The permeability of Brazilian Courts of Accounts to citizen participation and to social accountability

Increasing citizen insertion in the public sphere, so citizens may participate in State decisions and control the actions of public representatives has been a claim of contemporary society. To attain this aim, it would be... [ view full abstract ]

Increasing citizen insertion in the public sphere, so citizens may participate in State decisions and control the actions of public representatives has been a claim of contemporary society. To attain this aim, it would be necessary to reduce both the information asymmetries between State and society, and the distance between representatives and constituencies. Bearing this context in mind, the relevance of the Courts of Accounts must be highlighted, since they are autonomous and independent institutions that can become important instruments for enhancing the control that society must or should exert over its political representatives. But are these Courts prepared to play this leadership role, considering that they would need to be permeable to society? Based on this premise, the aim of this work is to assess the permeability of Brazilian Courts of Accounts to citizen participation and social accountability. This descriptive research will be developed in two stages. The first stage will be a review of the theoretical literature on the theme, to build a framework for assessing the permeability of the Courts of Accounts to the society and their potential for enabling social control. The second stage will be to elaborate perceptual maps of similarities/dissimilarities of Brazilian Courts of Accounts, based on the framework constructed in the first stage. For this, the Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) technique will be used. A high level of permeability to citizen participation and the existence of mechanisms that facilitate the exercise of social accountability over the Brazilian public administration are expected results with this research. The proposed work will be based on a multiple theoretical framework that will contemplate scholars of democracy, transparency and democratic control. It is believed, therefore, that this paper will be of great relevance for the panel “Citizen engagement and participation”, as it will reveal the profile of one of the main actors that acts in one of the phases of the process of elaboration of public policies: the result of the implementation of such policies. The future work, therefore, is significant for the field, since it will explore a thematic still little studied in Brazil.