Minipúblicos como possibilidade de participação e deliberação em compras públicas

Abstract

Different types of civil society institutions have emerged in many fields of public life. Therefore, it is necessary that the members of these institutions be able to participate autonomously, with a critical conscience to deliberate for the common good. In this context, we observe groups of people interested in improving the quality of public deliberation, who strive to find projects for creating improved deliberation spaces outside those conceived from constitutional directives. Theoretically, these groups are studied as mini-publics and, one of the reasons for their attention is that the choice of institutional design interferes in public deliberation. The contemporary experiences with mini-publics vary between actions from deliberative polls, citizen meetings, participatory budgeting, among others. In Brazil, an example of an active mini-public can be found in groups formed to discuss and deliberate on municipal public purchases through the Brazilian Social Observatory (BSO). This study aims to identify and understand how the formation process of qualified groups to act in monitoring the purchases is structured in a municipality of Minas Gerais from the perspective of a minipublic considering the diversity of the reality of Social Observatories present in many Brazilian municipalities and the importance of understanding the elements of institutional design. We used a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive methodology, represented by the development of bibliographic and documentary research, and on-site visit and interview. We used the content analysis to analyze the data. The results indicated a mini-public formed to hinder the misuse of public resources, with the power to influence public decisions. The analyzed mini-public is characterized as a democratic space for participation and deliberation with significant consequences for the quality of democratic governance, such as increasing the accountability of public agents and entities, strengthening citizenship, improving public policies, and broadening citizen participation in public decisions.