This paper proposes a analysis on the dynamics established by the Conselho Municipal de Assistência Social (CMAS) Niterói-RJ and its local process of public deliberation about Social Assistance, analyzing the effectiveness of one of its main tasks: the social control. Assumes that, in the field of Social Assistance Policy, the municipal councils are constituted as spaces correlations of forces, able to promote and strengthen a new relationship between state and civil society, linked to their ability to make policy. Its approach becomes relevant for its role as opposed to the perpetuation of the idea that the main changes of the Brazilian state - political, economic and social - occurred without the active participation of society as a result of political practices grounded in authoritarianism, clientelism and paternalism that marked much of our sociopolitical history. Expressed thus a reflection on the process of overcoming historical marks of social welfare policy in our country, from the 1980s, broadens the democratic and participatory debate, whose highest expression is Brazilian Federal Constitution (1988). Thus, the present study addresses aspects that qualify policy management councils as a new democratic able to provide the division of power, as well as dialogue about the possibilities that can transform it into an instrument of reproduction of the status quo, primarily related to new settings that civil society takes today.