The process and the proposals considered as priorities during the 1st National Conference on Transparency and Social Control (Consocial), are here analyzed, based on two patterns - State-centric and socio-centric - of the relationship between State and Society (Keinert, 2000). The Conference, led by the Office of the Comptroller General (agency of the Brazilian federal government) during 2011 and 2012, involved thousands of people, in different meetings, reaching a set of 80 proposals (combined in 42) for a coming National Plan on Transparency and Social Control. The Conference is part of an ongoing process of democratic maturation in Brazil, which includes the opening of State institutional forums for citizens' participation, increasing direct participation in decision-making and control over public administration, as well as in building new institutional and governance arrangements (typically found in societies adopting the socio-centric pattern). However, characteristics of the State-centric pattern, such as centralization, formalism, and the notion of "public" as restricted to State, are still reinforced. Overall, it is possible to observe a variety of combinations between these two patterns. The study is based on the method of participant-observation during six phases of Consocial, analyses of the communication of the conference and documents such as the proposals and Consocial's final report.
