Introduction

This chapter introduces the reader to PB’s core principles and basic institutional design. The core principles include voice, vote, social justice, social inclusion, and oversight. All PB programs adhere to these principles, but each program gives different weights to each principle, which helps to account for the differences in program design around the world. The chapter provides a detailed explanation of PB, based on the Porto Alegre model, which emerged as the early example that other governments sought to replicate. The chapter also introduces three guiding questions that shape the rest of the book: How has PB transformed during the past thirty years as it spreads around the globe? What are the causal mechanisms through which PB programs may produce social and political change? To what extent have PB programs actually generated this social and political change? The authors emphasize these questions as critical for advancing theoretical and empirical debates surrounding PB as well as participatory democratic institutions in general.