The process of democratization of Brazil contributed to the emergence of management councils and thematic conferences in the context of public health policies. The scope of this article was to conduct a systematic review of the literature in order to establish the factors associated with the process of institutionalization of these democratic areas. The following databases were researched: LILACS, IBECS, MEDLINE, SciELO, PAHO, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Social Science and EBSCO. For the composition of the sample of 25 articles, the following key words were used: Social Control, Social Participation, Consumer Participation, Community Participation, Public Participation, Citizen Participation, Political Participation, Participative Management, Participative Democracy, Deliberative Democracy with Health Councils and Health Conferences. The results found synthesize a set of categories that has impacted the participatory public spaces: political representation and qualification, relationships among the social actors, institutional design, political culture, discourses about health/disease and the debate about democracy. The findings help to move forward in the understanding of such institutions, fostering the construction of alternatives committed to the strengthening of democracy in Brazil.
Social participation; Health counseling; Democracy
