Instituto Ethos

• English
• Español

The third sector, government, and society

Adriana Somma, Diogo Cosentino, and Mônica Nascimento

The participants of the first plenary of June 22 - Social control over government and market – the role of the civil society, were Sean de Cleene, executive director of the African Institute of Corporate Citizenship (AICC); Eduardo Felipe Pérez Matias, co-owner of the law firm L.O. Baptista Advogados; Luiza Cristina Fonseca Frischeisen, Federal Public Prosecutor in Rio de Janeiro; and Eduardo Capobianco, president of Transparency Brazil advisory board, who contributed to a very enriching discussion.
According to Eduardo Matias, the third sector’s future role will be to gradually take the place of the government’s functions through the organizational strengthening of the civil society. He believes this evolution is shown by the trinomial “globalization, technological innovation, and weakening of the government,” and makes way for new actors to take over the roles until now in the public power hands, such as the promotion of justice and social development. The challenge is to act with legitimacy and transparency aiming at the collective interest.
In Frischeisen’s view, one of the greatest challenges will be to find ways for the social inclusion of a large portion of the world population who still has not had access to the benefits of globalization and remains marginalized. “We must think in terms of citizenship, which requires both the government’s presence and social control,” she explained.
Capobianco – also with an opposite view in relation to Matias’ – presented the risks of counting on a third sector management of the government and market mechanisms, saying that this sector is also regulated by interests that go beyond collaboration, thus generating a “dysfunction that is present when we think about organized civil society control over the Government and the market”. Such dysfunction also brings the need for setting accurate criteria for certification and inspection of the third sector management.

Cleene believes the “civil society and private sector attraction movement towards each other is generating a new market model, creating pressure on the part of the society and the enhancement of new social technologies.” Therefore, he believes in the active participation of the third sector together with the globalized private sector for the evolution of developing economies. In addition, he called for a more hopeful attitude towards this movement: “I’ve worked in this sector for ten years, and I’ve never been as enthusiastic as now. I used to feel like a priest on the pulpit telling people who to do. Now I feel we are all speaking the same language.”