The Production of Meanings in the Construction of a Participatory Democratic Model: The case of Volta Redonda’s Municipal Council of Urban Development

• Autor(a) principal: Delgado, Marcos Vinicius Araujo
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: da Costa Lima, Raphael Jonathas
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Cadernos Gestão Pública e Cidadania (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/cgpc/article/view/81274
• topic: Participação; Conselhos Gestores; Projeto Político; Sentido; Democrático-participativo.

This paper is the result of a case study on the experience of Volta Redonda / RJ, assuming the Urban Development Council (CMDU) as an empirical object. The goal is to analyze the meanings of social participation and their implications for the CMDU's performance as a council capable of restricting or favoring the construction of a democratic-participatory model. The CMDU integrated a set of civil society efforts dedicated to rethinking the city after the privatization of Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) in 1993, and to overcome historical divergences between sectors of local civil society, such as social movements and businessmen. As a methodological procedure, a predominantly qualitative approach was used based on semi-structured interviews, documentary research and non-participant observation. For data treatment, critical discourse analysis was used. When analyzing the CMDU experience, it is inferred that, despite the subjects' involvement in a participatory management model, this, ambivalently, can assume characteristics contrary to democratic deepening. The speeches collected reveal that the overlapping and ambiguities of different types of political projects are reflected in the CMDU's performance, attributing multiple directions to the sense of participation in the construction of a democratic-participatory model.