Abstract
The article analyzes the social imaginary of democracy in the second half of the 1980s, examining how it influenced the municipalization of the Elementary Education process in Brazil. It also aims at verifying how the advocacy of the municipalization helped building a comprehension that connects local political institutions to the enhancement of democracy. The debates on the structuring institutions of public sphere, the press and the parliament, were analyzed. The conclusion is that the imaginary of democracy that sustained the advocacy of the educational municipalization during the political aperture had a wide social capillarity, being decisive to insert such process in the constitutional propositions, allowing it to be consolidated in the following decade.
Keywords:
municipalization; elementary education; social imaginary; democracy