Decentralization and social participation: the new design of social policies

Abstract

This text indicates essential elements needed for an analysis of direct democracy, materialized in processes of decentralization and civil society participation in spaces for deliberating public policies, in a context of reform of these policies in the 1990’s. It analyzes the national Policy for the Elderly and the experiences of elderly rights councils. It concludes that despite the fact that spaces for participation are contradictory and the orientations of participation of the various subjects are in conflict, the correlation of forces favorable to conservative forces, redirect social policies, giving them a new rationality and new legitimacy that distribute responsibilities to civil society. These changes reinforce a culture of privation in light of the clashes of the refractions of the social issue and transmute popular participation into consent and legitimization of the given order.