ABSTRACT
Porto Allegre, the beacon city of alter-globalization, pioneer in the establishment of a participatory budget, has entered the World Bank’s catalogue of good practices designed to increase the influence of the poor. This encounter has consecrated the unexpected alliance between macroeconomic orthodoxy and social radicalism – provided that the latter is confined to local management. It is based on civic discourses in which the civil society theme is both predominant and entirely ambiguous. This chapter proposes some references for understanding the variety of representations of civil society in civic discourses. After a short introduction in which the key concepts are presented, we propose four ideal types of civil frame.
