Engaging Citizens in Governance: Lessons from Brazil’s Democratic Experiments

Brazil’s democratic experiments have attracted the attention of those seeking new ways to engage citizens in governance and tackle democratic deficits. This briefing shares some of the insights that arose from a DFID Brazil funded project called Olhar Crítico - "a critical look" - that brought together activists, academics, and practitioners to enquire, with a critical eye, into Brazil's experiences with participation in governance, and what lessons this might have to offer other countries. To make participatory governance work, it suggests that what is needed is not only the kind of good institutional designs that Brazil has developed. It also calls for efforts to build the preconditions for meaningful citizen engagement, so that the spaces for participation that new institutions open up can be taken up and used by citizens to achieve greater accountability and voice.
Three factors have been identified as critical for viable participatory sphere institutions: 1) strong and well-organised civil society, 2) a supportive state, and 3) institutional designs that favour inclusive participation and deliberation.

An overview of the strategic democratic practices (and institutions) that have come about since the signing of the 1988 “Citizen’s Constitution” include:

• The principle of controle social – public oversight – giving service user representatives a statutory right to participate in holding the state to account. Brazilians have found that there can be a very positive impact when this model brings progressive elements of civil society together with progressive bureaucrats working for a common goal, rather than pitting civil society against government.
• Participatory budgeting – citizens work together to prioritise use of public funds. When this process is embedded in government structure and public expectation, it can endure changes of government and remain flexible to each particular context. Providing space for the participation of different types of organisations can help to ensure that participation is sustained and broadened.
• Putting democracy to rights – an organised civil society works to create statutes that guarantee their rights under law, and then hold government and private actors accountable to these laws. The example of women "coco harvesters" gaining legal rights to the babaçu palm tree nuts has become a legendary example of an age old practice becoming sanctified through organisation and the eventual creation of a law sustaining this right.
• Negotiating citizenship – if it is to achieve genuinely inclusive deliberation, a diverse society must recognise the diversity of styles and cultures of participation and establish links beyond the participatory sphere through which marginalised social actors can build confidence, arguments, and skills with which to participate. Such is the case of Brazil’s health system, for which the principle of universal access and delivery of biomedical services is key. Indigenous peoples, for whom the state’s historical role has oscillated between genocide and paternalism, claim a right to their own forms of medicine (example, administering herbs with the accompanying ritual).
• Mobilising for change – in addition to state sponsored arenas for democratic participation and engagement, this study revealed that more contentious forms of social action (such as the organisation of the coco breakers) are vital for democratic vitality. "Interactions with the state outside the participatory sphere – in the courts, in the streets – can strengthen the accountability of participatory institutions... getting the institutions right is only part of what it takes to deepen democracy. What is also needed are measures that can strengthen the voice, confidence, and political agency of historically marginalised groups so they can enter and make use of these institutions, and claim their rights.