Federalismo e instituições participativas: os conselhos de assistência social (2003-2010)

Abstract

Federalism and institutionalized social participation are two topics of relevance in public policy studies, especially in countries such as Brazil, marked by a territorial organization of power in three levels and that has the participation as constitutional precept. However, there is little dialogue between these aspects of the Brazilian reality, a gap that this paper sought to minimize when presenting and discussing the relationship between federalism and participatory institutions (PIs) in social assistance policy in the period 2003 to 2010. The objective was to verify the effects of jurisdictional and fiscal centralisms in the design, operation and outcome of these institutions. Therefore, we sought to analyze how jurisdictional centralism affected the (1) design: nature, linkage, parity, composition of representation and competencies in relation to policy financing; and how fiscal centralism affected (2) the functioning: ability to decide and control the financing of politics and (3) the deliberative outcome: decisions made (resolutions) on the financing of social assistance, a structuring aspect of social assistance actions, which occurs in articulation with the spheres of government. For this purpose, documentary analysis, content analysis and semi-structured interviews were conducted with key actors of social assistance PIs at the national level, from two states, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul, and their respective capitals, Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre. The results show that the jurisdictional and fiscal centralization during the analyzed period strengthened the capacity of national IP to define and control financing, while the capacity of subnational PIs was constrained by these centralisms.