Meio ambiente e democracia: uma análise da questão ambiental na Assembleia Nacional Constituinte de 1987-1988

Abstract

This paper addresses the historical process of building the constitutional rules on the environment in the National Constituent Assembly 1987-1988. The goal is to understand the conditions that led to the environmental issue to the constitutional debate and analyze the decision-making process that defined the content of the final text adopted, which devoted a chapter exclusively to the environment, for the first time in history. The research object has the main time frame the years 1987 and 1988, timing of the National Constituent Assembly, whose historical documents make up the whole of the primary sources of the study. However, for better understanding of the issue were addressed other temporalities, covering the history of the environmental issue and its implications in contemporary society in shaping its institutions, in thought and social dynamics. In addition, they focused on the sociopolitical context of the Constituent Assembly, the fundamental decision-making steps, trading rules, the actors and their strategies, conflicts, joints and coalitions in support of different perspectives on environmental issues in order to identify the general conditions and specific influencing the development of the chapter on the environment. The theoretical framework adopted for the treatment of the object of research included the contributions of the neo-institutionalist approach regarding the literature on the constitutional construction processes and the behavior of the actors in decision-making processes.