Summer University
Governance and Participation challenging the crisis

September 9th to 12th, 2009, São Brás de Alportel

 
Presentation

The present crisis strongly revealed the weaknesses and contradictions of neoliberalism. In face of the economy’s recession, the need to discipline the financial sector, the exponential increase of unemployment and the inability of social protection systems to respond to all emergency situations, one of the main challenges of the future is the reconstruction of trust among the different actors of the territory. This is an essential condition in order to attain a correct development regarding the processes of representative democracy and, at the same time, the necessary capital so that individuals and social organizations accept participating in the construction of public policies. These should be, ever less, “public sector policies”, and, ever more, “public interest policies”, carried out by different actors,   in a correct interpretation of the principles of horizontal subsidiarity.
Transparency, respect for the diversities and recovering ethics regarding individual and collective enacting, are fundamental presuppositions towards the reconstruction of such trust, without which results impossible the breaking of  the vicious cycle created by the double pathology of liberal democracies, namely, the pathology of representation, in the sense that citizens are ever more distant from political life and the elected , and the pathology of participation, which relates to the idea, increasingly common, that “it isn’t worth  participating”, because citizens “feel much to small” to face the greater interest and political and economical dynamics that dominate society.
The notion of governance is frequently used in political discourse as synonymous of a pragmatic approach that only takes into account the comprehension of territorial actors in the construction of certain actions. In face of the deprivation of sovereignty of citizens in fundamental issues,  the loss of  authority of democratically elected instances’, the concentration of powers in supranational actors that function in the sphere of private interest, it is, today, necessary to question this notion of governance and the redistribution of the levels of power, in which each actor falls. It is, thus, essential to adopt a notion of “participatory governance”, according to which citizens are considered legitimate intervenients in the decision making processes, being involved through innovative procedures.
This new framework cannot neglect the aims of peace and social justice, decolonialization of political culture and social imaginary, opening towards different conceptions of democracy and towards construction of public interest policies, integrators of social diversity.
The Summer University aims to offer points of view and readings complementary to some issues here approached, for such counting on the contribution of national and foreign experts that, most certainly, will help stimulate the debate with the participants. This University aims to constitute itself as space par excellence in the reflection on present day themes, foreseeing, this year, the following panels: “Democracy and Participation – Reconstructing trust in institutions”, “Right to the City – Recasting the belonging to territory” and “New Social Imaginaries – reincorporating the economic in the social”. At the end of each panel a key-question will be asked to local government officials, both Portuguese and foreign, that will compose a round table during the last day, intituled “Towards a new culture of ‘public’, The role of local governments”.
The Summer University is the result of a partnership constituted between different Portuguese institutions, that work in the field of social sciences, justice, citizenship and local development, and the Commission for Participatory Democracy and Social Inclusion of CGLU (international organization for United Cities and Local Governments, with seat in Barcelona, Spain.

Registration

Until July 24th:
Normal – 100€
CES Doctoral and Master Students and unemployed – 25€

After July 24th:
Normal – 125€
CES Doctoral and Master Students and unemployed – 35€

Registrations until August 31st

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