Direito participativo-democrático: critérios para avaliação da democraticidade de instrumentos normativo-participativos na perspectiva municipal

Abstract

In the Brazilian municipal context, the formal expansion of mechanisms for social participation, driven by the 1988 Constitution, coexists with institutional obstacles that limit the influence of civil society on public decision-making. It is within this mismatch between normative openness and decisional effectiveness that this research is situated, dedicated to examining the democratic quality of normative-participatory instruments, with particular attention to public policy councils. The research problem consists in assessing to what extent the legal-institutional design of these mechanisms, in the Municipality of Fortaleza, fosters or constrains their concrete realization, taking the local case as a unit of analysis capable of shedding light on dynamics observable in other large municipal arrangements. The empirical scope focuses on the local regulation of participation, from the Organic Law to the internal bylaws of the collegiate bodies. The thesis is linked to the concentration area “Constitution, Society and Legal Thought,” within the Research Line “Social Relations and Legal Thought,” in articulation with the broader project “Political Participation in the Democratic State.” The study adopts the hypotheticaldeductive method, with a qualitative approach supported by quantitative data, through bibliographic, jurisprudential, and documentary research, encompassing normative acts and meeting minutes. As an original contribution, the work organizes the concept of ParticipatoryDemocratic Law into four dimensions, procedural, substantive, interpretative, and dialectical, and, based on this framework, develops the Index of Democraticity of Municipal Participatory Instruments (IDPM), structured around 47 binary indicators distributed across five dimensions: inclusion and plurality; institutional autonomy; deliberation and agenda-setting; transparency and publicity; and procedural regularity. Applied to 30 councils in Fortaleza, the index demonstrates that broad normative provision coexists with deficits in autonomy and transparency. From this diagnosis emerges the analytical category of tutelary inclusion, understood as a pattern in which the presence of civil society is admitted, although its capacity to exert influence remains constrained by bureaucratic dependencies and low procedural visibility. The research also presents a proposal for a municipal model law to regulate participatory democracy, with the aim of translating analytical findings into objective parameters for institutional improvement, both in the local system and in other municipalities subject to analogous legal regimes. It concludes that the effectiveness of participatory democracy requires overcoming administrative tolerance and the model of tutelary inclusion, since citizen presence only acquires deliberative density when supported by a binding institutional design capable of preventing procedural capture and projecting participation as a structuring element of public policies.