This article analyzes the involvement of parliamentary fronts in the conflict surrounding the democratic regime in force during the Brazilian Republic of 1946. By investigating the positions they assumed in key national political debates, as well as their relations with various organized movements of civil society — expressed both through official statements and in the speeches of their main leaders in the National Congress — the article seeks to demonstrate how the Nationalist Parliamentary Front mobilized to promote the expansion of the Brazilian democratic regime, while the Democratic Parliamentary Action acted to preserve its limits. Adopting an expanded notion of democracy — one that goes beyond legal-institutional boundaries to also encompass its social and economic dimensions — the article aims to support the understanding that democracy in Brazil was under constant dispute throughout the Republic of 1946 and, in doing so, to complement the interpretation proposed by Florestan Fernandes (1980), who viewed the 1964 civil-military coup as an action intended to prevent a transition toward a more participatory democracy.