The Social Participation on the Other Side of the Counter: Bureaucracy Perceptions in the Social Assistance^*

Abstract

This paper proposes an analytical and empirical shift to identify the meanings that state actors mobilize regarding social participation. It innovates by focusing on the perceptions of bureaucrats about participatory institutions and by proposing the dialogue between two sets of literature: the approaches of Participatory Institutions (PI) and of the Sociology of Public Action (SPA). From the former, it takes up the debate on the meanings of participation, while from the latter it takes on an understanding of bureaucrats as actors who mediate between the state and society and of the role of interaction in defining state action. It carries out a case study in the middle-echelon bureaucracy of the National Secretariat for Social Assistance, covering the period of political-institutional changes after the presidential impeachment. The main technique is qualitative and content analysis of 44 semi-structured interviews with DAS 04 and 05 bureaucrats. It concludes that there are multiple meanings of social participation among bureaucrats, influenced by attributes such as professional and management links, subnational experiences in politics and PIs, and academic background. It identifies a gradual decrease in the relevance of non-state actors for decision-making and the redefinition of participation as listening, which becomes both formal and uninterested.

Social participation; participatory institutions; State actors; sociology of public action

The spread of participatory institutions (PI) in Brazil, such as councils and conferences, has been accompanied by a profusion of studies on the phenomenon. Both from the point of view of its inclusion in several research areas, including the humanities, applied social sciences and health (ALMEIDA, CAYRES and TATAGIBA, 2015), and from the analytical lenses used to understand it: participatory, deliberative, representative, among others (ALMEIDA and DOWBOR, 2021; PEREZ and SANTOS, 2019). However, social participation has been studied over the last few decades, taking into account the strategies, repertoires and forms of action that Civil Society adopt and the perception of social actors about the meanings of participation and the effectiveness of participatory mechanisms.

This paper proposes an analytical and empirical shift in the studies on social participation and it asks: what are the meanings of the social participation that the state actors mobilize? Starting from the literature on social participation, the paper focuses on the perceptions of the state actors (bureaucracy) regarding participatory institutions (PIs). It is true that state actors have not been disregarded in studies on PIs in Brazil. The main entry into this debate was through the category ‘political will’ which, although widely criticized in more recent studies (ROMÃO, 2011; SOUZA, 2021), was central to initially understanding the greater or lesser adoption of participatory mechanisms by some political actors, or even their willingness to share decision-making power (AVRITZER, 2008; DAGNINO, 2002). However, the debate became more sophisticated and attention began to be drawn to the plurality of the State and the vision of political actors and party supporters regarding participatory processes and their interactions with social actors (PIRES and VAZ, 2014; SOUZA, 2021). Although the ‘State’ comes into play in the literature on social movements and participation, the focus is on political actors and party supporters and, only in a few exceptions, on the bureaucracy itself (ABERS, 2021). In this paper, we are seeking elements in this literature that think about participation ‘from the outside to the inside of the State’ in order to understand the meanings of participation that the middle echelon bureaucracy expresses and how this can influence the differentiated adherence of bureaucrats to participatory processes. However, when looking at the actors on the ‘other side of the counter’, it is necessary to go beyond the categories of analysis present in the literature on participation.

In this sense, the paper brings up the contribution of the Sociology of Public Action, hereinafter (SPA). This literature allows us to perceive bureaucrats as actors who mediate between what is inside the State itself and what is in society (HALLET and VENTRESCA, 2006). In this approach, the construction of meanings is the cognitive mechanism by which actors interpret reality, and is made up of variables that guide their way of acting, such as the interests they pursue, the values they share with others and even the notion of the purpose of their actions. Thus, it is necessary to analyze them based on their insertion in society and the interactive and relational processes that form their system of representation and, consequently, guide their strategic actions in dealing with the issues assigned to them (HASSENTEUFEL, 2011). In short, actors base their strategic actions on how public action problems are synthesized, in other words, how they make sense to them (HASSENTEUFEL, 2011).

It is worth noting that the understanding of the interactive process between bureaucracy and society, which can alter the construction of meanings, has been gaining strength in Brazilian production. Focusing both on the activities of the bureaucracy and on the actions of social movements in public policies, revealing how this interaction affects the activities of bureaucrats and the functioning of political institutions (ABERS, 2021; CAVALCANTI and LOTTA, 2015; LAVALLE et al., 2018; PIRES, LOTTA, and OLIVEIRA, 2018). However, even though actors and participatory mechanisms appear as a dimension that influences bureaucratic activity, the studies are not focused on understanding the bureaucracy's perception of participation. We start from the assumption that the meanings that state actors attribute to participation are a central dimension of analysis, since they affect the public policy framework, i.e., a set of definitions that these actors understand as the possibilities and limits of the policy (LASCOUMES and LE GALÈS, 2005).

The paper presents a case study on social assistance policy, based on the state actors, more precisely on the middle echelon bureaucracy, which worked in the National Secretariat for Social Assistance (SNAS) between 2015 and 2018, and their interaction especially with the National Council for Social Assistance (CNAS). SNAS is in charge of articulating the participatory and decentralized model within the federal government. In addition, the history of the construction of this field of public policy shows us that the bureaucracy was active in defending social participation as a way of changing from a model based on charity to a policy focused on rights (BICHIR and GUTIERRES, 2019, GUTIERRES, 2015). As such, it is a typical case, that is, where one should expect greater affinity between state and societal actors in the PIs and the possibility of this process positively informing the meanings they attribute to participation and their practices.

The study in this policy area is justified by the central role that participatory institutions play in the technical-administrative capacities of social assistance (ALMEIDA, MARTELLI and COELHO, 2021), by the presence of a structured bureaucracy and in which the federal government has played a role of inducing the participation mechanisms (LAVALLE and BARONE, 2015). Despite the strength of the councils and the inclusion of Assistance as a social right in the 1988 Constitution, the establishment of the Unified Assistance System (SUAS) is more recent, from 2004. As a result of an articulation process of the policy community - made up mainly of scholars and professionals - who started to occupy positions in the federal government during the Workers’ Party (PT) Administration (GUTIERRES, 2019). The structuring and expansion of the system in terms of providing social assistance services and benefits accompanies this development of the SUAS, and the practices, rules and roles still depend, to a large extent, on the actions of the state and non-state actors that interact in the field. Compared to health, an area that has historically been associated with a successful social participation model, the history of Assistance is more vulnerable in terms of consolidating advocacy groups within the state and identifying permanent budget sources to support the policy, and is more subject to fluctuations in the face of government changes (ALMEIDA, VIEIRA, and KASHIWAKURA, 2020). The study in this period will allow us to analyze the perception of middle echelon bureaucrats about participation in times of favorable winds, when social participation had support within the state and in society. This should be compared to the adverse winds, marked by attempts to deinstitutionalize participation since the presidential ‘impeachment’ (BEZERRA et al., 2024) and changes in the profile of these bureaucrats. Thus, as secondary questions we highlight: are state actors in favor of or against participation? Do the meanings of participation change according to government change?

The research involves a documentary analysis of the minutes of the CNAS meetings, which serve as a complementary source to the semi-structured interviews with SNAS bureaucrats - DAS 04 and DAS 05 - and to map the actors. This is a bureaucracy characterized as being of middle echelon (CAVALCANTE and LOTTA, 2015) because it can influence both decision-makers and its own teams in the execution of the policy, i.e., the framework for public action (HASSENTEUFEL, 2011). In addition, some play the role of government representatives in participation forums. Based on research about the flow of appointments, we identified 66 people who held the positions specified above - DAS 04 and 05 - for more than 03 months at SNAS between 2015 and 2018. We interviewed 44 professionals, that is, almost 70% of the defined universe, 13 of whom occupied DAS 05, which represented almost 85% of the occupants of these positions.

The text is divided into four parts, besides the introduction and conclusion. In the next section, we discuss briefly how participation literature analyzed state actors and the meanings of participation. In the second section, we analyze the contribution of the Sociology of Public Action and the central factors to examine the meanings or representation schemes that the actors produce. In the third section, we detail the methodological aspects of this study. And then we discuss the results of the research, presenting the meanings that social participation acquires considering political and professional attributes of state actors and the changes in the political-institutional context after the impeachment. Finally, the paper shows the various meanings of participation among state actors and the redefinition of some meanings in the recent context, pointing out paths for a research agenda that relationally integrates state and societal actors.

The meanings of social participation

The need to expand the field of analysis and deepen the ‘state perspective of participation’, namely, looking at participation spaces from the point of view of state actors, ‘including the identification of these actors as well as their forms of action and perceptions about participation’, although defended, was barely carried out in existing research on participation (PIRES, 2014, p. 192). The relevance of the topic is undeniable. In addition to participating directly in PIs, the bureaucracy – including those who have no contact with Civil Society – can make the governmental machine adapt to or distance itself from what was deliberated, especially considering that its execution depends on secondary rules issued within the government. From a practical point of view, it is the role of bureaucracy to bring information and data available within the state apparatus for participatory institutions to analyze and deliberate. Just observe how budgetary matters are debated, when the ability of state actors to clarify contingencies, revenue crises, fiscal surpluses, among other specific matters, more related to the State's activities and way of functioning, becomes evident.

The state actor – governments, political actors and bureaucracy – was seen in different ways in the study on participation. The role of the governments in the implementation and in the dynamics of the operation of participatory institutions, such as participatory budgets and councils, was initially condensed in the category political will, understood as the degree of openness, will and commitment of the political system with participation (LÜCHMANN, 2020). The refinement of this view helped to recover the role of the political actors beyond this voluntarist agent who may either collaborate or collide with the participation spaces. Firstly, it stood out as the ties or the multiple membership of the social actors with political and party actors and they are central in the propensity to participate, occupy state spaces or act as an intermediate (LAVALLE, HOUTZAGER, and ACHARYA, 2004; MISCHE, 1997; ROMÃO, 2011; SILVA and OLIVEIRA, 2011). Secondly, it began to consider the bets and calculations of all political actors and partisans with veto positions and interests involved in PIs, and the relationships and strategies of these actors in the different electoral, legislative and executive spheres (SOUZA, 2021). In both cases, however, political actors and partisans are central.

The intensification of the transit of activists to the federal government with the victory of the Workers' Party in 2003, expanded studies about the different links. Among social actors, political parties and bureaucracy in public policy subsystems and participatory institutions (ABERS, SILVA, and TATAGIBA, 2018; LAVALLE et al., 2018), with attention to the state capacities necessary to develop participatory processes (SOUZA, 2017). According to Abers (2021), a bureaucrat may become an activist by proactively defending a contentious cause within the State. The adopted practices and intended objectives are partly shaped or defined from the resources that actors have, whether institutional or relational, such as connections with movements and networks of social actors. Which are a source of practical resources for action, but also of the production of meanings, ideas and shared identities – which reveals the importance of aiming at the meanings of participation. Although links with social movements can be resources for action or even production of meanings, the meanings of participation in bureaucracy were not the object of this research agenda here.

This paper seeks to advance in this field and establish bridges between both of them. For this, we based ourselves on the records that literature presents with a focus on Civil Society. Teixeira (2020, 2013) wrote the benchmark work in terms of systematization of the meanings or ‘imaginaries of participation’ and its changes over the decades of participatory experience in Brazil. A first meaning, linked to the idea of participation as ‘emancipation’ and ‘self-government’, prevalent in the 1970s and also present in the ‘Classic’ field of participatory theories (PATEMAN, 1992), perceived participation as a mechanism to organize society and education for citizenship against an authoritarian project and for democratization. The significant experiences of societal organization shared the meaning of ‘people power’, whose native meaning given by the social movements themselves, emphasized the ability to act in a direct, unmediated way, and generate social transformation (LAVALLE, and VERA, 2022). In the 1990s, with the opening of spaces for participation in the formulation of public policies, such as participatory councils and budgets, participation acquired for social actors the meaning of “participation as deliberation” (TEIXEIRA, 2020, p. 07), in which words such as co-management and power sharing are consolidated. However, since the 2000s, with left-wing parties taking over leadership in the Executive Branch of States, municipalities, but especially in the Union, participation started to be perceived as a space for listening and dialogue, that is listening to the demands of society. In this case, Teixeira (2013) revealed a meaning shared by government actors. However, even if understood as listening, Bezerra (2020) highlights the central role of participation in PT governability, which allowed to include new demands from marginalized sectors and produce specific social policies with a redistributive character.

Gurza Lavalle and Isunza Vera (2022) separate the meanings that the actors produced from that analytical inflections presented, seeking to escape at the same time from the temporal scheme of the imaginaries of participation. Among the analytical inflections, the idea of ‘participation as social or Democratic control’, linked to the bet that social actors could at the same time focus on the action of the State and exercise control over it, a new form of accountability, beyond voting, stand out. This meaning does not directly coincide with those that Teixeira (2013) presented, but would be close to the latter (participation as deliberation), when she also associates it with the idea of co-management. Secondly, the idea of ‘participation as pluralization of representation’ was responsible for illuminating the representative practice of social actors in their role of speaking for the absent. Thirdly, ‘participation as a political rationality of the actors that promote it’ refers to the political logic underlying the adoption or not of participatory mechanisms, in terms of the calculations and interests of political actors. Finally, ‘participation as a component of policies and their effectiveness’, in which participation is directly linked to its different effects on policies, state capacities and governance itself.

Thus, literature shows that there are several meanings that, sometimes, separate theoretical and native categories of the actors, and sometimes they mix them. There is no single meaning, not even within the left (TEIXEIRA, 2020), and it is not always possible to separate them according to temporal criteria (LAVALLE and VERA, 2022), since different meanings overlap. However, considering that state actors have often been little ‘interrogated’ about their perceptions regarding participation, it will be crucial to assess the extent to which the meanings are similar or different among them.

Bureaucracy: how these actors build meanings that influence their strategic performance and the participation

In order to analyze what the actors ‘on the other side of the counter’ think about social participation, it was necessary to use theories that analyze the State from a relational perspective of knowledge production and of definition of the public policies. From a historical point of view, the North American approaches related to the analysis of public policies – as a solution to collective problems – since the 1950s sought to understand the role of the State and its decisions. These studies were encouraged, mainly, by the on-going expansion of state action. Which, through rules and regulations, established a growing number of rules related to the most varied areas of social life (FERNANDES and ALMEIDA, 2019), but that gave the State a central role as a decision-maker and implementer, leaving little room or relevance for the society that is affected by these determinations. The second generation tried to overcome the watertight and sequential stages by thinking about public policies as the result of interaction with actors other than the State. This is the case, for example, of the defense coalition model, initially proposed by Paul Sabatier (1988), for whom the State and its bureaucracy are actors who, among others, establish coalitions and defend their positions in the political subsystems.

In this paper, we started from what Hassenteufel (2011) calls a third stage of evolution of the analysis of the public policies, namely Sociology of Public Action. Located at the border between Sociology and Political Science, SPA analyzes the practice of the state actors in the daily life and based on the real contexts in which they are inserted, both for the negotiation and the consolidation of the public actions (PADIOLEAU, 1982). Those perspectives were mainly developed in France and in dialogue with traditional French concepts and thinkers, such as Pierre Bourdieu, but they dialogue directly with what had already been thought and conceptualized elsewhere, mainly in the United States of America (DIREITO, 2021).

Since the neo-institutionalist approaches (EVANS, RUESCHEMEYER, and SKOCPOL, 1985), the State had already recovered its central role as significant institution to define public policies and, at the same time, as a sphere mutually constituted by the social structures and networks of actors with whom it has ongoing negotiation – businessmen, pressure groups, among other segments. From the point of view of the Sociology of Public Action, however, this literature overvalued the internal coherence of the institutions when it based itself on the institutions as analysis units (DIMAGGIO and POWELL, 1991; MAHONEY and THELEN, 2010), and it underestimated the autonomy of the strategic action of the actors within them (HALLETT and VENTRESCA, 2006; HASSENTEUFEL, 2011). Thus, the State should not be considered only an institution, but also an institution ‘inhabited’ by the actors who perform both within and those that are outside them, but in permanent contact. Thus, greater significance is given to the state actors and to how they understand the public problem, taking into account not only the interaction, but also the values and the historical nature that these actors bring with them. Just like the neo-institutionalist perspectives, the interaction is acknowledged, but there is more detailed view on the internal actor/bureaucracy, as an engine for the institutional change. The performance of the State is understood as a public action, as opposed to a state production of public policies (HALPERN, HASSENTEUFEL, and ZITTOUN, 2018).

This literature uses its own vocabulary, which we briefly present to turn easier the analysis that was made. It is understood that the actions outside public policy have an impact on the path of the public action. In the semantics that SPA traditionally uses it is said that there is a sector – disputes and production of meanings within public policy – and there is a global one – outside the sphere, but which has direct influence on it (JOBERT and MULLER, 1987). The sector establishes itself by the own understanding of what the state and non-state actors, with active role in this area. Understand as being the focus of its performance and the process of acquisition of competencies to deal with a certain problem, with that being the process that provides legitimacy for the State to perform and exercise its authority (HALPERN and JACQUOT, 2015). In turn, the global one has to do with the context outside the sector, but that is able to influence its decisions and paths. For example, a global financial crisis that has consequences in the country may cause the de-financing of the public policy, which will turn necessary a renegotiation among the actors within the sector.

In that analytical perspective, the public action takes place in a concrete social context in which organizational, financial, administrative and legal resources are made available and the definition of what is this sector takes place according to the power relations and complex social negotiations among the several interested segments. The interactions between state and non-state actors, mediated by several mechanisms, such as public consultations, decision-making forums, councils, among others, allow the development of a shared understanding of what a given policy is and how it should be configured. The Sociology of Public Action will call this definition a ‘framework’ (référentiel). It is the set of definitions that the institutional actors – that interact in and with the field – understand as the possibilities and limits of this policy (JOBERT and MULLER, 1987; LASCOUMES and LE GALÈS, 2005).

Despite considering socio-state interaction and even participatory forums as spaces for the development of the framework, SPA does not focus on the specific production of meanings of participation that can also influence politics. In addition, it is necessary to consider the mandatory nature of participation in the Social Assistance policy, which makes these spaces of participation necessarily call for public action. Social participation and PI models have been consolidated as a place to build consensus, negotiation and decision-making of the reference of this sector. That is, as bases for the development of the policy itself, being central mechanisms for the expansion of the field of Social Assistance, especially for the consolidation of the Unified Social Assistance System - SUAS and the financing mechanisms, such as the National Social Assistance Fund - FNAS (JACCOUD et al., 2018; MENECUCCI and GOMES, 2018). Thus, understanding how bureaucrats make sense of these spaces is an important step to understand the development of the framework and the directions of the public action.

Methodology and construction of meanings

The construction of meanings is the cognitive mechanism by which actors interpret reality, being made up of variables that guide their way of acting, such as the interests it pursues, the values it shares with others and even the notion of the purpose of its actions. This construction results from the interaction with multiple actors and is constantly changing both based on what occurs within the field and outside it. It is significant to understand which actors guide their strategic action in the field considering this system of representation, in other words, how public action problems were synthesized, that is, how they acquired meaning (HASSENTEUFEL, 2011).

The state actors, specifically, are not totally free to carry out their understanding of the public matters. They have relative autonomy, since their action take place based on several existent constraints, in addition to the pressure of certain specific social groups and elected actors, there are also legal limits and institutional constraints that limit or condition their action (ZITTOUN, 2014). In the case of SNAS, the PIs are one of the spaces that can shape and constrain their actions, given their mandatory and normative character in the political discussion.

In order to deal with the complexity of the reality, the individuals not only simplify it by using their previous knowledge, their analytical skill, their values, but they also consider what is placed within their experiences with other actors, to create a mental scheme to frame the problem and its possible solutions. Identifying values, knowledge and interactions necessary to reach a certain perception is an extremely difficult task, considering that the individuals do not rationalize their decisions with this level of details. Therefore, in order to evaluate the understanding of the state actors regarding social participation it is necessary to face the methodological problem of relating intention and gesture, that is, what is thought about a certain topic, what is expressed and, finally, how this informs the practice related to the field. In this paper, we give importance only to the second level of details, namely what the actors say about the participation, which may influence the framework and even the practice of the area. However, the focus of this paper is the speeches rather than the practice, which deserves future attention and research.

In order to evaluate the narratives collected, we used the principles of cognitive theory and aspects of the sociology of actors. According to Muller (2000), cognitive matrices are produced by the interaction of the several actors involved, but these tend to become autonomous in relation to this construction process and overlap as the dominant model to interpret the world. The proposal is to overcome the dilemmas of determinism and voluntarism by advocating that actors are able to perceive the existing framework and, likewise, understand the transformations taking place in the context and, based on a set of causal relationships and interpretations, decode and recode events. The actors decode/recode based on their system of representation, which generates arguments aimed at consolidating their convictions.

To understand the meanings that state actors give to participation, which is part of the set of interactions that make up the framework, their speeches were adopted as the main analytical support. We also assumed that meanings are a consequence of the individual's subjective normative framework and of the relational process in which they are inserted (FISCHER and FORESTER, 1993; REIN and SHÖN, 1993; SCHÖN, 1983). Thus, for the purpose to identify the system of representation to which the actor belongs, attributes were established, considering aspects of the sociology of actors. But which also find resonance in the literature on participation, especially that which analyzed the academic background of state actors in the field of social assistance and the importance of professional experiences at sub-national levels for their training (GUTIERRES, 2015). Such information has been summarized in Chart 01.

Chart 01
Attributes analyzed

Attributes	Description	Hypothesis
Types of Public Service Relationship with Administration	Identify the type of public service relationship, such as the permanent link (those who belong to the Federal Public Administration - APF), temporary links (only commissioned positions or those in state/municipal careers).	Permanence or impermanence in federal administration can translate into different understandings regarding participation.
Experience in CSO	Experience in coordinating or managing Civil Society organizations. Experience in trade unions and class councils was also considered.	Experiences outside the State can provide greater awareness of the role of the social actors and the place of participation in the State machine. Multiple affiliation helps to establish points between actors and the production of meanings.
Academic Background	Undergraduate area	Certain theoretical/practical knowledge establishes a shared understanding of reality.
Experience in Councils and the Like	Previous experience in councils in the various governmental levels.	Experience in PIs may provide a more favorable perspective to political participation and learning.
Acting at Sub-national policy Assistance Levels	Acting beyond the federal level	Acting at the cutting edge can make a difference compared to those who have only worked at the federal level, given the local diffusion of participatory spaces in Brazil, their proximity to the making of public policy, the public and the policy communities established at the local level.

• Source: Elaborated by the authors based on the interviews, considering the literature on the sociology of the actors and the establishment of the field of social assistance.

In addition, changes outside the global field can lead to changes in the framework. As seen above, these actors have relative autonomy, since they are sensitive to changes in direction and priorities that political leaders establish. In this case, there are three possibilities: adjusting the state actor's own construction of meanings in order to adapt to the new normative framework, changing meanings due to the replacement of people in positions. And maintaining the initial understanding of the matter, mainly by means of external and internal reinforcements, as a result of previous experiences, types of public service relationship, among others. According to SPA, when the understanding changes, there is a change in the strategy of action. If social participation becomes an unwanted form, understood as illegitimate, this can ultimately lead to a rethinking of meanings and/or a form of management that is less inclined to interactive processes.

The semi-structured interviews were analyzed using NVivo content analysis software, which also allows for a quantitative treatment of the codings that the researcher carried out. The analysis in the next section is based on the more than 40 hours of interviews collected during 2019 and 2020, with the professionals who held middle management positions at the National Secretariat for Social Assistance from 2015 to 2018. In this paper, we refer to the interviews in the female gender, since women are the majority of the workforce in social assistance, among the researched universe - DAS 04 and 05 (62% women) - and in the sample (52%). The difference between our sample and the total workforce - which has a higher percentage of women - was due to the proportionally higher number of men who agreed to be interviewed. We maintained anonymity by using sequential numbers - 01 to 44 - established at random. The first analysis has to do with the administration in which the interviewees worked, in which we have identified three profiles, as shown in Chart 02. The permanent ones are those who worked for the Administrations of both Presidents Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer, the interviewees who only worked during the Administration of President Dilma Rousseff, with Tereza Campello as SNAS secretary, and those who joined after the impeachment and were classified as being from Michel Temer's Administration, in which Osmar Terra was the secretary.

Chart 02
Distribution of the interviewees by time of permanence in the administration

Ranking	Description	Percentage
Permanent	Servants who participated both in the Rousseff/Campello and Temer/Terra Administrations (2015 to 2018)	18%
Administration Rousseff/ Campello	Servants who were dismissed between May and June, 2016 - the initial moment of President Dilma Rousseff's ouster	34%
Administration Temer/Terra	Servants appointed after June/2016	48%
Total of Interviewees	44 interviews	100%

Source: Elaborated by the authors based on the interviews.

The changes in the presidency - with the assumption of Vice-President Michel Temer - and in the party base that supported the government did not significantly change the structure of Social Assistance and SNAS, which enables the comparison. Although there was great replacement of people, the same positions and attributions remained.

Social participation: positions and meanings

This session is divided into four parts. In the first one we present general points of view based on general questions on the matter, such as: 01. is participation important for social assistance policy? and 02. what does social participation mean? The second part analyzes these perceptions based on the interviewees’ attributes. Next, we analyze the meanings given to participation, vis-à-vis the meanings already identified in the literature, and we point out some changes in the meanings with the change in the political-institutional context.

Overview of participation

The word frequency map was based on the content of all the interviews (Figure 01). As expected, the most frequent words were policy, assistance, society, government and participation, as well as Council. This tells us that although the questions asked had to do with social participation in a broad sense, the National Council for Social Assistance (CNAS) constantly appeared in the answers, which reaffirmed its central role in the process of building social assistance policy.

Figure 01
Frequency map: words that the interviewees mentioned the most

The interviewees pointed that social participation is established by means of several channels, including from those of greater power to those of less interaction, that is, the ombudsman offices and public hearings go hand in hand with workshops and meetings. When they are asked about what means social participation and how is it related to politics, there is a tendency to consider the most institutionalized channels, such as the National Council, as being the places to deal with more complex or more far-reaching problems, that reach politics in a most significative way. In addition, 23 people indicated inter-federative agreement management forums, such as CIT, FONSEAS, CONGEMAS, as being spaces for participation, which is in line with their role as managers.

The first analysis of the interviews already demonstrated that despite the recognition of the participation, the meanings varied. Support was not generalized or free from criticism. A group of servants made harsh criticisms regarding the slowness created by the participatory process, the lack of representativeness of some members, the low knowledge and expertise of non-state actors to deal with state matters and the perception that Civil Society would try to occupy the space of the Administration. Although these criticisms have already been identified in the literature focusing on social actors (FARIA and LINZ, 2017; LAVALLE et al., 2006; MILANI, 2008), they are noteworthy for their forcefulness.

Thus, it's a fight over who gets whose piece. Which piece do I get, which resource do I use.... Then it becomes a gang. It's not a representation, it's a gang, you know? So you have to be prepared. Come on! So much work, so much! Universities working, discussing the matter of representation. You're one yourself! And that does not apply. In other words, we have to be more scientific and less amateurs on these matters (ANONYMOUS INTERVIEW 34, 2020), (Temer/Terra Administration).

In order to simplify the analysis of the attributes and to join groups with similar perspectives we ranked the interviews as those in favor, against and neutral, namely, interviewees who did not position themselves, only mentioned laws and norms, but avoided to value what they said. According to the following rank and outcome (Chart 03).

Chart 03
Position on social participation

Position	Summary	Interviewees	Percentage
Against	Criticism of deliberative processes or non-state actors, even pointing to participation as making state action unfeasible	13	30%
In favor	In favor of the deliberative arrangements and advocate shared decision-making between state and non-state actors	29	65,5%
Neutral	They avoided making value judgments	2	4,5%

Source: Elaborated by the authors, based on the interviews.

The categorization based on the overall reading of the interviews reveals that despite the criticism, most interviews were in favor of social participation in the public policy cycle (65.5%). Among those who were against (30%), criticism of deliberative processes was more recurrent, mainly focusing on the negative aspects of the social-state interaction.

Participation versus attributes of the actors

Discourses are situated and reflect a specific period, but at the same time they reflect values established in social interactions, in the professional practice, academic background and other relational processes. Table 01 below shows the relationship between political and professional attributes and how the participatory process is understood.

Table 01
Political and professional attributes versus position regarding participation

Attributes	Values	In favor	Against*
Civil organizations, trade unions, parties	Never	(16) 36.4%	(12) 27.3%
	Occasional/Often	(13) 29.5%	(01) 2.3%
National/State/Municipal Councils	Yes	(24) 54.5%**	(07) 15.9%
	No	(05) 11.4%	(06) 13.6%
Subnational Acting at AS	Yes	(20) 45,5%**	(03) 6,8%
	No, Only Federal	(09) 20,5%	(10) 22,7%**

Source: Elaborated by the authors, based on the interviews.
• Note: *In cases where each attribute does not add up to 100% of the total, the missing percentage refers to the neutral position. **These percentages highlight the importance of the attributes’ participation in councils and sub-national acting for the in-favor position regarding participation.

According to Table 01, the relationship between political or social activity in civil organizations and meanings of the participation is not as direct. On the one hand, proportionally among people who have worked occasionally (06) or frequently (07) in civil organizations, or even in trade unions and party politics, there is more understanding in favor (13) than against (01). On the other hand, there are more people with no links to associations or civil organizations (30, including 02 neutrals). Even so, among them, 54% (16) were in favor of participation.

The findings point to the significance of closer contact with beneficiaries and the subnational experience. It is worth recalling that Gutierres (2019) also points to the role of the policy community formed at subnational levels to establish SUAS and strengthen the National Council itself. The position against 22.7% (09) is higher among interviewees working exclusively at the federal level – and two of them were considered neutrals. Most of those working at sub-national level (20 out of 23) were in favor of participation. Previous work in councils also makes a big difference to the greater acceptance of participation.

Table 02 below points to other aspects that influence representation in the field, such as professional training and the government Administration in which the activities took place.

Table 02
Academic background and types of public service relationship versus position in the evaluation regarding participation

		In favor	Against
Background	Social Service	(14) 100%**	0
	Social Science	(05) 83%**	(01) 17%
	Other Human Sciences	(07) 58%	(04) 33.3%
	Business	(01) 17%	(05) 83%**
	Law	(02) 33%	(03) 50%
Administration/Type of Public Service Relationship	Permanent	(06) 75%**	(02) 25%
	Rousseff/ Campello	(13) 86.7%**	(01) 6.7%
	Temer/ Terra	(10) 47.6%	(10) 47.6%

Source: Elaborated by the authors.
• Notes: *The attributes were defined based on the interviews. As for the values that do not add up to 100% in each line, the difference has to do with those who considered themselves neutral. **These percentages point out the importance of some backgrounds and type of public service relationship for the position in favor or against regarding participation.

All social workers supported participatory processes, followed by interviewees with a degree in Social Science. The full understanding of this information requires further research, but one can argue that it has to do with the profession's own history of growth with the consolidation of social assistance as a public policy, whose model in Brazil is strongly based on deliberative processes and decentralization. The difference with professionals with degrees in other areas of Applied Social Science, such as Business and Law, is notable (83% and 50% against, respectively).

As far as the professional link is concerned, one can see that several of the unfavorable perspectives echo the distance that the Temer/Terra Administration is taking from formal participation (10 against and 01 neutral). The rejection can be summarized by the sentence: Government is Government, Council is Council. Among the Permanents and those who only took part in the Campello/Rousseff Administrations, support is higher.

In order to qualify this last piece of information, we went into greater depth with other questions. The interview script included a closed question with the following terms: ‘Does Civil Society participating in decision-making forums help bring solutions to social assistance policy?’ We asked the interviewees to respond using a scale of 01 to 05, where 01 represented totally disagree and 05 totally agree. Thus, the higher the score, the better the perception of participation (Figures 02 and 03).

Figure 02 shows the greater support given to social participation by those bureaucrats who worked during Dilma Rousseff's Administration, as compared to the position of those who worked under President Michel Temer or even the Permanents who were in both.

Figure 02
Administration and support to participation

In a similar way, when we rework this data to confirm a position in favor of social participation based on academic and professional background, the result shows that interviewees with a degree in Social Service express greater support than those with all other professional backgrounds, according to Figure 03.

Figure 03
Background and support to participation

Thus, the use of other questions and methodologies reaffirms the findings previously analyzed, as shown in Table 02 above. It is significant to consider that the data confirms that meanings about participation are influenced by experiences and differences in government administrations, which are more or less inclined towards participation. In order to deepen this debate, next we analyze the interviews in order to identify the meanings of social participation that the bureaucrats expressed.

The meanings of social participation

There is a clear polysemy of social participation among the researched group. However, as shown in the previous section, there is a sharing of perspectives and meanings if we consider the various aspects of the sociology of the actors. However, we are interested in understanding beyond the simplification of support for or denial of the participatory model what meanings are actually given to participation.

Based on the categories that Teixeira (2020) and Gurza Lavalle and Isunza Vera (2022) presented, and initially using Nvivo's word search functionality, and then analyzing entirely the interviews to capture and interpret the latent and expressed meanings in relation to social participation, we arrived at the following meanings: sharing (of power), deliberation, consultation/listening, control and democracy, and we analyzed each mention to understand the meanings, how they overlap and which ones stand out. The analysis involved a full reading of the interviews, which revealed not only overlapping meanings, but also tensions regarding the support and criticism that make up the complex process of interpreting reality (Table 03).

Table 03
Meanings of the participation in the SNAS bureaucracy

Meanings	Examples and Description	Quantity/ Interviews
Democracy	On how this experience is very typical of ours. On how since then it has been appropriated around the world, and many people replicated it. And it's powerful from the point of view of democracy. On the idea of democracy. On the idea of a more porous State, with more interfaces, with more dialog capacity. So, I think it's crucial from the point of view of principle. (Interview 17)	07 14; 15; 17; 18; 26; 31; 38
Control of the Policy / Accounts (Accountability)	The participation expected in the Councils as a space for policy control and oversight, in which Civil Society can play an important role to put pressure. (Interview 02) And then the Council has to monitor what has been decided over the last two years, what the administration has implemented and make demands. Because it's the body that says: "What about what was approved here?". So, the council model is very important, because it provides legal mechanisms. (Interview 10)	10 (02; 03; 06; 10; 14; 17; 18; 24 37; 40)
Consultation/Hearing/Listening	I think any manager needs to listen to the other person's demands. Because you can't make public policy without knowing what the other person needs. I think this debate took place in these spaces. (Interview 42) Civil Society had the movement to contribute, to speak out. Sometimes things even got a bit mixed up. It was hard to identify what was management and what was Civil Society. Which may even be a positive point.... That it was a collaborative spirit in favor of politics. (Interview 12)	17 (05; 06; 07; 12; 14; 19; 20; 21; 22; 23; 28; 30; 33; 38; 39; 40; 42)
Deliberation / Co-management / Power-Sharing	The Conference is the ultimate moment for deliberation. It is actually the moment when it starts at the grassroots, in the municipality, it leads to deliberations and goes upwards. It filters down to the State, then it goes up to the National level. And it culminates in all those deliberations that will be the most significant for years to come. (Interview 26) Each line, each concept must be discussed in the CIT and discussed in the national council. This enables a construction in the public sphere, the sharing of decision-making power among all. (Interview 28) But the Conference is getting involved in things that weren't discussed with the total. It's like saying: ‘The Conference has decided that, in reality, we're going to have a monoarchy’. Is that sovereign? It's not! But I don't think so. (Interview 35)	21 (04; 08; 09; 10; 13; 14; 16; 18; 19; 22; 23; 26; 27; 28; 29; 32; 35; 36; 39; 41; 44)
Social Control	Let's think about which body is the main reference for participation, and social control, which is extremely important in the SUAS. Let's think about the Councils at all three levels. (Interview 10) I think today our greatest challenge is that we created a block, that is in Brazil as a whole, there’s a block of institutions of the Civil Society, so today they have a seat in those social control instruments. (Interview 22) There are other accountability mechanisms that are better, which is precarious in Brazil, but in other countries there are other models. (Interview 01)	42 (Except: 01 and 37)

Source: Elaborated by the authors, based on the interviews.
• Note: Almost all the interviewees refer either directly – mentioning the term - or indirectly – presenting only the concept – to participation as social control. However, interviewees 01 and 37 are explicitly against the model.

Firstly, one can notice that native terms of the bureaucrats are very close to the theoretical ranking, maybe due to the very academic background of these actors in the fields of Social Science and Social Service, which reinforces the choice to look at the meanings from this theoretical point of view. At first, the term ‘social control’ stands out, since it’s present in almost all the interviews. However, the qualitative analysis of the meanings reveals that many interviewees use it as a synonym/replacement for the word social participation, without meaning a qualification regarding the exercise of the State control.

Thus, one can say that when the interviewees define participation, they do it mainly as deliberation, meaning co-management between State and society; consultation or listening to the desires of the society and accountability. The recognition that state management has a hard time to understand the daily life and diversity of society and our territory are driving forces behind the defense of social participation, in its many forms, such as public consultation, meetings, events and PIs, which would be crucial for bringing public will and state action closer together.

I think this interlocution between Civil Society and the government is very healthy, because Civil Society is often on the front line, providing services, and it brings a perspective. It brings what is actually happening to the population. So it ends up being a bit of a spokesperson for the things that are going on in Brazil and can influence a view to improve public policy. (ANONYMOUS INTERVIEW 07, 2020), (Permanent, other background).

The aspects raised about the role of deliberation are not always positive, even among those in favor of participation, since the actors question both the model and its premises. In these cases, the meanings of deliberation intersect with that of representativeness/representation, since the questioning is made in terms of decision-making power, the legitimacy of society, especially users, in relation to the power of elected representatives. This criticism appeared in 40% of the interviews of the Temer/Terra Administration. Less than a meaning in itself, for example of participation as representation, in 29 interviews there are criticisms that together highlight the problems of representation, periodicity of meetings, limits on the actions of the segments.

I don't think that's always very helpful! Because it depends on what you're going to deliberate about. So you transfer a power of deliberation, of veto, to a group of people who... They get very angry whenever this matter of the legitimacy of the council members is raised, the legitimacy of the people who are there as activists. But the fact is that it's very few people, with limited representativeness. With their own interests, with different capacities. And on the other side there's a government elected to govern. So I think sometimes it's questionable if you should assign a group of 9 or 18 people the power to prevent certain governmental actions by an elected government (ANONYMOUS INTERVIEW 36, 2020).

Support for deliberative processes in some cases is fragile, if contrasted with the different meanings that appear throughout the same interview. For example, we could consider power-sharing as the broader level of joint construction of the policy among the various actors involved and the recognition of the decision-making aspect, but this meaning only appeared in 02 interviews. In the other interviews, the idea of deliberation appears in the broader sense of debate, with complementary meanings and contradictions in the same interview:

There must be social control. There must be power sharing [...] demands can be heard, understood, where there can be feedback on why they were met, why they weren't, what the impossibilities were (Interview 32, Temer Administration, career, other background).

The council works to undo what management does, sometimes even in a disrespectful way. Because there are clashes that go beyond the technical, institutional and political aspects (ANONYMOUS INTERVIEW 32, 2020), (Temer Administration, career, other background).

The statements also echo what Gurza Lavalle and Isunza Vera (2022) define as social control in terms of accountability, that is, a way for Civil Society to demand and follow up on the implementation of the policy. Ten of the 44 interviewees referred to this type of accountability, in the sense of the necessary feedback to Civil Society. “The Council carries out the social control of a certain instance. And then it carries out Social Control with regard to resources and the policy implementation. It follows up and monitors its implementation, its results and the drafting of SUAS regulations. A major guardian of the SUAS (ANONYMOUS INTERVIEW 40, 2020), (Rousseff/Campello Administration, open-ended, social work)”.

Sometimes social control is linked to the control of accounts and the budget, more than monitoring politics as a whole. At the same time, this budgetary control has an important public and political role, including activating vertical accountability between voters and elected officials. “He can do 30 percent of his duties, but the only thing he does 100 percent of is checking the accounts at the end of the year. Without [the control of the budget] there's no transfer or anything, and it's a mandatory function (ANONYMOUS INTERVIEW 24, 2020) (Permanent).

I believe in Social Control, I think it is necessary and an extremely important tool for society to keep an eye on the government. I know that from the point of view of oversight, if so-and-so is receiving federal funds and he's not doing what had been agreed in the municipality, that is why social control exists, so you can control these accounts and even review your vote in other elections (ANONYMOUS INTERVIEW 06, 2020), (Temer/Terra Administration, free provision, other background).

It is also worth mentioning that participation was directly associated with democracy (07 cases). As far as listening was concerned, while it replaced deliberation in the PT Administrations, after the impeachment the term was redefined and interpreted in a different way. The statement below shows listening without hearing, that is, without this meaning reflection or any actual change in action.

...in the Temer Administration ... many people went there and said absolutely nothing, and didn't get involved with anything. They kept their laptops open and observed messages or thought that this was something pro forma, I need to be here formally... The guideline was: "Let them talk. Let people say what they want here"... A space for participation is a space for speaking. Let people speak, speak everything! But it's only for vocalizing! It's not about vocalizing and listening to what you can do. Let them talk, talk a lot, say whatever you want, we're here to listen, but it's just to listen, that's all (ANONYMOUS INTERVIEW 19, 2020) (Permanent, temporary, other background).

As we saw above, the position against participation increased considerably during the Temer/Terra Administrations, which reveals the impact of the change in context on participation and, possibly, on the policy framework. Listening becomes only formal, given the legal prerogatives of the CNAS on the deliberative process of Social Assistance. It is there to fulfill a role. At the same time, formal existence does not prevent these institutions from being redefined by some actors and from operating in a different way. This is careless listening, as a way of reducing the decision-making power of the PIs, without having to change the rules that regulate them. After all, participatory practice most often requires direct and intentional action by government actors, as the statement above demonstrates.

Although the research analyzed the discourse, which informs practices in the context of cognitive theories and SPA, it does not provide enough elements to analyze changes in practices. The documentary analysis did not identify any changes in the regulatory framework during this period, but this does not mean that bureaucratic activity has not changed. The statements above show that changes in the representation system of the actors involved can lead to a reduction in the scope of the participatory process. Even though they use similar words, one can see the adoption of a less inclusive and deliberative understanding of participation by the state actors. This is possibly an adjustment in practices based on the political-institutional changes that took place during the period analyzed. Without changing the rules, the council's role in the production of the framework has been changed by no longer convening meetings and events to deliberate and discuss. By not holding the national conference – which was only held following a call from the policy community and social movements in 2020 without government action – or, more subtly, by holding ordinary CNAS meetings, but without actually listening to society's demands and positions.

Some statements point to a ‘discomfort’ with decisions that are too detailed and come to be seen as an invasion of the management's premises, which should have the freedom to carry out programs that are in their interest. According to the statement below:

There was an understanding that participation is a necessary process, but that it had to be overcome in order to carry something out... Although the government councilors may have a perception of its importance, they end up being submerged in this view that they have to go through it. The government ends up seeing participation as an approval for what it wants. Not necessarily construction. (ANONYMOUS INTERVIEW 44, 2020) (Temer/Terra Administration, free provision, social service).

There is little prospect of joint construction, of a meeting of equals to identify and discuss the best solutions. In addition, after the approval, the execution is ‘ours’, it is the task of those inside the State. To a certain extent, this would be a return to a self-referential state, guided by its own norms and hierarchies, with the norm being the one that suits the public authority, that is made from its actors’ understanding of reality and not from listening, from the joint construction with society.

Conclusions

This study sought to contribute to two sets of literature. Firstly, with that produced with the aim of understanding social participation and its meanings, based on the little-explored perception of the actors within the State. The paper reinforces the findings of the literature regarding the different meanings of participation by showing that they are also reproduced among state actors. But it also reveals in an innovative way how the actors can redefine some meanings, such as listening, depending on the political context in which they are inserted.

Secondly, in dialogue with the premises of the Sociology of Public Action, the paper underscores the importance of analyzing how actors form their actions and strategies, taking into account contextual changes, but also the establishment of their values and beliefs, rooted on their lives and experiences across various spheres, including especially institutionalized participation spaces. However, since this is an approach conceived elsewhere, it is important to consider the differences with the Brazilian reality. For example, given the characteristics of the bureaucracy in the country, with less stability of public agents and greater turnover of positions, it should be analyzed to what extent the Brazilian bureaucracy is more affected by political-institutional changes, especially when compared to the stable reality of some European bureaucracies, for example. At the same time, the study reaffirms the precepts of this literature by showing that, in relational processes of establishing and consolidating public action, the state actors involved matter. The meanings given to social participation, as well as the roles assigned to this participation, affect not only participation mechanisms, but also the very definition and implementation of public policies. In this way, institutions matter, but understanding who populates them and how they form their representation systems and, consequently, their practices is central for us to explain where policies are heading.

The study allows us to conclude that among middle echelon bureaucrats in the federal government, social participation has multiple meanings, reflecting in some way the meanings produced by social actors and studies in the field, such as deliberation, listening and accountability, as presented in the section above. There is virtually unanimous recognition that institutionalized participation processes were central to the very construction of the field of social assistance. However, the data reveals that even in the SNAS, which is in charge of coordinating participatory spaces and services in Social Assistance, which are directly deliberated in the PIs, in the period analyzed, support has been reduced and is competing with other narratives. There are factors that influence the development of state actors' values and understanding, such as the actors' attributes, especially experience at sub-national level, participation institutions, academic background and type of link with administration, as well as political-institutional changes. With the change in actors and also in the government coalition, there is a redefinition of meanings. There is a gradual shift away from the role of non-state actors, emphasizing the importance of elected actors and their decision-making power, and a redefinition of the notion of listening or consultation. Although a numerically larger group recognizes the importance of listening to what society brings to the decision-making arena, those linked exclusively to the Temer Administration expressed a sense of uninterested listening, just to comply with the rules.

We must go deeper into many aspects. Firstly, the meanings of participation analyzed here must be reconsidered in light of the shift towards a government that is more averse to social participation, such as that of President Jair Bolsonaro, and, from 2023 on, with the restructuring of the government with Lula da Silva. Secondly, it is important to understand how social movements, especially Civil Society represented in the Councils, react or have reacted to these new practices. In any case, the aim of the paper was to present a research agenda that takes into account both social and state actors in a relational way, based on the understanding that social participation is part of the process of building the public action framework. And that the different ways in which the bureaucracy responds to it can help to understand the limits and potential of state and participatory practice.

Acknowledgments

Rethinking society-state relations research group - RESOCIE <https://www.resocie.org/home>. Debora Rezende de Almeida: Productivity Grant - National Council for Scientific and Technological Development – CNPq.

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• Data replication: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/GGJEPZ

Data availability

Data replication: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/GGJEPZ

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  20 May 2024
• Date of issue
  Apr 2024

History

• Received
  20 Jan 2023
• Accepted
  24 Aug 2023