Barrier Clause of Constitutional Amendment nº 97/2017

Impacts on party-political representation of the Chamber of Deputies

Abstract

The article examines the Barrier Clause established by Constitutional Amendment nº 97/2017 in the context of Brazilian constitutional representative democracy. In this sense, the present approach will deal with the origin, concept and purposes of the Barrier Clause institute, as well as explain its historical-normative evolution in Brazil, adopting as a time frame: the period before the Federal Constitution of 1988 (subdivided in Democratic and Dictatorship after the Military Coup of 1964) and after the Federal Constitution of 1988, highlighting the National Constituent Assembly as the moment in which the attempt to insert the Barrier Clause in the constitutional text of 1988 was unsuccessful. Subsequently, the constitutional foundations concerning party political representation by the proportional system will be pointed out, to then demonstrate the impacts arising from the first applicability of the Barrier Clause established by Constitutional Amendment no. 97/2017 of the Chamber of Deputies after the 2018 proportional elections. To this end, the deductive methodology was used through specialized bibliographic and doctrinal research on the subject, as well as access to the official database of the Brazilian State represented by the Fundação Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) and the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE).