This article considers the debate on the major paradigms through which are usually examined the proposals to widen the channels of citizen participation in the management of public policies; studies that examine the participatory processes not only from the prism of the "neo-corporatist arrangements," but also through an approach based on the concept of "deliberative democracy." Aiming at this goal, this paper emphasizes the history of two of the main participatory instances that, in recent decades, have been developed in Brazil: the participatory budgeting and the public policy councils. These instances were evaluated taking into account four aspects in particular: a) institutional relationships with the government; b) the profile of the participants; c) the decision-making context; and d) the functioning dynamics. Considering the study of these characteristics, the authors discuss the ability of the neo-corporatist and the deliberative paradigms to create a consistent analytical model for the investigation of divergent participatory structures.
Public Policy Councils; Deliberative democracy; Participatory budgeting; Neo-corporatism
