This article studies members of the major public policy management councils in the municipality of Curitiba (Councils of Health, Social Welfare, Labor and Council on Children and Youth), state of Paraná. We observe that the groups studied have - in relation to the Brazilian population in general- a larger amount of political culture resources and therefore, more incentives for political activism. We then go on to discuss two theoretical questions related to "political culture". First, we look at the problem of the causal relationship between these institutions and the political culture of their members. In this regard, we recognize the importance of institutional effects on the political culture of individuals and at the same time, the active role that factors that are external to the institutions analyzed here have on the intensity of such effects. In the second place, following an alternative route to the one that is usually taken in the literature of the field, we look at political culture as a resource that is unequally distributed among the groups that make up the institutions studied here and that can therefore be considered one of the bases of political inequality.
democracy; political culture; councils
