E-Participation in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies: A case study of the Portal e-Democracia

Among the digital initiatives linked to the openness of Parliaments, the Portal e-Democracia, sponsored by the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, is a singular case of innovation. Being a pioneer initiative to outreach the legislative discussion, that portal aggregates different tools for participation, which leads to both participatory and deliberative democracy models. It considers diverse participatory preferences of the citizens, using channels as surveys, forums, and wiki tools. This paper aims to present what have been developed in the Portal e-Democracia as well as to observe the limitation of its actions pointed out by the analysis of four important and large discussions developed within it: the laws related to Brazilian budget in 2013 (the “Budget Guidelines Law” and the “Annual Budget Law”), and the Political Reform debate in 2013 and 2015. The methodology adopted was a deliberative content analysis in two levels: 1) forums structure (identification, openness/freedom, agenda, moderation, public space), and 2) speech structure (justification, reciprocity, and respect). The work also provides an overview of the portal, and uses some statistical tools to show how the participation has been developed in its Legislative Communities (the space to debate the subjects) since 2009, when the Portal e-Democracia was created. By this study, one might observe that in both pairs of discussions the first forum had a better speech quality in relation to their subsequent ones. However, the contributions from those Legislative Communities did not make any difference to the debates and the voting moments related to those themes in the Chamber of Deputies.