Title: Desenho jurídico-institucional da participação social: uma análise do Conselho Nacional de Educação
Abstract: To the eyes of the layman, social participation often is seen as positive.However this mechanism can work co-opted by interest groups, distorting democracy or accentuating their problems.The hypothesis of the participation to act as disturbing element of democracy is, in this dissertation, the starting point for reflection on the importance of the legal and institutional framework adopted.The evolution of democracy is analyzed in its representative and participatory aspects, speculating on possible relation between the operating mechanisms provided for in the legal and institutional framework and some "mistakes" of democracy, such as clientelism.The core of the work is the social participation and its legal and institutional framework.Understanding the acts that promote participation, conditioning the effectiveness of participatory bodies, through the legal and institutional framework of these.Hence arises the importance of observing and understanding their way of institutionalization, relating it to the very aspects of democracy.Participation in Brazil has a history dating back to the 1930s, time when there was some reservation as to traditional representative mechanisms, which resulted in the creation of the National Councils, still no political participation sense typical of the period following the 1988 Constitution.As applied hypothesis, will be examined an important Council, ancient, which has undergone profound changes since its inception and provides rules that make up the National Policy Education, now called National Education Council.The observation point concerns the process of choosing the members appointed to the Board of Higher Education of the National Education Council.Formally, the appointment is made by the Head of the Federal Executive Power and should lie between unblemished reputation Brazilians who have rendered outstanding service to education, science and culture, whose referral is made in consultation with civil society organizations related to the acting areas.But the paper investigates the relationship between the legal and institutional framework and possible distortions in this space, strictly speaking, participatory, because the composition of the National Education Council, since the early 90s, is heavily criticized by allegations of favoritism and patronage.The review period is the year 1996 -year of creation of the CNE -to 2015.In particular will examine the selection process and the matter of participation of interest groups -that can cause both the under-representation in the selection of members connected to the organized civil society and the overrepresentation of these groups.