Como políticas públicas de inclusão representativa de mulheres entram na agenda decisória? Agendas, alternativas e a Minirreforma Eleitoral de 2009

The objective of this study is to comprehend how policies designed to improve women’s political representation are inserted in the decision agenda, by conducting a case study of a significant proposal in the Brazilian political history: the bill 5498/2009, which came to be recalled as “Minirreforma Eleitoral de 2009” once sanctioned. To this end, concepts related to John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Approach are mobilized, with a special focus on the distinction between agendas and alternatives, which is addressed in distinct moments throughout the dissertation. In a first moment, an analysis of the legislative proposals presented in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies between 1995 and 2014 is conducted, with the intent to determine a sample of possible cases to be studied, as well as to establish the criteria which guided the selection of the “Minirreforma Eleitoral de 2009” as a representative case of a policy designed to improve women political representation which reached the decision agenda. Secondly, using as method the qualitative content analysis of shorthand transcripts from the Chamber of Deputies’ plenary speeches – delivered between the beginning of the legislative year until the sanction of the proposal –, the study identifies the theoretical elements described by Kingdon in relation to both the conduction of Brazilian political reform policies to the agenda and the selection of policies which propose changes in political, electoral or party legislation. As a result of this analysis, the study presents the hypothesis that policies designed to improve women political representation are not able to individually reach the last phases of the decision agenda, but they might be incorporated to broader political systems reforms, as occurred in the “Minirreforma Eleitoral de 2009” and possibly happened to other reforms which contemplated policies in favor of women in positions of power. This conclusion, in turn, may be inserted in the political theory debate which opposes the concepts of critical mass and critical actors, offering contributions that allow the suggestion that policies designed to improve women political representation reach the decision agenda through the articulated action of critical actors, and not by a predetermined percentage of political participants of a certain social group, as established by the critical mass theory.