Role of municipal councils as a form of citizen participation in municipal public administration

Abstract

Citizen participation is a right that gives the possibility that anyone can participate in the public affairs of the community of which they are a part, it must be effective through applicable mechanisms, assimilable and measurable in their effectiveness and not be reduced to corporatism and clientelist system that constantly reflects and recreates a socio-state relationship of favoritism in which opacity is a constant. In the political life of Brazil, open sessions of the councils and public meetings of the municipal councils are held, as well as various institutional designs that sought to promote local participatory processes in the public policy agenda. Thus, the main objective of this research is to analyze the participatory performance of citizens in Municipal Councils to elaborate and apply municipal public policies. When citizen participation is an effective instrument for the emancipation of society, at the same time, it ceases to be functional for the State. Municipal councils have gained strength in recent years, for example in the creation of a master plan for cities. As it is an abstract entity, where its effects are perceived in the long term, the Master Plan must be followed by immediate actions in the short term, taking into account the city's priorities perceived in the initial diagnoses. In this way, the changes perceived in the short-term period make the benefits of the participatory process visible to the community, ensuring its credibility and acceptance by the groups involved in its preparation.