Em busca de um discurso social : a ideologia da política social do PSDB na Câmara dos Deputados na 52ª Legislatura (2003-2007)

Abstract

Sustained by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Discourse Theory epistemological postulate, this paper investigation aim is to elucidate the ideological position of the Brazilian Social-Democratic Party concerning its social policy propositions in the Chamber of Deputies during the 52nd Legislature. The main purpose is to comprehend how the party’s ideological discourse is characterized in this specific field. To achieve that, we seek to identify the main meanings articulated in this discourse, in order to establish the relation between those and the party’s place in the ideological spectrum. It’s also our interest to perceive whether this discourse changes throughout the term, leaning to the left or to the right. To face up this purposes, the hypothesis upheld by us is that despite the ideological proximity between the PSDB and the Workers Party in the rhetorical field, in which both of them adopt a left-wing social discourse, on the “practical terms” the propositions submitted by the PSDB’s deputies for the social area maintain a character that is predominantly economic, bound to tax cuts and job growth. Thereby, the party’s discourse, concerning the social policies over the period under consideration, would be closer to a ideological stance usually related to the right-wing. For this verification, we analyzed the social policy bills submitted by the PSDB congressmen between 2003 and 2007, under the methodology for ideological classification of the political parties developed by the research group "Ideology and Discourse Analysis" (IdAD), associated to the Post Graduation Program in Political Science of the Federal University of Pelotas. In the refereed methodology, we use a combination of content analysis and discourse analysis, which allows us to deepen the knowledge on the draft issue. Contrarily to our hypothesis, the results showed that the party’s ideology concerning the social policy during the period considered can be categorized as a left-wing discourse, with no strong ties to the economic field, as we supposed.