The Constitutional Principle of Transparency in Public Administration and the Public Prosecution Service: Interrelations and Possibilities of Accountability in Brazil

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between the concept of accountability and the constitutional principle of transparency in Brazilian Public Administration, with special emphasis on the institutional role of the Public Prosecution Service as an organ of oversight and democratic guarantee. It first reconstructs the theoretical development of accountability in Public Administration scholarship, highlighting its dimensions of control, supervision, monitoring, sanction, popular participation, and accountability in the sense of rendering accounts, as well as the difficulties of translating and adapting the concept to the Brazilian context. It then argues that, in Brazilian Public Law, accountability corresponds to the principle of administrative transparency, understood as an implicit constitutional principle, broader than mere publicity and composed of sub-principles such as motivation, access to information, popular participation, and the duty to render accounts. The study also proposes an expanded reading of the institute, encompassing mechanisms of social control, civil, administrative, and criminal liability of public managers, as well as universal suffrage and institutional oversight exercised by state bodies. Finally, it contends that the Public Prosecution Service, especially in light of article 129, II, of the Constitution, plays a central role in making administrative transparency effective, both through preventive and extrajudicial action and through the use of judicial instruments aimed at curbing illegality, administrative misconduct, state omissions, and abuses of purpose in public management.