Between ideas and interactions: user participation in social assistance policy

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between state and society in the social assistance policy in Brazil, focusing on the effects of interactions between managers and user organizations from 2004 to 2020. Based on interviews and documentary analysis, we argue that, when assuming director positions in the National Secretary of Social Assistance, the members of the policy community began to induce incremental changes regarding the participation of users not only in councils, but in the provision of services. Such changes depended on the potentialities historically created inside and outside the state sphere. Also the entry of new societal actors in the National Council of Social Assistance, since 2012, enabled experimentation that resulted in the creation of the National Users' Forum.