PARTICIPATION AND SOCIAL CONTROL - THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE STATE HEALTH COUNCIL TO THE PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY OF ALAGOAS
Democracy; Social Control; Participation; Public Policy;
The object of analysis in this research is Social Control over Public Health Policies through popular participation in the Conselho Estadual de Saúde de Alagoas – CES. This council is the instance of popular participation in the scope of the state's health policy, given that the instances of participation appear as a distinct modality, different from the traditional model of political participation by party affiliation, unionization or electoral turnout. It is part of the recent expansion of different forms of popular participation in spaces and processes of discussion and formulation of public policies. The current political context points, at least in the Federal sphere, to an unfavorable policy of reducing popular participation by the extinction of several councils in the most varied fields of public policy. In this context, this research addresses the Conselho Estadual de Saúde de Alagoas, an agency inserted in the health policy decentralization process, seeking to understand its contribution to health policy, what is the relationship with the government and its interaction with municipal departments. This is a case study, which uses bibliographic research and interviews, in which it seeks to answer to what extent the State Health Council contributes to the Health policy in the State of Alagoas? Therefore, it seeks to discuss how popular participation in the State Health Council has been organized and carried out; if there is pressure or similar discouraging movement; whether the data found point to the weakening of popular participation. The hypothesis is that there are difficulties encountered by counselors in their performance, and they are related to technical-scientific language; asymmetrical relationship of power, resources and access to information between incorporated actors, inequality of insertion and demobilization.