Eles não me representam: representação e representatividade política em Serra Branca-PB.

Abstract

Representation and Representativeness are complementary concepts, but they are confused when it comes to the voter's understanding about the electoral process. Roughly speaking, we understand Representation linked to the numerical issue where a certain number of politicians express the different categories present in society. Besides, Representativeness is linked to the expression of ideas, goals, and the defense of rights. Thus, it refers to the question that whoever is occupying political positions, performs in his political and institutional practice the desires of his electorate. The present work deals with analyzing the issue of representation and political representativeness in the legislature from the city of Serra Branca-PB, especially illustrating the Crisis of Political Representativeness present in the Brazilian political system, based on the development of a descriptive, qualitative and quantitative search, with the questionnaire technique composed of open and closed questions applied to a sample of 1% of the electorate of the city of Serra Branca, which corresponds to 100 people. Data analysis was performed using the Efficient Process Tracking method, proposed by Schimmelfennig. The data obtained pointed to the voters' lack of knowledge about the constituent mechanisms of the Brazilian political system, especially about the electoral process, as well as to the existence of corrupt political practices, such as clientelism, which displaces the voter from his objective when choosing his representative in political office. The disconnection between the Party and the candidate appears as a distinct element when the voter is about to choose.