This study analyzes the political-administrative decentralization of public policies and its corollary, popular participation. It addresses limits in the social projects and their supposed social control function, linked to the projects of the subaltern classes in the organization of the culture and in the construction of the collective will. It discusses the recent process of national political-administrative decentralization, the mediation of social policies in the construction of an alternative system for social control and finally, popular participation and the possibility for consolidating a new sociability based on the critical insertion of subjects in the broader processes of construction of social life.
Public policies; Decentralization; Popular participation