This article aims to discuss strategies for political struggle developed by the social movements in Brazilian society, focusing in the question: what are the possibilities of social democratization since the decentralization of the political space and the plurality of political subjects have been characterized the last decades of contemporary Western societies? We interviewed leaderships of groups from the feminist movement (World March of Women - MMM), the afrobrazilian movement (Black Active - NA), the peasant movement (Landless Rural Workers Movement - MST), the trade union movement (Central Union of Workers - CUT), the Movement of Unemployed Workers (MTD) and the Popular Brigades (BP). In addition, we interviewed the secretary of the Popular Assembly of Belo Horizonte - Minas Gerais (AP-MBH) and vice-president "Trans" of the Brazilian Association of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transsexuals (ABGLT). All those entities we named as a public space where different political subjects are linked. We also collect materials from the groups about the actions undertaken by them, the history of the groups, and their political demands. For data analysis, we focus on a specific theory of democracy named Plural Radical and Democratic Theory, developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe since the mid-1980s. From reading the interviews, the documents collected from the groups and the considerations of the Radical Democratic Theory and Plural, we have built analytical categories related to the research problem. We discuss in this article two strategies of political struggle, called articulation strategy and alliance strategy. The articulation strategy is conceived as the construction of an equivalence relation ("we") between different political actors in order to build a counter-hegemonic project. Otherwise, alliance strategy is defined as the construction bond, around specific demands, among political actors in the construction of joint actions, without implying necessarily in promoting a relationship of equivalence between the groups. We consider these two forms of political strategy not as opposed, in principle, but as complementary ways of building social change. The strategies discussed may be useful for research in the field of social movements, especially in the analysis of construction methods of political struggle.
Articulation Strategy; Alliance Strategy; The Logic of Equivalence; The Logic of Difference; Democracy
