Participation as Public Policy

Challenges of the National Policy of Social Participation in Brazil

Abstract

Brazil has been the locus for the implementation of various participatory tools and spaces after the period of democratization and promulgation of the 1988 Constitution. Many studies have been carried out to discuss the importance of these spaces and, more recently, the quality of participation and the impact on strengthening democracy (Avritzer, 2009; Dagnino, 2011; Lavalle, 2011). In May 2014, Decree 8.243 of the Presidency of the Republic sought to establish the National Social Participation Policy (NSPP) and the National Social Participation System (NSPS), with the objective of consolidating participation as a method of government through the organization of forums and social participation and other existing mechanisms in the federal government. The decree generated controversy and discussion in the media and by the Chamber of Deputies. The creation of a national social participation policy in 2014 represented an innovation that must be studied in depth, raising its potential and limitations. Based on the literature review, this article aims to: (i) present the trajectory of NSPP (ii) and analyze the attempt to institutionalize NPSP through the lens of Scott's regulatory, normative and cognitive pillars (2001, 2008), in order to identify and characterize the variables that influenced the process. The regulatory, normative and cultural cognitive pillars emerge from a refinement of institutional theory and contribute in an important way to the systematization of institutional analysis. Analyzing from the pillars' point of view, it is possible to say that the decree was the regulating pillar of institutionalization. However, there were opposing normative and cultural cognitive variables that culminated in its non-approval in the Chamber of Deputies and in not institutionalizing this public policy. This study aimed to show how regulatory, normative and cultural-cognitive elements worked together and materialized through different variables that impacted the NSPP non-institutionalization, contributing to understand the challenges that exist in the creation of a social participation policy, the fragility of some participation mechanisms in Brazil and the tension between participatory democracy and representative democracy. In the future, more analysis must be carried out to better understand the institutionalization of a participatory policy and system at the national level, taking into account new existent bills that deal with the subject.