Leonardo Avritzer

Sociedade civil, instituições participativas e representação: da autorização à legitimidade da ação

In democratic Brazil, political participation has been characterized by the enlargement of civil societys presence in public policies. Such presence generated a series of institutions with the participation of civil society and state actors in the areas of social welfare, health and urban policies. Within these institutions, it began to happen what we can call an institutionalized representation of civil society. This representation is characterized by the inexistence of an explicit requirement of authorization, and the absence of a structure of territorial monopoly in the representation carried out by the actors of civil society. Representation by affinity is proposed as a manner of associating parliamentary representation and representation of civil society.

Instituições participativas e desenho institucional: algumas considerações sobre a variação da participação no Brasil democrático

The author analyses the participative institutions (participative budgets, local councils of politics and managing plans) emerged in the recent Brazilian democracy and he points to their differences due the distinct institutional designs. These institutions vary in the way as the participation is organized; in the way as the State is related to the participation and in the way the law imposes the government to adopt participative formula. The author shows this variation in different Brazilian cities (Porto Alegre, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte e Salvador) and the analysis shows that the participative budget is the more democratic but also the most vulnerable form that suffers the pressure of political society. The analysis also indicates the importance of the context variation for the effectiveness of the participation.

Teoria crítica, democracia e esfera pública: concepções e usos na América Latina

In this article we analyze the construction of the concept of public sphere within critical theory, discussing its recent reformulations and reinterpretations. Our primary aim is to focus on contributions that emphasize the increasing importance of new publics, subaltern counter-publics, diasporic publics, and deliberative publics in contemporary democracies. We seek to outline a broader concept of public sphere in order to offer an adequate instrument for analyzing the simultaneous cycles of democratization and structural adjustment in Latin America.

Teoria democrática e deliberação pública

The question about deliberation in democratic theory is examined through the opposition between two models of deliberation: the decisionist and the argumentative. The underlying question concerns where and through which mechanisms does deliberation occur.

Um desenho institucional para o novo associativismo

Apontam-se elementos de alteracao no padrao do associativismo latino-americano e na auto-percepcao dos participantes das associacoes civis. A partir dessa analise, sugere-se um modelo institucional que permitiria potencializar a contribuicao desse novo associativismo para a democratizacao de praticas politicas que se geraram a sombra da debilidade historica do associativismo civil.

Living under a Democracy: Participation and Its Impact on the Living Conditions of the Poor

The Brazilian democratization took place between 1985 and 1988. In 1985, the authoritarian power holders transferred political power to civilians, and in 1988, a new democratic constitution was enacted, thus finalizing the transition. The end of the transition triggered processes of participation in different Brazilian cities, such as São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Recife, and Rio de Janeiro. However, only in Porto Alegre could the political context in the postdemocratization period generate a process of reverting priorities, that is to say, of inverting the pattern of democratic participation and the pattern of public investment at the urban level. In this article, I show the social conditions of the poor in the city of Porto Alegre in 1985, explain the emergence of participatory budgeting in the city, and show how democracy made a difference in the living conditions of the urban poor in the city of Porto Alegre. In the second part of the article, I analyze the recent expansion of participatory budgeting in Brazil and its recent expansion to midsize cities. In the final part of the article, I show how new participatory institutions are being introduced at the federal level of government. Participation at the local and national levels is making a difference in the living conditions of the Brazilian poor.

The different designs of public participation in Brazil: deliberation, power sharing and public ratification

The emergence of participatory institutions in Latin America is today an established phenomenon and has generated a vast corpus of literature. Among all the participatory mechanisms that have recently been incorporated, participatory budgeting appears to be the one that has received the greatest attention. Since its introduction in Porto Alegre, participatory budgeting has become world famous and has been exported to other parts of Brazil, Latin America and Europe. Participatory budgeting, however, is not the only available form of institutionalized participation in Latin America. Policy councils in the areas of health and social assistance have thrived in Brazil and today involve tens of thousands of participants. Participatory planning in cities was greatly enhanced after the creation of the Ministry of Cities and today takes place in more than a 1000 cities in Brazil. This article analyzes participation in Brazil in the light of its different designs. Our aim is to de-center the debate on participation from participatory budgeting and argue for the relevance of context in decision-making and participation.

Sociedade civil e Estado no Brasil: da autonomia à interdependência política

Resumo: O conceito de sociedade civil e bastante contestado no seu uso e na sua capacidade de explicacao analitica. Reelaborado na teoria democratica nos anos 1990, ele tem sido bastante utilizado no Brasil em diferentes acepcoes. Alguns autores defendem o seu uso, tal como estabelecido na sociologia-politica norte-americana (Cohen e Arato) enquanto outros criticam a ideia da autonomia social a ele inerente. Neste artigo, descrevo o surgimento da sociedade civil no Brasil durante os anos setenta e analiso suas principais areas de atuacao durante sua primeira fase. Analiso tambem uma segunda fase de interacao entre Estado e sociedade civil, mostrando a existencia de uma interdependencia entre ambos. Palavras-chave: chave:sociedade civil; autonomia; interdependencia; democratizacao; participacao social

Em busca de um padrão de cidadania mundial

Against the background of the globalization process the conceptions of citizenship of classic authors and of three contemporary ones, Anthony Giddens, Jurgen Habermas, and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, are examined in search of a concept of citizenship comprehensive enough to incorporate the global society and robust enough for not being diluted in it.

Política de Reconhecimento, Raça e Democracia no Brasil

The analysis of the relationship between race and democracy in Brazil requires a specific theoretical approach based on different conceptions of recognition. This article aims to address critically the theories of Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth in an attempt to deepen the understanding of how a hierarchy of status, which is based on the racial issue and imbricate elements of public, social and private space, was established in Brazil. We point out a number of distinctions in the forms of racial stratification in the United States and Brazil showing that differences can not be reduced to interracial relationships existing in Brazil. We attribute this contrast to the different traditions of legal regulation. We also discussed the different traditions of racial integration and affirmative action in both countries trying to shed light on conceptual lacks of the theories that think racial integration only from the perspective of private sphere. At the end of the paper we propose a recognition model that integrates the theories of Fraser and Honneth and associates the assigning of legal status to racial segments historically subordinate to a policy that deals with the formation of self-esteem.