An outside view: Councils in Brazilian structure of partcipatory governance

Brazil is an outstanding case of institutional innovation experiences of participation and extra-parliamentary representation. Both are nowadays features of the Brazilian state and thus the range and degree of institutionalization of new venues for participation and extra-parliamentary representation are unparalleled: over 30 thousand institutionalized policy councils, not to speak of hundreds of non-mandatory councils created by the city halls in the bigger municipalities. Surprisingly, although Brazil became an emblematic case of participatory governance, we still need to improve our understanding about this new layer of institutions. Most of cumulated knowledge was produced by case studies, but we lack systematic knowledge of these institutions working as institutionalized structure of participatory governance. This paper draws on a new generation of literature intending to cope with this lacuna.We present finding that are innovative in three ways: first, we analyze councils relationally from outside, as used by civil society organizations; second, we examine them as part of a broader organizational ecology specialized in coordinating collective action within civil society and in enhancing civil society policy influence (f.i. councils, fora, federated hubs of civil organizations); and finally, we do so by working in a systematic comparison of the place of councils in that organizational ecology in six  of the largest Brazilian cities (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Porto Alegre and Brasilia). Methodologically the finds draw on network analysis.