Abstract EN:

The thesis reports the way how it was built, historically, the idea of popular participation in the imaginary aspect of the Brazilian social movements in order to explain the experiences of democratization of the current local power in that country, which have been stimulated by the labour party (partido dos trabalhadores - pt) in important urban centers. The empirical motto of the paper is the experience of the "sharing budget" of Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, where the direct democracy processes in combination with the political representation, originating a hybrid system of public administration wherein the distance that separates the civil society and the political society is visibly attenuated. It is about a "democracy model" that motivates the active engagement of citizens, through the non-conventional modalities of political participation. On the other hand, the thesis shows that the subject of the local power in Latin America and Brazil is, simultaneously, an object of scientific investigation appreciated in universities nowadays and, yet, a strategy adopted by the left to oppose the government policies with a neoliberal cut of the present central government. The priority inversions in the municipal rule, in terms of administration and financing of Porto Alegre, orientated by the "pt" through the "sharing budget", constituted themselves in one demonstrative effect for the anti-neoliberal opposition of the new continent. A "profane democracy" started to grow, making the state more efficient, without becoming "minimum". The support of the voters, for successive three times, aims at the consolidation of the experience and at the new challenges in the "pt" project of socialization of politics.