitution, the protection of historical heritage, for example, would deserve similar zeal from the legislator than granted it Getúlio Vargas.so, in certain cases, than can be seen in periods of democracy.These have been more notable for the flexibilization of rights, as shown by privatizations and reforms such as those carried out in social security.Establishing reflections on findings of this nature is essential to understand the dynamics that have historically been established between the administration and the administered, and also in relation to the advances and setbacks in the process of constitutionalization of Brazilian administrative law.
The analysis of rejection or valorisation of these legislations, from the perspective of historical sociology, cannot fail to investigate all the proposals that have expired in each of the periods of legislative formulations in order to assess in depth their links with the dominant public administration project as a structure of order of the Brazilian State.That is to say, both the immediate rejection and the restricted consideration of the legislation approved do not contribute to explaining the reasons why these legislations were approved during these periods.The clarification of political disputes in each of the cases of normative change is essential as to whether or not they indicate ruptures and continuities or even originalities of the process.
Thus, the bureaucratic administration model was born in Brazil at a time when democracy was in abeyance.Its consolidation takes place again during a dictatorship.And, if the reform of the 1990s took place during a democratic period, the public administration model is the heir of the structure set up during the dictatorship, from which it has difficulties to disentangle itself.In any case, it would be expected that the democratization of the regime would contaminate the way in which the public administration was issued, causing significant changes in this area.On the contrary, the logic that permeated the dynamics of advances is that democracy is not necessary and can even "get in the way", as shown by the elucidating statement of the then President-Dictator Getúlio Vargas: The dictatorial period has been useful, allowing the realization of certain saving measures, which are difficult or belated to be carried out within the legal orbit.Most of the initiated and completed reforms could not be carried out in a regime in which the interest of political conveniences and party injunctions prevailed. 63rroborating the above observation, the study evidenced in the doctoral thesis of Verónica Giordano 64 showcases a set of data related to the recognition of the full civil capacity of women in Latin America.Giordano (2012).