Neopatrimonialism, functional differentiation and the centerperiphery relationship revisited

Abstract

This article aims to deny the theoretical validity of the concept of neopatrimonialism, formulated by
Simon Schwartzman, in order to understand the dilemmas of political exclusion in contemporary Brazil, since the concept is based on an apologetic reading of Max Weber’s diagnosis about the West. From the bibliographical analysis, we argue that the concept of neopatrimonialism is stuck to an empirical and theoretically unsustainable vision of political modernity, which idealizes the democratic and constitutional basis of modern political power and ignores its autocratic dimension and non-constitutional. Next, we present as a theoretical alternative the political sociology of Niklas Luhmann, for it describes modern politics as divided in the circuits of formal and constitutional power, and informal and non-constitutional. In this way, we can analyze the processes of political exclusion in the center and in the periphery without the presence of
idealizations about the central countries.