Author:

Françoise Montambeault

Abstract:

The adoption of the 1988 Democratic Constitution in Brazil was marked by the will to break with an authoritarian past and to include deeper and wider forms of citizens’ participation in local, state and national decision-making processes. After 30 years, the language of citizens’ inclusion and of the citizens’ Constitution was adopted by politicians at all levels of government to affirm the democratic and inclusive character of their own political projects and ambitions. Many participatory initiatives were indeed created and implemented at all levels of government in Brazil, even at the national level with the growth of the public policy national councils in the last decades. What is the legacy of the 1988 Constitution for the institutional articulation of citizens’ participation in Brazil? This paper looks back at the origins of such participatory innovations and studies its institutional articulations, emphasizing the successes, but also highlighting the limits of the constitutional dispositions in themselves for the deepening of democracy in Brazil.