Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to identify, based on a multicriterial survey, the perceptions of stakeholders about the organizational-procedural and the participatory decision-making processes on Brazil's national STI conference.

Paper long abstract:

In Brazil, despite some recent progress, public participation and engagement in governance processes related to STI is still limited. This may be explained by a number of factors, involving issues related to education in general, limited information and the distribution of power amongst stakeholders.

Aiming to contribute to the studies of deliberative democracy and to provide a better understanding of the dynamics that shape the Brazilian National STI Conference (CNCTI), this research seeks to identify and analyze, based on a multicriterial survey, the perceptions of stakeholders about the organizational-procedural and the participatory decision-making processes on the conference. The survey (structured along the lines of a Likert scale with opposite and forced choice questions) identifies the participants' perceptions on several topics related to the Conference's organization, the profile of attendants, participation and representation, spaces of dissent, conflicting perspectives etc.

Preliminary results indicate that the organization of conferences changes with each of its editions. While the first and second conferences were significantly rigid, centralized and limited to specific groups of invited academics, responsible for producing position papers on the topics to be discussed. The 3rd Conference was a bit more open and drew from earlier discussions held at the state level through preparatory meetings. However, we do observe what one might call a selective decentralization of the organization, through which only a few states were invited to send representatives. Thus, we argue, there are still many challenges to overcome - most of which Conference participants are well aware of.