This article discusses the practice of social management in Regional Development Councils (Coredes) experienced in Rio Grande do Sul over the past twenty years. Social management, as understood here, requires the participation of civil society in public administration and development. The study uses the interpretative approach embedded in the paradigm of critical social theory, establishing a matrix of categories and subcategories of analysis that include the principles of inclusion, pluralism, equal participation, autonomy and the common good found in the concept of deliberative citizenship. The Coredes as institutional arrangements that work to promote development are potential public spaces for the practice of deliberative citizenship. If the participatory experiences are already significant locally, as in the case of municipal councils and participatory budgeting, they remain rare at the regional and state levels, this highlights the the importance of Coredes, still active after six state government mandates. Therefore, Coredes are processes and spaces for deliberative citizenship, which produce changes, albeit slowly, in the public perspective of individuals, in the culture of civil society, in the profile of the political society and in the modus operandi of bureaucracy and governments. Moreover, it is the dialogic process that needs to be continuously constructed and reconstructed by the participants to avoid the risk of corporate, political or administrative control through cooptation and manipulation, even in these incipient social management experiences.
Social management; Deliberative citizenship; Social participation; Regional development councils
