As vozes do sul: uma análise da participação social e cidadã a partir do trabalho do parlamento do Mercosul e da cúpula social do Mercosul

Abstract

MERCOSUR completed 30 years of existence on March 26 of this year, 2021, and with that, the Citizenship Statute was released. This document brings together all the rights that the States Parties understand to constitute the citizenship of Mercosur, including political rights. Located in a region marked by coloniality and democratic fragility, MERCOSUR strategically positions itself as an integration process, what strengthens its consolidation, but also makes it dependent of regional democracy for its effectiveness. The debate about citizenship as a basic element of democracy permeates political participation. In this sense, several participatory mechanisms were created in order to foment the democratic character of the regional integration initiative, including the MERCOSUR Parliament, in regard to representation, and the MERCOSUR Social Summits, understood as an instrument for participatory democracy. Based on this scenario and with the general objective of confirming that social participation in MERCOSUR is related to the elaboration of regional citizenship, the following research problem is noted: to what extent does PARLASUL and the MERCOSUR Social Summit present themselves as tools for consolidating the active participation of civil society into building a regional citizenship in MERCOSUR? As a final result, even with difficulties regarding legitimacy, institutionality and social control and transparency, such political forums can be considered consolidating the democratic participation of the civil society as well as building regional citizenship based on a multidimensional perspective of integration, through its improvement and strengthening, thus, confirming the hypothesis presented. Therefore, in order to answer the problem and prove the aforementioned hypothesis, the inductive approach is used, as well as the historical, normativedescriptive, comparative and empirical procedures. Moreover, through the literary review, document analysis and semi-structured interviews research techniques, the understanding of the construction of citizenship and the consolidation of democracy based on initiatives for social and citizen participation in MERCOSUR is intended.