Contemporary democratic theory includes at least two approaches that link the presence of participatory spaces to the quality of democracy. Both the deliberative and participatory approaches consider these spaces important to the legitimacy of policy decisions that bond a collectivity. By investing in the centrality of participation and discussion to the legitimacy of decision making, such approaches become useful tools to analyze yet another democratic innovation of contemporary Brazil: Public Policy Conferences. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the institutional structure of those Conferences, in order to see how they combine different types of action and whether or not they form an integrated system of participation and decision between the different levels of the federation.
Public Policy Conferences; participation; decision; inclusion
