SOCIAL CONTROL OF THE STATE: Some Mechanisms and Experiences of Popular Participation

The Quality and participation in the Public Administration Program will be aimed to the improvement of quality and efficiency in public services delivery ..." Two of the additional projects that contribute for the operation and effectiveness of the Directive Plan of The State Reform, mention the issue of participation: the Quality and Participation Project and the Valorization of the Civil Servant. [...] The superficial reference made within the Directive Plan of the Reform of the State Apparatus, in the diagnosis of the current situation of public administration, about the necessity of the institution of mechanisms of popular participation, do not exclude the affirmative made in the last paragraph vis-à-vis do not characterize an effective intention of the government. [...] The inexistence, both of a deeper analysis of the national and international experiences and of the foresight of specific projects that operates that supposed intention, make evident the worry more with the theoretical consistence of the Plan than with the democratic intention of incorporating the population to the decision making process. [...] The conception of this management model is based in the principle that the representative democracy itself, characterized by periodical election of Representatives and of the Mayor to defend the interests and to pursue the achievement of the pleas of the society, had reached an stage of complete breakdown in answering the ever increasing complex demands of the society. [...] If the debate concerning the social control of the State could be summarized in a few points we would suggest: the creation of committees, functionally or territorially organized, depending on the level of the federation, with the same number of representatives of the government, of the Civil Society, and of the civil servants, that should formulate, implement and assess public policies, defining.