Case study on National Councils in the Jair Bolsonaro Government (2019-2022)

Abstract

Participatory Institutions were growing in Brazil, but social participation began to show signs of weakness in 2014, when the National Social Participation Policy was vetoed by the National Congress. In the first months of the Bolsonaro government, Decree 9759/19 extinguished collegial bodies created by inferior legal instruments, affecting collegiate bodies such as the National Council to Combat Discrimination. Created in 2001 from Decree 3952/01, its objective was to promote social rights of victims of racial discrimination or other forms of intolerance. Conanda was not directly extinguished, but was emptied as a result of Decree 10,003/19. Starting from qualitative research, which allows us to interpret the social world, we used the documentary analysis methodology with the aim of carrying out a case study on the two councils, and we concluded that after a trajectory of visibility and management of public policies, the suppression of Such a space for public debate led to the setback of rights, a fact that reinforces our argument that maintaining participatory institutions is fundamental to strengthening democracy.