Brazil's health councils appear to offer inspiring examples of what Fung and Wright (2003) term “empowered participatory governance.” But what happens in practice? This article narrates an episode in the life of a municipal health council in northeast Brazil, in which democracy itself came under deliberation. It seeks to locate normative assumptions embedded in theories of deliberative democracy and participatory governance in everyday conduct in one of these institutions. It suggests that assessing the democratizing potential of the myriad new spaces that now populate governance landscapes the world over calls for far closer attention to be paid to power, political culture, and politics.
Vera S. Coelho, "Brazil's Health Councils: The Challenge of Building Participatory Political Institutions,"IDS Bulletin35, no. 2 ( 2004): 33-39; Vera S. Coelho and J. Veríssimo, "Considerações sobre o processo de escolha dos representantes da sociedade civil nos conselhos de saúde em São Paulo," in A Participação em São Paulo, ed. L. Avritzer ( São Paulo: Unesp, 2005); A. I. de Carvalho, "Os Conselhos de Saúde, Participação Social e Reforma do Estado,"Ciência e Saúde Coletiva3, no. 1 (1998): 23-25; L. Tatagiba, "Os Conselhos Gestores e a Democratização das Políticas Públicas no Brasil," in Sociedade Civil e Espaços publicos no Brasil, ed. E. Dagnino (Sao Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2002); N. Rodrigues dos Santos, "Implantação e funcionamento dos Conselhos de Saúde no Brasil," in Conselhos Gestores de Políticas Públicas , ed. M. do C. A. Carvalho and A. C. C. Teixeira ( São Paulo: Polis, 2000), 15-21; Günther Schönleitner, "Can Public Deliberation Democratise State Action? Municipal Health Councils and Local Democracy in Brazil," in Politicising Democracy: Local Politics and Democratisation in Developing Countries, ed. J. Harriss, K. Stokke, and O. Törnquist, (Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
3.
Schönleitner, "Can Public Deliberation Democratise State Action?"
4.
A. L. Ávila Viana, "Desenho, Modo de Operação e Representação de Interessesdo Sistema Municipal de Saude-e os Conselhos de Saúde,"Ciência e Saúde Coletiva3, no. 1 (1998): 20-22; M. R. Dal Poz and R. Pinheiro, "A participação dos Usuários nos Conselhos Muncipais de Saúde e seus Determinantes,"Ciência e Saúde Coletiva3, no. 1 (1998): 28-30.
5.
L. Hayes, Participation and Associational Activity in Brazil: The Case of the São Paulo Health Councils, master's dissertation, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2004; Adrian Gurza Lavalle , Arnab Acharya, and Peter Houtzager, "Beyond Comparative Anecdotalism: How Civil and Political Organizations Shape Participation in São Paulo, Brazil,"World Development33, no. 6 (2005): 951-64.
6.
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
7.
By "participant observation" I mean taking part in meetings as a member of the public and occasionally contributing to debate myself and having informal discussions afterward with those who attended the meeting to hear what they thought of what was going on, keeping verbatim notes during the meeting, and recording observations afterward.
8.
Andrea Cornwall, "Making Spaces, Changing Places: Situating Participation in Development," IDS Working Paper 173 (Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2002).
9.
Joshua Cohen and C. Sabel, "Directly-Deliberative Polyarchy,"European Law Journal3, no. 4 (1997): 313-42; John Bowman and William Rehg, Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997); Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, eds., Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovation in Empowered Participatory Governance (London: Verso, 2003); John Gaventa, "Triumph, Deficit or Contestation? Deepening the `Deepening Democracy' Debate," IDS Working Paper 264 ( Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2006).
10.
Fung and Wright, "Deepening Democracy."
11.
Hannah Arendt , On the Human Condition ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).
12.
Jürgen Habermas , "Three Normative Models of Democracy," in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political , ed. S. Benhabib ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 21-30; Bowman and Rehg, Deliberative Democracy.
13.
Fung and Wright, Deepening Democracy, 26.
14.
Ibid., 27.
15.
Ibid., 27, 32.
16.
Ibid., 24.
17.
Ibid., 33.
18.
Ibid., 33-34.
19.
Ibid., 34.
20.
Ibid., 35.
21.
Sonia Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, Cultures of Politics, Politics of Cultures: Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998).
22.
See, for example, Chantal Mouffe, "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism,"Social Research66 ( 1999): 745-58; Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press , 2000); John Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Leonardo Avritzer, Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).
23.
Mouffe, "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism,"16.
24.
S. Bairlie, "The Porto Alegre Thermidor: Brazil's `Participatory Budget' at the Crossroad," in Socialist Register, ed. L. Panitch and C. Leys ( Monmouth: Merlin Press, 2003); G. Baocchi , "Participation, Activism, and Politics: The Porto Alegre Experiment and Deliberative Democratic Theory,"Politics & Society29, no. 1 (2001): 43-72.
25.
P. Heller, "Moving the State: The Politics of Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, South Africa, and Porto Alegre,"Politics & Society29, no. 1 ( 2001): 131-63.
26.
Schönleitner, "Can Public Deliberation Democratise State Action?"
27.
There are no accurate records of the registration of civil society organizations in the municipality, and a survey that attempted to quantify the number of such organizations and explore the degree to which they engaged in participatory governance spaces quickly met a politicized end when it became evident that a number of those who were officially registered simply did not exist or were so closely associated with their patrons that they were organizations in name only.
28.
Silvia Cordeiro , Andrea Cornwall, and Nelson Giordano Delgado, "Rights to Health and Struggles for Accountability in a Brazilian Municipal Health Council," in Rights and Resources: The Politics of Accountability , ed. P. Newell and J. Wheeler (London: Zed Books , 2006).
29.
All the names of the protagonists in this story have been changed.
30.
Fung and Wright, Deepening Democracy.
31.
Henri Lefebvre , The Production of Space ( Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 111.
32.
Cornwall, "Making Spaces, Changing Places."
33.
cf. Jonathan Fox , "How Does Civil Society Thicken? The Political Construction of Social Capital in Rural Mexico,"World Development24, no. 6 ( 1996): 1089-103.
34.
Peter Houtzager , "Introduction: From Polycentrism to the Polity," in Changing Paths: International Development and the New Politics of Inclusion, ed. P. Houtzager and M. Moore (Ann Arbor : Michigan University Press, 2003 ); Neera Chandhoke , The Conceits of Civil Society ( New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003).
35.
Pierre Bourdieu , Outline of a Theory of Practice ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
36.
Cornwall, "Making Spaces, Changing Places."
37.
See, for example, J. Cohen, "Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy," in Deliberative and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).
38.
Evelina Dagnino , "`We all have Rights, but . . .' Contesting Concepts of Citizenship in Brazil," in Inclusive Citizenship: Meanings and Expressions, ed. N. Kabeer ( London: Zed Books, 2005).
39.
Habermas, "Three Normative Models of Democracy"; Cohen and Sabel, "Directly-Deliberative Polyarchy"; Fung and Wright, Deepening Democracy.
40.
Chantal Mouffe, Politics and Passions: The States of Democracy ( London : Centre for the Study of Democracy, 2002).
41.
John Dryzek , "Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies: Alternatives to Agonism and Analgesia,"Political Theory33 (2005): 218-42.
42.
Mouffe, "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism" and "Politics and Passions"; Young, Inclusion and Democracy.
