Orçamento cidadão participativo: democracia participativa ou formalidade político-administrativa

Abstract

The work presented analyzes the structure and functioning of the experience of the citizens’ participation on the deliberations of financial research applications, referring to the Citizen Participatory Budget in the town of Passo Fundo, moreover this administrative practice is being disseminating throughout the municipality with the objective to rescue citizenship of the same, through the formation of participatory citizens and to improve the quality of the public planning and the efficiency of the usage of public resources as well as the institutionalization of a new relationship between state and society. The study importance is to reveal aspects, which permit to verify if the way that administrative practice is being developed, evidence participatory democracy. Based on the main theoretical concepts dealing with participated democracy and the peoples participation to determine the public resource allocation, we sought data, information and opinions on how to develop this experience in order to analyze aspects considered key elements to highlight participatory democracy, since these may represent limits to the success of the experiments in participatory budgets, such as popular participation, financial resources available, approved and implemented demands, political will, organizational capability, transparency of information, political influence and legal aspects. It was identified that these factors and other situations contributed significantly to the Citizens Participatory Budget not to concretize as a participatory democracy, in addition the people have not made an active presence in the process, therefore de executive power was not able to concretize the demands which seen to be priority for the society. The people’s negligence to this opportunity as well as the constant lack of political commitment of the executive branch were crucial for the experiment not to be a success, it is concluded that this mechanism is merely a political-administrative formality, even though its purpose is to serve in a partial manner.