Social control in municipalities: contributions from the Courts of Cudit of Portugal and Paraná

Abstract

With the re-democratisation of Brazil and Portugal in the 1970s and 1980s, social control came to be seen as an instrument for citizens to monitor the actions of public managers. Thus, exercising this control becomes an act of citizenship that can and should be exercised by everyone, in the care of public affairs. The Courts of Auditors, as constitutional external control bodies, can contribute to training citizens to exercise this control. The aim of this article is to analyse the existence of actions aimed at training citizens to exercise social control, promoted by the Court of Auditors of Portugal and the Court of Auditors of the State of Paraná, in order to stimulate citizen participation in municipalities. The methods used to develop the work involve applied research with a qualitative approach, with explanatory and descriptive purposes and the use of bibliographical, documentary and comparative techniques, in order to answer the following question: How do the Courts of Auditors of Portugal and the State of Paraná contribute to encouraging citizens to exercise social control? The results show that the Court of Auditors of Portugal and the Court of Auditors of the State of Paraná developed 310 and 70 actions, respectively, aimed at social control between 2010 and 2022, with the former reaching 40,628 participants and the latter 25,320, with a ratio of participants per action/event of 131.05 people in Portugal and 361.71 in Paraná.

Keywords: accountability; empowerment; control; societal participation; redemocratization.