PUBLIC CONSULTATIONS AS A MECHANISM FOR LEGITIMIZING NORMATIVE ADMINISTRATIVE ACTS

Abstract

Objective: This paper is dedicated to the survey and analysis of the regulations of public consultations in Brazil and other Latin countries, formulating proposals to enable the democratic effectiveness of the institute in the administrative processes of creation of normative acts, encouraged by Law no. 13,655 (BRASIL, 2018), which amended the LINDB.

Methodology: The empirical research employs documentary analysis of the legislation of Latin American countries with a socioeconomic reality close to that of Brazil to collect elements that enable the formulation of proposals for the effective application of the institute in Brazil. For this, eleven Latin countries were selected, whose legislations were consulted electronically by accessing the federal government sites, verifying the norms pointed out by the entities as regulating the public consultations. The theoretical framework was based on Jürgen Habermas's theory of proceduralist deliberative democracy, Hannah Arendt's concept of politics, and the constitutionalization of Administrative Law.

Results: It was verified that there is an unsatisfactory regulation of the institute of public consultations in Brazil and in most of the researched countries, besides deducing that, thus, the institute has been used in a way to integrate only the legitimation rhetoric of the Public Administration, without properly fulfilling its democratic purpose.

Contributions: The article contributes to the improvement of the regulation of public consultations in Brazil so that it actually meets its democratic assumptions and legitimizes normative administrative acts. Thus, based on the theoretical framework and the data collected, elements are proposed that should be observed when regulating and applying the institute.