Deliberation on educational policies in the Portuguese parliament: the enhanced role of subcommittees and working groups

In this paper, we propose to analyze and to discuss the process of public deliberation of the Portuguese parliamentary standing Committee on Education, Science, Youth and Sport competent to decide on the legislative initiatives presented on educational policy. It is in this internal body of the Portuguese parliament, with permanent jurisdiction over education matters, that the legislative process unfolds predominantly Our findings indicate that the distribution of pending bills started to take place in the late 80s for consideration by subcommittees, but, above all, in working groups created ad hoc, without the duty to publicize their work, and that their responsibilities have widened to the conduct of the deliberative process itself. Considering that the functioning of these subcommittees and working groups involves an important limitation inherent to their competences, that none of these bodies has, in fact, deliberative power, these findings raise two problems that we propose to discuss. The first, related to the external communication of the decisions taken and their quality. The second, on the need for the deliberation to be public, for several reasons, including that of inhibiting manipulation and control.