Management councils and regulation: public assistance in times of transition

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of municipal public assistance councils in the regulation of civil society organizations classified as social welfare organizations. We draw attention to the importance that these councils have for the operationalization of the more general principles governing the country’s social welfare/public assistance policies. Focusing on the regulatory role that management councils’ take on, we seek to understand, on the one hand, the wider institutional environment to which they belong and, on the other, their power to remodel a particular type of associativism which until very recently was identified and identified itself as philanthropical. Keywords: municipal councils, social welfare, Sistema Único de Assistência Social, regulation, public assistance entities.