Author:

VINICIUS FOLETTO BEVILAQUA

Abstract:

The thesis theme is the manifestation of the capital-labor conflict in the Brazilian National Congress during the legislative process of the labor reform in 2017. The main objective is to analyze a discursive and strategic dynamic supported by representatives of the capital-labor conflict during public hearings on reform in the legislative sphere. The set of criticisms, justifications, discursive and action strategies organized by the representatives of that conflict is understood as the discursive and strategic dynamic. The theoretical framework is based on the concepts of critic, justification and cité (or models of justice) by Boltanski, Chiapello and Thévenot and on the Advocacy Coalition Framework by Sabatier. In order to complement the theoretical bases, the concept of social grammar was created. Such concept comprises a set of criticisms, justifications and discursive strategies collectively and historically elaborated by social groups or collectivities. Discourse and action strategies from parliamentarians of political parties and representatives of employers’ confederations and central unions were chosen for analysis. Methodologically, text-based documents of public hearings on the reform were used as the main empirical analysis material. The empirical material was complemented with the search, on electronic sites, for official publications of political parties, employers’ confederations and central unions. Data treatment was carried out using Nvivo11 software and SPSS v.18. It was applied the content analysis and discourse analysis on the chosen discourses. As a result, two advocacy coalitions were found: the capital coalition and the labor coalition. The first consists of political parties and employers’ confederations favorable to reform, while the second is composed of parties and central unions that opposed the reform. The manifestation of two social grammars was identified: the social grammar of “modernization”, identified in the coalition of capital, and the social grammar of “citizenship”, identified in the coalition of labor. The social grammar of “modernization” was characterized as an authoritarian grammar because it showed the reform as the only possibility to change the CLT, refracting and reframing opposite discourses, what made difficult the reconciliation of coalitions. The social grammar of “citizenship” was characterized as a reactive grammar because it did not participate in the initial process of drafting the propositions. During the analysis, a relation was evidenced between the advocacy coalition’s beliefs and the types of justice models chosen, a relation that was not previously seen when the theoretical framework was originally proposed. The social grammar concept filled in this analytical gap by explaining that the critics, justifications and discursive strategies selected by the advocacy coalitions respond to the collective and historical experience of social groups or collectivities themselves. In this way, the beliefs of the agents are historically crystallized in grammar concepts, resulting in the production of discourses. Such concepts and discourses show how each advocacy coalition conceives labor, the State, the market and labor legislation. The thesis concluded that the political configuration of the legislative sphere – that is, the composition of an asymmetrical conflict between social forces that includes interdependence among political parties, employers’ confederations and central unions – directly interferes in the discursive and strategic dynamic operated between capital and labor.