A universidade não é o castelo: democracia e gestão pública universitária

Abstract

Democracy as a way of life, since at least the revolutionary processes of the 18th century, has become a constant agenda not only for the organization of political regimes, but has taken the ideas of freedom and equality, for example, to the most diverse areas where human plurality coexists. In the 20th and 21st centuries, democratic expectations deepened and gained even more space in our current institutions, including the university. Based on this, the main objective of this research is to know why and how the public university management must be guided by democratic principles. In order to do so, three specifics objectives are analyzed: 1) initially, I develop a delimitation of the concept of democracy in terms of its principles and objectives; 2) next, I explain the uniqueness of the university to understand what constitutes its structure and how it is a privileged space for democratic practice and for the promotion of a democratic culture, and 3) finally, I evaluate under which aspects we can understand democratic public management from a focus on what constitutes public administration, on the one hand, and, on the other, in view of the classic models of public management: the patrimonial, the bureaucratic, the managerialism, and the societal. The methodology will be bibliographic, based on recent analyzes by Chauí (2018), Avritzer (2019) and Bignotto (2020) regarding democracy in Brazil. In addition, we will verify the studies of Braga (1998), Mendonça (2001), Souza (2019) and Salles (2020) and others about university democracy. Furthermore, a theoretical essay is carried out in the way in which the objectives are presented. The assumption is that, in general, there is not a pure application of management models, but that elements from the most diverse sources are part of administrative practices. It is, therefore, necessary to understand which forms of action lead to public vices, above all generating an environment of domination of certain groups over others, and which ones help in the promotion of university democracy. As a result, another way of looking at university public management is necessary, deepening its democratic aspect and based on republican principles, inspired by a notion of active citizenship, in which direct democracy becomes possible through councils, from which responsibilities are divided, rights are guaranteed and a feeling of belonging to public affairs is created.