Based on the principle of community participation in the Unified National Health System (SUS), the National Health Conferences in Brazil have served as public spaces for collective decision-making on the guidelines for the organization and implementation of the SUS. Given that the community participation principle gains meaning and substance in the daily and institutional practices of the various stakeholders, it is crucial to know how popular participation has materialized and the meanings that have emerged from this social process in order to understand both its actual presence and its capacity to impact the construction and consolidation of the National Health System. The article thus draws on the reports of the recent National Health Conferences to analyze the country's experience with the principle of community participation in the System (as provided by the 1988 Constitution). We performed a discourse analysis of the reports from the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th National Conferences, seeking to identify social participation issues since the National Health System was implemented, including both the issues that traversed all four Conferences as well the main argumentative shifts that occurred during the same period.
Social participation; National Health Conferences; social control