Determinants of Successful Participatory Institutions in Brazil

What enables civil society to sustain effective participatory institutions? Civil society is assumed to play an important role in enhancing social accountability in new democracies that still lack electoral accountability. Civil society in new democracies, however, has two divergent characteristics: actors controlled by the government and actors independent from the government. To examine the political outcomes produced by these two different aspects of civil society, I observe the workings of participatory institutions. I categorized strategies used by civil society as inside and outside strategies and examined the effectiveness of participatory institutions as a political outcome. Using original observational data collected in Brazil, I compared two National Public Policy Conferences, and attempted to identify the factors responsible for sustaining effective participatory institutions. In so doing, I demonstrate that social pressure produced by civil society serves to sustain effective participatory institutions based on social movement theories.

Latin America Ronshu