Effectiveness of citizen participation in the municipal councils of Curitiba

This article evaluates the effectiveness of citizen participation in the municipal councils of Curitiba. A multiple case study was performed, which the focus was the social councils. Documentary research was carried out on the legislation, internal regulations and minutes of meetings of the Municipal Councils on School Feeding, Sports and Health, with the objective of identifying the legal possibility and the effective participation of citizens in plenary sessions. An ideal type of public governance was proposed from a synthesis of the literature review on the subject. From this, 18 qualitative variables were defined to be identified in the minutes of the council meetings. In the period of 2015 and 2016, the relative frequency of occurrence of the different variables in the councils studied was 18%, 10% and 45%, respectively. It was concluded that, despite the legal prediction of participatory democracy and social control, citizen participation is still limited, characterized by the passivity of representatives of civil society. In addition, there is little transparency in the acts of the councils, evidenced by the absence of updated data in the Portal of the Municipal Councils of Curitiba or in its own electronic address, as well as by the succinct way of writing the minutes of the council meetings.