Between Times: institutions, governance and influence in the 21st century
Press Release · Justice, Welfare and Economics 2026 · Brazil · Rio de Janeiro, July 2026
The Lobbying Bill and the Administrative Reform Constitutional Amendment are in motion. They are two of the most structurally significant vectors of contemporary democratic governance — and their progress unfolds in a public space increasingly governed by the logic of the digital panopticon: everything visible, little intelligible, almost nothing traceable by those who most need to follow it.
Civic tech falls short of and exceeds the idea of a simple tool. In organic perception, it is political practice — collective construction of intelligibility in the public sphere, a movement in which technology articulates with citizenship in communicative action that makes emerge something more than administrative efficiency: governance as correspondence with the world of life.
This is the field in which ENTE Civic Tech — TELCO Democracy operates: as the Germinal Cell of an ongoing process, where theoretical production and legislative action meet in living, immediate dynamic. Not an event about democratic processes — but an installation inside them.
The concept guiding this work is global citizenship-governance as consensus: an emergent field of shared perception, through which citizens, researchers, collectives and parliamentarians build together — each from what they already do, what they already know, what is still forming.
In May 2026, a live dialogue with anthropologist Tim Ingold — When Law apprehends walking together — opened Movement I of the Mycelial Tetralogy through the ESMPU YouTube channel, Brazil's School for the Federal Public Ministry, broadcast globally. The 16–17 July encounter moves into Movement II: the technopolitical capture of the legislative process — the compression of deliberative time, the crisis of the public sphere, the silent erosion of the separation of powers. Democratic mandates becoming permanent campaigns. Governance dissolving into communicational event.
Brazilian parliamentarians directly involved in the Lobbying Bill and the Administrative Reform Amendment participate alongside researchers, essayists and civic tech collectives, national and international.
The journey does not end in July. Between the encounter and the launch of the collective volume, Between Times remains open — a living space of correspondence where new entries remain possible. The Germinal Cell is becoming a hub in the Inner Development Goals community, where human development and global governance meet and make each other.
The Brazil that acts here — peoples, collectives, citizens — co-inhabits the governance of our time as sustainability-becoming in the Cosmocene.
The thematic tracks
Coordination: Arthur Bezerra de Souza Júnior
Journey
To investigate how practices and structures of public influence take shape in the relations between State, market and society, analysing their effects on transparency, institutional integrity and the formation of public decisions.
Coordination: Rodrigo Corrêa
Journey
To analyse how processes of administrative transformation reshape state capacities, institutional practices and systems of checks and balances, identifying possibilities for institutional reorganisation in contexts of transition.
Coordination: Adriana Santos and Jéssica Painkow Rosa Cavalcante
Journey
To understand how civic technologies transform democratic participation and the circulation of public information, strengthening the correspondence between representatives and the represented and contributing to active local citizenship in dialogue with global citizenship.
Among those involved in the activities of the 2026 edition, the following may be selected:
up to 3 people or collectives
for participation in a supervised hands-on experience in a collaborative digital environment related to ENTE Civic Tech — TELCO Democracy, an initiative dedicated to developing civic technologies aimed at monitoring decision-making processes, articulating social actors and building collective solutions.
General Coordination: Fábio Böckmann Schneider
CrowdLaw — an initiative of The Governance Lab (GovLab) at Northeastern University — has documented and theorised for over a decade what civic participation in the legislative process can look like when it works: how citizens, collectives and specialists can engage with laws in the making, broadening the legitimacy and quality of normative decisions.
Between Times is in conversation with the GovLab about the presence of one of its researchers at the July encounter. Beth Simone Noveck, GovLab director and global reference in open government and democratic innovation, and Anirudh Dinesh, researcher in CrowdLaw and people-led legislative innovation, are part of this dialogue. The debate emerging from this conversation will be presented at the 16–17 July encounter — bringing to the Brazilian context the question the GovLab's most recent work has been pressing: what do democratic institutions need to cultivate for civic participation to fully realise itself?
