The event started with a welcome speech of Felix Dane, the Representative of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in Brasil.

In the first session, the main topic was the 125th anniversary of the Brazilian Republic and the state of the Brazilian democracy. The political scientists José Álvaro Moisés, Lúcia Avelar and Sérgio Fausto debated on the subject. They pointed out the fact that Brazilian democracy suffers from strong distortions, they tackled the issue of the pluralistic character of the Brazilian representative system and mentioned the necessity of integrating the new electorate that appeared due to the economic growth of the last decades. Moreover, the problem of corruption was discussed and the question of how the political party system could be reformed in order to guarantee more transparency.

In the afternoon, the participants had the option either to attend one of the thematic workshops or to engage in a discussion about the role of media in democratic system.

The main themes of the debate were Social Media and their effects on public opinion. Fátima Anastasia, Bernardo Sorj and Fabro Steibel took on the debate. In the first part, the speakers discussed the political demonstrations and their ability to impact the political agenda of a country. They pointed out that social media plays an important role when it comes to spreading information. This does not however have implications in terms of political demonstrations. They argued that although the internet creates a political culture this does not create a positive response. Finally, it was stated that democracy is a “learning-by-doing process” and that its quality depends also on the quality of the discussions brought forward by its citizens.

The thematic workshops that took place at the same time were divided into five main themes:

One workshop dealt with the European Union and was moderated by Bruno Theodoro Luciano. The aim of this debate was to show that problems linked to democracy are not exclusively a Brazilian phenomenon but that they also occur in every other country of the world. In order to undermine this, the participants discussed the problems and the challenges of democracy in the European Union.

In a second workshop, Caetano Scannavino Filho moderated a debate around the topic of Sustainability. The participants tackled the complicated issue of sustainability on the environmental, social and economic level. The aim of this was to show that solutions to these problems always have to take into account those three dimensions that are linked together. One major problem is the social advancement in Brazil that leads to more consumption and thus to new environmental challenges.

João Ricardo Viégas moderated a third workshop on youth and rights that mainly aimed to define youth and the rights of young people. Moreover it discussed the consequences of the reduction of the age of criminal responsibility.

The subject economic policy was moderated by Maria Antonieta Del Tedesco Lins. This debate circled around the effects of the 2008 economic crisis, the different economic decisions taken by Lula and later by Dilma Rousseff in the aftermath of the crisis and finally about Brazil’s role in the BRICS.

The last workshop about political parties was moderated by Silvana Krause and tackled the issue of the Brazilian political system and whether it is able to satisfy the expectations of its citizens or not.

The last event of the day was a roundtable on which André Luis Prudencio Sena, Miriam Saraiva, Renato Flôres and Roberto Fendt debated on democracy in International Relations and analysed Brazil’s role in the world. The main question was about the different visions about the US’ international relations as well as these of Europe and Brazil and the reasons of eventual divergences. The debate also dealt with the representative political crisis in Brazil.