2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

17th Edition

Phase 6 of 7

Publication Preparation 18/09/2023 - 06/11/2023

Process phases

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São Paulo: Câmara Viva

Official proposal

26/05/2023 16:30

The São Paulo City Council is the largest municipal legislature in Latin America. There are 55 members of parliament representing around 12.4 million inhabitants. They are responsible for voting all the city's laws, approving the budget, which this year is R$90 billion (around US$17.8 billion), and defining the public policies to be implemented by the mayor.

TV Cultura is the main public television channel in Brazil. The channel has already been elected the second best public television broadcaster in the world, behind only the British BBC. Its signal is shown throughout the national territory openly and free of charge.

In November 2021, the São Paulo City Council and TV Cultura joined forces to launch an innovative public communication and political education project: the "Câmara Viva". A television programme, at no cost to the Chamber and the city, which airs every Saturday morning and teaches the population a step-by-step way to inspect the work of parliamentarians and research the accountability of legislators. It also addresses the main issues being debated in the Legislative and discusses their impacts on society through interviews with political scientists, researchers, historians, community leaders, among other representatives.

The Chamber saw the need for this political education and transparency programme because of surveys that detected a great distance between the population and the work of elected representatives. There is a high percentage of people who do not even remember who they voted for in the last elections. A large part of the population is also unaware of the role of the municipal legislature, including basic information such as who their representatives are, the location of the Chamber, the function of the Legislative House, etc.

The main objective is to improve the evaluation and monitoring of the mechanisms of participatory democracy. By providing the public with basic information on politics and participation/monitoring, the "Câmara Viva" programme contributes to the formation of citizenship among voters. Participatory democracy is reinforced to the extent that the population learns to supervise and monitor the Legislative. With more information, citizens can better exercise their decision-making power.

The greatest innovation is to bring political education to the general public through a nationwide open public television station. TV Cultura is broadcast in open signal at no cost to citizens, which is extremely significant in a country of vast territory and high inequality like Brazil.

In Brazil, legislative television channels are common, that is, TV channels maintained by the parliaments themselves that broadcast their activities. Câmara Viva" goes further by taking the public discussion to a TV channel with greater reach, audience and credibility.