Power, Policy, and Citizen Participation in Santo André, Brazil

Abstract

City master plans assumed a central role in urban planning in Brazil with the promulgation of a new constitution in 1988 and the passage of enacting legislation in 2001. Citizen participation became an important part of this new urban planning framework. In contrast to some of Brazil's other democratic experiments, participation in urban planning has been received critically or with only cautious optimism. A comparison of two participatory forums in Santo André, São Paulo, shows that established patterns of administrative power can decisively influence the participation of the public in city planning. Differences in the executive structures of the two institutions enabled one of them but not the other to foster open-ended deliberation on policies with members of disadvantaged groups. The study suggests that participation might be enhanced by reserving executive positions for civil society participants, including the public at all stages of policy development, choosing participants largely from disadvantaged groups, and keeping the forum small. Planos diretores para cidades desempenharam papel fundamental no planejamento urbano brasileiro com a promulgação da Constituição de 1988 e o sancionamento da legislação em 2001. Demais, a participação de cidadãos tornou-se importante elemento dessa nova moldura de planejamento urbanístico. Ainda assim, em contraste com outros experimentos democráticos no Brasil, a participação no planejamento urbano tem sido recebida de maneira crítica ou no máximo com otimismo cauteloso. Contudo, uma comparação entre dois forums participativos em Santo André, São Paulo, demonstra que padrões estabelecidos de poder administrativo tiveram influência decisiva na participação pública no planejamento urbano. Diferenças na estrutura executiva das duas instituições permitiram que uma delas, mas não a outra, promovesse deliberações transparentes sobre iniciativas enquanto permitia a participação de grupos menos privilegiados. O estudo sugere que a participação pode ser ampliada com a nomeação de participantes da sociedade civil a cargos executivos, incluindo-se o público em todos os estágios da política de desenvolvimento e escolhendo-se indivíduos majoritariamente entre segmentos mais desfavorecidos da população. O forum deve, ainda, manter-se pequeno.City master plans assumed a vital role in urban planning with the passage of Brazil's federal constitution in 1988. They became obligatory for cities of over 20,000 people and the sole means through which the urban planning powers devolved to municipalities in the constitution could be exercised following the 650673L APXXX10.1177/0094582X16650673LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESAlbert / CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN BRAZIL research-article2016

Citizen Power as A Sustainable Transformation of Population Services

“…Theorists respond to this complexity by continuing to develop the science of public The new public service perspective first highlights the recognition of the crucial role of citizens and their very vital position in the context of democratic government (Albert, 2017) .…”

“…Then, a shift occurred towards a new public management model, New Public Management (NPM), by David Osborne andTed Gaebler in 1992. Finally, in 2003, a new public service model emerged, NPS (Albert, 2017) .…”

“…However, the application of this concept requires courage from government officials to influence all applicable systems, sacrificing time and energy (Winterford, 2016) . The alternative offered is that the government must listen to the public's voice in participating in governance, so that it can abandon the habit of governing and move towards a new administrative concept that respects opinions as suggested by the NPS concept (Albert, 2017) .…”

“…State administration in the NPS view is not only about satisfying customers, but also about providing citizens' rights to obtain public services. The NPS emphasizes that the state apparatus is not the main actor in formulating public interests, but is part of a government system that involves citizens, groups, people's representatives and other institutions (Albert, 2017) .…”