Democracia e participação social: a construção de avanços democratizantes nas políticas urbanas pós-1980

Abstract

This work addresses participation on its social and political dimension focusing civil society's actors role in the construction of institutional changes characterized by democratization features. In an interpretative approach, the National Movement of Urban Reform is focused, from the initial building of the urban reform agenda to its rearticulation as National Forum of Urban Reform, as a more stable network of civil organizations and social movements. The study points out Forums dual orientation (defensive and offensive) associated to a wide collective action repertoire and to its performance in the civil society and institutional domains. The core analytical argument sustains that the referred Movement and Forum have significantly influenced and intervened on urban politics post-1980 (especially on legal instruments) in the sense of democratization. Additionally, the study argues that the profile of the state concerning political inclusion is an intervening factor to the extension of the reforms, as well as it assumes that an inclusive state favors democratic progresses. Secondarily the work approaches the effects of the politicalinclusion on the collective actors' organization and performance. It also considers the inclusion of the actors in the state does not corrode the vitality of society civil. The work is structured in seven chapters, the first two examining two complementary theoretical fields. The first approaches contemporary democratic theory debates in the perspective of theradicalization of the democracy, addressing participation, deliberation and their conjunctions. It points out the complementarity of participation and deliberation to democratic deepening. The second approaches the developments on social participation (contemporary theories of the social movements and the theory of the civil society), being emphasized the dual orientation of collective action and the dilemmas related toinstitutionalization processes. The following chapters analyses periods that are associated to distinct inclusion profiles of the state, examining the performance of the Movement and of the Forum and their effects. The first period examined is the Constituent Assembly that may be considered as a political opportunity context. In this environment the Movement collective action resulted in the inclusion of an urban policy chapter in the Federal Constitution of 1988. The second period (1989 to 2003) is characterized by the exclusive profile of the state, and only in 2001 the Statute of the City was approved due to the influence of the Forum, that also affected this law content. The third period is characterized by the inclusive profile of the state and by institutional innovations such as the creation of the Ministry of the Cities and of participatory institutions, and also by the formulation of urban policies and their regulatory instruments with Forums incidence. The work points out some contradictions and limits in processes connected to the imperatives of the state in the period. The conclusion´s remarks stand out the continuity, the resilience and action capacity of the Forum and its role in the democratization of the urban politics and, beyond, their contributions for the democratic deepening.