Henrique Almeida de Castro

This project examines how organized groups secure durable inclusion in policymaking in new democracies, and why some participatory bodies endure while others collapse. Focusing on participatory councils—standing bodies in which state officials and civil society organizations deliberate over public policy—it advances the concept of compulsory deliberation: legal rules that allow organized actors to constrain executive discretion over council membership, procedures, and reform. The project argues that such rules enable groups to convert fleeting leverage during democratic transitions into lasting footholds, but only when leaders recognize law as a resource rather than a tool of co-optation. Empirically, the project employs comparative legal and historical analysis across Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, and Slovenia. It draws on archival materials, labor movement publications, legislative records, press sources, and secondary historiography to trace how unions navigated inclusion during and after transitions. In doing so, the project reveals administrative organization as a site that shapes – and is shaped by – long-term state–society relations.