“Guardian of Rationality”? Deliberation and the Interpretive Role in the Portuguese Parliamentary Committee on Education

The Assembly of the Republic (Assembleia da República), the unicameral parliament of Portugal, has as its primary functions political representation, participation in processes of political discussion and decision-making, oversight of compliance with the Constitution, the law, and the actions of the government and public administration, as well as the drafting and approval of legislation. With regard to this latter function of normative production, there has been a progressive strengthening, particularly since 1985, of the role played by standing parliamentary committees. It is within these internal parliamentary bodies, endowed with subject-matter competence, whose composition is determined at the beginning of each legislature and reflects the proportional representation of parliamentary groups, that legislative deliberation predominantly unfolds and shapes decision-making outcomes. In the field of education (encompassing all educational systems and levels), there is a permanent specialised committee, currently designated the Committee on Education and Science. Among its responsibilities are the presentation and scrutiny through the production of reports and opinions of legislative initiatives submitted by Members of Parliament or parliamentary groups (bills) and by the government (government bills), the detailed discussion and voting of legislative texts approved in general terms by the plenary, the monitoring of political and administrative issues within its remit, and the proposal of thematic debates in the plenary on matters falling within its competence. Empirically, the paper draws on discourse analysis of the public meetings of this Committee. This initial analysis indicates that, in the examination of contested provisions, namely controversial elements within draft legislation, the role of an interpreter proved decisive in structuring deliberation and orienting legislative outcomes. The paper therefore focuses on the role played by this interpreter, drawing on Habermas’s (1989, p. 19) notion of a “guardian of rationality”. From this perspective, the interpreter’s function consists in clarifying the rationality at stake in deliberative exchanges (Bernardo, 2003), thereby enabling participants to arrive at a new shared definition of the situation. Through this process, contested norms may be reframed and reintegrated as unproblematic, contributing to the restoration of a disrupted normative consensus and illustrating how deliberation within parliamentary committees shapes decision-making processes. By foregrounding the potential of this interpretive role to foster rational discussion and deliberation, the paper seeks to contribute to the panel’s aim of advancing the study of parliaments in the face of contemporary challenges to parliaments as fundamental institutions for representative democracies. References Habermas, J. (1989). Consciência moral e agir comunicativo |Moral consciousness and communicative action|. Tempo Brasileiro. Bernardo, L. M. A. V. (2003). Linguagem e discurso: Uma hipótese hermenêutica sobre a filosofia de Eric Weil |Language and discourse: A hermeneutic hypothesis on Eric Weil's philosophy|. Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda.