Estado, sociedade civil e orçamento participativo: limites, possibilidades e perspectivas para a emancipação social

Abstract

This research aims to study the Participatory Budget as it has been deployed in some areas of Brazil, in the midst of historical constructos such as: State, Civil Society and Public Budget, seeking an approximate answer about their ability to transfer power to civil society, under a emancipatory perspective. The Brazilian people built, throughout its history, peculiar ways of participating in the common desideratum, but since the 1970s at least, there is discussion about participatory government in Brazil. Thus, it was researched a range of possibilities of social emancipation, before a painting seen in the last decade of the twentieth century in the country, marked by the opacity of the state against the citizen and the political constraints embedded in the state structure itself. Supported by several academic studies that deal with this specific problem, this study addresses the first concrete experience more participatory management known and documented - Lages (SC) in 1970, the second-1990s, in Porto Alegre, by far the one that had greater disclosure, and the third held in Bahia - Vitória da Conquista, between the end of this decade and the next - from 1997 to 2011. Although the experiences of Participatory Budget studied here have shown how much they are distant from social emancipation and are uncertain about the ways of their achievement, it is concluded that studying the Participatory Budget in Brazil leads to propose alternatives to the system prevailing liberal-representative, substantiated in utopias beyond the status quo.