Social management and iceland’s crowdsourced constitution: the use of icts on democratic participation at Universidade Federal do Tocantins

Abstract

Social Management is an original Brazilian concept still under construction that, among other aspirations, aims to broaden the participation and popular engagement in the decisions that influence the lives of everybody. Studies on social management in Brazil have been expanding since 1990. In 2007 the National Network of Researchers in Social Management (RGS) organized the first National Meeting of Researchers in Social Management (ENAPEGS). This field of knowledge envisages building a new public sphere that aims to bring people and politics together in a way that they can debate and generate collective decisions about the needs and future of the community. Iceland's popular constitution is an innovative process that brings new possibilities for the development of democracy. The Icelandic government recently, between 2009 and 2013, led the process of creating the first crowd-sourced constitution of the world. Immersed in a context of the global monetary crisis generated by the collapse of America's major financial institutions in 2008, following the biggest banking collapse of the century, known to the Icelanders as 'The Crash', a bill was submitted to the parliament requiring an advisory Constitutional Assembly to be instated. To ensure participation, the assembly used social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Flicker and YouTube to conduct discussions between the people of Iceland and the Council. Historically, the process of drafting a constitution never included direct popular participation. Although the process was not ratified like the new constitution of Iceland, it served as model that spread by the world. Considering this context, the formulation of a crowdsourced constitution in Iceland will be studied on the perspective of Social Management, begin this a case study, and also a qualitative research. This work aims to strengthen this perspective from the practical experience of the process of drafting the Constitution of Iceland. The analysis of this process enables the approximation between Social Management and Icelandic Crowdsourced Constitution process and as well to present Social Management as an alternative capable of ensuring participation and emancipation, proposing through this study, the adopting a model, based on the one used during the creating processes of Iceland’s Crowdsourced Constitution, to be adopted and used in the CONDIR from Universidade Federal do Tocantins in order to improve democratic decision-making process by means of participation from all academic community.