Local power in Brasil: the alternative of participative democracy

Abstract

In the context of the contemporaneity, this study points out a crisis in representative democracy as a consequence of economic concentration at global level. Such an economic concentration makes it possible for great economic conglomerates - more powerful then many national States – to control the media, to manipulate public opinion and to finance overexpensive electoral campaigns. With the strenghthening of the economic power in relation to national States, the social State is deconstructed, being replaced by a penitentiary State prioritizing social control over social assistance or social inclusion. Traditional liberal democracies are turned into oligarquies where civil rights have continuously been compromised. In this scenario, the best alternative is found to be the strenghthening of participative democracy, which in Brazil is going through important experiences such as the strenghthening of the municipality as a federal unit and of municipal democratic mechanisms such as participative budgeting. Democratic decentralization stands as the single most viable alternative for the construction of a dialogic democracy capable of restoring the credibility of representative democracy.