Prestação de contas eleitorais como instrumento de transparência e sua contribuição para o aperfeiçoamento do controle social.

Abstract

The Brazilian State experiences an institutional crisis, where frequent corruption scandals involve Public Administration. Recent policy evidence shows a strong link between public machine management and illicit election campaign sponsorship. In this context, accountability over the years has become increasingly important for social control, since it represents a means of monitoring society has to monitor the large resources invested in the elections. Thus, the overall objective of this study was to analyze whether the Electoral Justice's electronic information tools favor the improvement of participatory democracy, making possible the social control of the resources applied in electoral campaigns. As specific objectives the research proposed to: demonstrate the electronic tools made available by the Electoral Justice that favor vertical accountability; to highlight the forms and possibilities of virtual citizen participation, through the digital mechanisms made available in the institutional portals of the Electoral Justice, in the control of the resources used in electoral lawsuits; as well as to identify to what extent the Electoral Justice stimulates the digital participation of the population, considering the main variables and indicators related to electronic. For this purpose, a descriptive-exploratory approach of a qualitative and quantitative nature was used. In order to unveil the potential of the tools arranged in the Portals of Electoral Justice, the research instrument was used, validated theoretically and empirically, both for data collection and for data analysis. The analyzes of the results revealed that the electoral accounts represent a sophisticated instrument of transparency and social control, but the electronic information tools of the Electoral Justice little use their potential in favor of encouraging citizen participation for the improvement of democracy.