Regulação econômica e social e participação pública no Brasil

Abstract

This article examines the democratic potentials that we might have through the use of mechanisms of public participation inside independent regulatory agencies in Brazil after the state reform in the nineties. The background of the analysis is the clientelist and authoritarian tradition of the Brazilian regulatory state and the dynamics of policy-making processes inside executive and legislative powers.

The regulatory agencies were conceived as a new institutional design of the state to act in the economic sphere. Policy-making in Brazil is no longer only in the hands of the president and his ministries, but also inside independent regulatory agencies. This could be understood as a lack of legitimacy from the point of view of a certain theory of democracy. It could be seen as a constitutional law problem, concerning mainly the classical doctrine of separation of powers. It also could be argued that it increases the risk of "capture" of the regulator by the strongest interest groups.

The article discusses these questions from a deliberative democracy theoretical perspective. The study suggests that the adoption of mechanisms of public participation like public hearings and public consultations within the new regulatory agencies model has a democratic potential for the accountability of policy-making processes inside state bureaucracy in Brazil. The article presents empirical data concerning the regulatory process and the use of mechanisms of public participation inside the Brazilian Telecommunications Agency (Anatel).