A landmark in its democratization process, Brazil´s promulgation of a rights-centered Constitution in 1988 led to a proliferation of local and federal participative institutions, ending a 20th Century in which the Brazilian State was relatively impermeable to public engagement. Unlike its predecessors, the new Constitution includes in its present form twelve explicit provisions for participative practices, understood as deliberative mechanisms that incorporate citizens and civil organizations into the process of governmental decision-making. As has been amply discussed, this groundwork led to a proliferation of public policy councils among Brazil´s 5.570 municipalities.

Are transversal public policy councils effective in promoting the rights of vulnerable groups at a local level? Applying techniques of regression analysis, the paper seeks to breach the matter by investigating the relation between Councils for the Rights of Disabled Persons and a pool of municipal policies for this social segment. Results suggest that the constitution of these councils and their levels of activity are significant predictive variables for the existence of public policies promoting the rights of disabled people at a local level.

The paper begins with a brief review of the available bibliography on participatory institutions, a review focused on the as of yet incipient debate regarding their effectiveness as instruments for policy design and governance.

Using data from the 2014 Survey of Basic Municipal Information (Munic), an annual census of local government realized by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the paper then presents a Municipal Index of Programs and Policies for People with Disabilities. A synthetic indicator, this index condenses ten variables as a proxy for the commitment of local governments to promoting the rights of this social segment.

Using linear regression techniques, the paper than measures the coefficients of determination of various explanatory independent variables upon the index´s measured variance. These include geographic region (fundamental given Brazil´s regional inequalities), per capita income, average age, schooling levels and disabled population – besides information regarding the existence and the level of activity of Municipal Councils for the Rights of Disabled Persons.

Among other results, the paper includes findings suggesting that the existence of specific policies for people with disabilities is correlated with statistical significance to the existence of these councils – but, surprisingly, not to the actual proportion of this segment in municipal populations. In other words, mechanisms of citizen participation and participatory governance appear to be a key factor for the effectiveness of inclusive policies for this social segment.

Researchers in education highlight the increasing level of school segregation in the Chile. Observing the high levels of segregation, public policy analysis has become focused on the structural conditions of the Chilean educational system as the major cause of social exclusion. “Poor people study with poor people while wealthy people study with wealthy people”, resound as recurrent phrase inside public opinion. Nonetheless, this problem, until now, has never been systematically addressed as the active consequences of people`s decisions. This paper analyzes school selection in Santiago de Chile as an active practice deployed by parents for their children. Through a qualitative approach, We seek to reconstruct i) the school experience, ii) the working trajectory, and iii) the past and present social conditions of parents.

The results show that school selection is not merely a way to choose schools for children but a mechanism of social delimitation and an active way to reinforce socio-urban exclusion. The high levels of social exclusion experienced in the city of Santiago de Chile is not understandable only by accounting for the spatial-mismatch between different social groups. Social exclusion is based on practices and discourses of people and families along time –decades-, and not only a result of structural determination. In other words, it is the agency capability of individuals the main responsible for the missing capacity for integration shown by the traditional socio-urban institutions (i.e. schools) in Chile during the last 40 years.

This paper analyzes from an essential perspective the role of the elites in the present society as a consequence of the globalization and therefore of the governance. Therefore, this paper questions the role of these in the new global context and how they will develop in the present and future relations between elites and civil society. In addition, it will describe the role that civil society in these new times must make so that governance ceases to be theoretical and can take shape, despite legal uncontrol. Political and of the exerted pressure of the elites to the traditional political powers. This fact rethinks a new context, with different problems and characteristics in the face of the old dilemma of the antinomy between technocracy and democracy.

The present essay is the result of continuous investigation by the author, who leads a group of researchers, which staff – made of students and university researchers from Brazil – Is dedicated to study public policies for social benefits, aimed at inclusion, substantial equalty, especially on the fields of housing, education and social assistance. The group is open to the participation of interested foreigner researchers and as it constitutes a in progress research, it permanently seeks its expansion not only conceptually or foundationally, but also on its contour objects, within the possible relevance. The essay’s theme are the public policies for urbanism, building, financing and related actions as a form of alternative provision to the need of low income  people’s housing; it is based on a general scenario about urbanism and housing conditions in the large cities of Latin America and the Caribbean, with geographic cut over Brazil and intentional emphasis on Rio de Janeiro. In the social aspect, the basis effort is given to the context of housing for low income population, living concentrated in the urban centers’ peripheric area. The aim is to carry out a case study regarding the innovations in terms of urban structure and equipments that became necessary to the city in terms of short duration housing public policies, including the actions and efforts to remove favelas, such as for the 2014’ Soccer World Cup (FIFA) and the 2016’ Olympic Games (IOC). The main discussion issue consists of verifying the application of proportionality, in terms of the social costs of these policies, facing their merits and demerits, in terms of planning, execution and their achieved good and negative results. The general objective of the work is to provide subsidy to new housing policies, by national or local power angles, with greater constitutional and administrative efficiency. As specific objectives: 1) to present a synthetic panorama of the Latin American reality and of Brazil on quality housing and its inadequacies, especially in large urban centers; 2) to know this reality in the geographic area of Rio de Janeiro, with the disordered occupation and its social, political and legal effects; 3) to study the innovations related to the field of public policies adopted for the execution of these events, as well as the favorable and unfavorable effects, as an evaluation of their results, in order to share with professional experts from other countries and continents in order to become able to collect their considerations, from their own experiences, about periphery and the housing policies applied to them or in the process of application – as a way of dealing with the problems of underdevelopment, poverty and exclusion. The work adopts, non-exclusively, the analytical inductive method, with research to literature and official statistical sources and case study of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

KEYWORDS:

public policies; housing; innovation; social inclusion.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for poverty are to end poverty in all its forms across the world by 2030. Local governments are important agents in the implementation of pro-poor  policies and the capacity of local governments is moulded by the intergovernmental relations in their own country. Decentralisation and fiscal decentralisation in particular, is a vehicle for achieving the SDGs. Using fiscal decentralisation as a theoretical focus, this research evaluates the feasibility of achieving the poverty alleviation goal by a) analysing the trend of key poverty indicators at the local level in Mexico; b) exploring possible lineal dependence between key poverty indicators and fiscal decentralisation arrangement at the local level and c) examining key fiscal arrangements. The expected findings are that urgent action to strengthen local government finance is required and that changes in specific fiscal arrangements can be used as a roadmap for setting targets at the local level.