Orçamento participativo em pequenos municípios: o caso de Cambuí-MG

Abstract

With the country redemocratization, after long years of dictatorship, were instituted several popular participation instruments by means of the Federal Constitution of 1988 and by others infraconstitutional legislations, in order to give sustainability to the democratic regime established in the country. In this sense, dawned the participatory budgeting, like a co management instrument between the State and the civil society, in order to share with population the decisions concerning the public budget which is up to the Executive Branch. Under these circumstances, the citizens participate in the budget piece elaboration, deliberating in public spaces about specific investments that they would like them to be executed, as well as the most urgent locations, innovating the classic and traditional representative democracy. In this diapason, this research had as objective to analyze which elements, present in conception processes, implementation and evaluation of Cambui-MG participatory budgeting, that potentiate and/or limit the validity of democratic principles and practices in the county, from the perspective of the local representatives. To achieve this purpose, was carried out a research quantitative, typified as case estudy, because the social phenomena in the participatory budgeting conjucture were studied. The data collection was done through interviews, non-participating observation and documentary research, and the data were analyzed through content analysis. The research results demonstrated several fundamental elements that contributed to the promotion of democratics principles and practices in the Municipality, during the participatory budgeting process. The found elements were the inclusive citizenship, the social actors plurality, freedom of speech, effective participation, clear understanding and the equality of votes. Were also corroborated others elements that favor the local democracy consolidation, such as the political will, administrative capacity, public space, population autonomy, intense deliberation and the simple linguage, although there is a need to improve the experience, as regards the criteria and used methodology deadlines, as well as the accountabilty information.