Social management of development: the exclusion of business representatives? The case of Programa Territórios da Cidadania Norte-RJ

Abstract

The concrete incorporation of the territorial approach as the basis of rural development policies requires a break with the centered vertical tradition of development strategies and the consequent importance of local initiatives and the multiplicity of territorial actors. However, the trajectory of these policies reveals not only the privilege granted to organizations linked to family farmers as well as the exclusion of organizations representing businessmen. Considering the importance of business participation to the success of such policies, we analyze in this paper the possibilities of including business representatives with a view to pluralism within the Programa Territórios da Cidadania Norte-RJ. We conducted semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis; the data collected was treated by content analysis with a combined design developed based on the Habermasian concept of deliberative citizenship. The results reveal that the actual model of social management is not capable of promoting the social consultation of territorial actors. Representatives of civil society reject indistinctly the inclusion of businessmen because of socio-political differences, which are worsened by the historical constitution of the territory. The business representatives are not included in the territorial collegiate North-RJ, nor do they know the Programa Territórios da Cidadania. However, these institutions are already included in other local domains of social participation and accept the dynamics governing these spaces in social management. This democratic experimentation can create minimum points of convergence that allow their inclusion in the territorial collegiate.