SOCIAL ASSISTANCE AND DEMOCRACY IN BRAZIL: SOCIAL SECURITY AS A CITIZENSHIP PROMOTION INSTRUMENT
Keywords:
democracy and social assistance. citizenship and social assistance. post-constitution social service. public policies and citizenship. public policies of social assistance.Abstract
The 1988 Constitution, when formatting the Brazilian social order, established a social security system that includes social assistance. Embryonic social assistance has been present in Brazil since the middle of the last century, but it had characteristics strongly identified with welfare and Christian charity, in an action strongly aimed at shaping the conduct of those vulnerable to the expectations of the state and Catholic morality. The social assistance, however, reinvents itself and from the Code of Ethics of 1986 and begins to define an ethical-political project that establishes a social service that builds an active citizenship. From the Constitution in 1988, social assistance definitively leaves any rancidity of welfare and begins to promote the vulnerable as a subject of rights. Public policies developed by social assistance, as they mitigate exclusion and minimize misery, make the economically vulnerable more conducive to effective rather than merely formal participation in the democratic life of the country; It also minimizes the risks of the vulnerable being co-opted as an instrument of power holders. Social assistance, therefore, has long been indispensable in the promotion of citizenship and, consequently, has effectively collaborated in the insertion of the vulnerable in the democratic life of the state.
