THE LOCAL ENVIRONMENT AND THE PARTICIPATORY IMPLEMENTATION OF PUBLIC POLICIES: A CASE STUDY ON THE MUNICIPAL SOCIAL ASSISTANCE COUNCIL OF SANTO ANDRÉ
This project aims to deepen a descriptive understanding of the municipal social assistance council of Santo André, regarding the normative roles assigned to it and its performance in the territorial materiality of the municipality, together with a network of institutions and actors that orbit its existence as a public policy management council. Our preliminary hypothesis is that, in this municipal scope, the attribution of the council regarding the inspection and protocol monitoring of the execution of policy actions is prioritized, to the detriment of an active process of popular participation and control that is effectively capable of modulating the implementation of this public policy. This would occur because there are constant administrative demands for which it is legally responsible, added to the constant need for training and updating of civil society advisors, and the historical presence of philanthropic entities organized around the material implementation of this public policy. In this sense, even if its attributions of full-blown social participation are also established by law, the positioning of the council in the network of institutions of social assistance policy can be restricted to endorsing a legal seal to these entities, instead of being a central node of articulation; this function carried out, in practice, by other actors historically better consolidated in the local scenario. In order to understand this problem, the conceptual premises of the theoretical approaches of local power and social participation are mobilized, associated with an empirical research design guided by the case study method.