[Health councils, intergovernmental commissions, and interest groups in the Unified Health System]

Health councils have developed in Brazil in keeping with arrangements under the 1988 Constitution, and the logic of their political consensus has expanded among interest groups relevant to public policy. Collegiate bodies, such as intergovernmental commissions, represent an extension of that logic to executive relationships and also express political intermediation by expertise, following the tradition of the European Welfare State. The state technical bureaucracy has thus developed a remarkable role in policy-making and in State-level modeling of interest groups. This article argues that such collegiate bodies should be analyzed through State action and defines two models for health councils. One, the vocal political model, is characterized by a prevalence of outspoken denunciation and an overload of demands on the political agenda. The other, the consensus model, expresses self-limitation amongst interest groups in drafting demands. These models are not hierarchically fixed and are usually linked to the political platforms of interest groups participating in the collegiate bodies.