Democratization of politics? An analysis of the Protestant presence in the presidential elections (2002-2014)
Religion and politics; Presidential elections; Protestantism.
The present research starts from the reflection that the interconnections between religion and politics are increasingly evident today. It is noted that the growth of Protestantism and its intense participation in Brazilian politics in recent years have highlighted the proximity of this relationship, with the last presidential elections (2010 and 2014) being important in this sense, since for many, the weight of religion and moral issues on the public sphere has been revealed in a very strong way. Thus, current research seeks to analyze the mutual relations between religion and politics in the presidential elections of 2002-2014 with a focus on Protestantism, with the interest of understanding the possible configurations of institutional democracy in recent years, given the strong presence of new actors in the political arena. For this, the study methodology seeks to unite research theory and practice. Thus, we will use a bibliography that uses works of important authors in the different areas: Paul Freston, Joanildo Burity, Ari Pedro Oro, Antônio Flavio Pierucci, Jairo Nicolau, Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos, Luis Felipe Miguel, Robert Dahl, David Held, Norberto Bobbio, etc. as well as the collection and analysis of data from the mentioned elections: information in the country's newspapers, such as Folha de São Paulo, O Globo, Carta Capital, research on evangelical and church sites, presidential candidate pages, religious leaderships, Voting intentions from different institutions (Datafolha, Ibope, Vox Populi, etc.), among others.