Vulnerabilidade e Democracia: a vulnerabilização social como fator de incremento do déficit democrático no contexto da pandemia da covid-19 no Brasil

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze how the Covid-19 pandemic contributed to the increase in the number of people in situations of vulnerability and, consequently, to the increase of social and economic inequalities that, historically, have thriven in Brazil. Therefore, it starts with an analytical reconstruction of the concepts of necropolitics and democratic legitimacy, proposed by Achille Mbembe and Pierre Rosanvallon, respectively. Thus, it seeks to show, preliminarily, how public policies and government management during the crisis contributed to the worsening of the post-pandemic chaotic scenario, with the resulting ratification and, even, resurgence of the invisibility of vulnerable groups, through the implementation of increasingly indifferent policies and, in some cases, refractory to the desires and needs of these groups, which will be considered mainly from the perspective of Achille Mbembe's necropolitics. Then, within the scope of this analysis, the forms of legitimacy (impartiality, proximity and reflexivity). Through this sophisticated conception of the democratic experience, viewed as irreducible to its electoral dimension (delegation democracy), an attempt will be made to explain the extent to which the increased vulnerability of various social groups in the context of the pandemic can be considered as an expression of greater democratic deficit in Brazil. © 2023: Author(s).