How Participatory Institutions Deepen Democracy through Broadening Representation: The Case of Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil

Theoria ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (139) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Piper
Keyword(s):  
Participatory Budgeting ◽  
Porto Alegre ◽  
Participatory Institutions

Expanding Accountability through Participatory Institutions: Mayors, Citizens, and Budgeting in Three Brazilian Municipalities

2004 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Wampler
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Sao Paulo ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
São Paulo ◽  
Participatory Budgeting ◽  
Porto Alegre ◽  
Participatory Institutions

AbstractAs new political institutions provide Brazilians with unprecedented access to policymaking and decisionmaking venues, politicians and activists have undertaken reform efforts to promote institutional arrangements partly designed to expand accountability. The expansion of participatory decisionmaking venues may grant citizens greater authority, but these institutions could also undermine municipal councils’ ability to curb the prerogatives of mayors. This article analyzes participatory budgeting in São Paulo, Recife, and Porto Alegre to illustrate that mayors have differing capacities to implement their policy preferences, and this greatly affects how accountability may be extended.

Participatory budgeting and government efficiency: evidence from municipal governments in South Korea

2021 ◽  
pp. 002085232199120
Author(s):  
Sun-Moon Jung
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Fiscal Sustainability ◽  
Efficiency Improvement ◽  
Participatory Budgeting ◽  
Strong Argument ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
Administrative Efficiency ◽  
Participatory Institutions ◽  
Improvement Effect ◽  
Government Efficiency

The current study evaluates the role of a democratic institution—participatory budgeting—in improving government efficiency. Participatory institutions aim to enhance governance, information sharing, and the responsiveness of political agents to citizens, leading to fiscal accountability and efficiency. Drawing from a database of 221 municipal governments in South Korea around a mandatory participatory budgeting adoption period, we find that participatory budgeting adoptions are followed by improvement in multiple dimensions of government efficiency. In particular, municipal governments experience statistically significant improvements in their fiscal sustainability and administrative efficiency. In additional analysis, we find that the efficiency improvements are more pronounced in the presence of strong mayoral leadership. Overall findings suggest that participatory budgeting programs contribute to fiscal health and administrative efficiency, above and beyond their role in securing fiscal democracy. Points for practitioners The current study suggests that participatory budget systems not only contribute to quality in democracy (as prior studies have found), but also improve fiscal efficiency and accountability by serving as a bottom-up governance mechanism. We document that introductions of participatory budgeting programs are followed by statistically significant improvements in fiscal sustainability and administrative efficiency. The results also indicate that the efficiency-improvement effect differs across municipalities, depending on their political environments. Overall, this study provides a strong argument for the participatory budgeting system by empirically supporting its efficiency-improvement effect.

scholarly journals La batalla por la democracia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERNESTO GANUZA ◽  
Heloise Nez ◽  
Ernesto Morales
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Participatory Budgeting ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Porto Alegre ◽  
Local Participation ◽  
Urban Social Movements ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
Set Up

The emergence of new participatory mechanisms, such as participatory budgeting, in towns and cities in recent years, has given rise to a conflict between the old protagonists of local participation and the new citizens invited to participate. These mechanisms offer a logic of collective action different to what has been the usual fare in the cities – one that is based on proposal rather than demand. As a result, it requires urban social movements to transform their own dynamics in order to make room for a new political subject (the citizenry and the non-organised participant) and to act upon a stage where deliberative dynamics now apply. The present article aims to analyse this conflict in three different cities that set up participatory budgeting at different times: Porto Alegre, Cordova and Paris. The associations in the three cities took up a position against the new participatory mechanism and demanded a bigger role in the political arena. Through a piece of ethnographic research, we shall see that the responses of the agents involved (politicians, associations and citizens) in the three cities share some arguments, although the conflict was resolved differently in each of them. The article concludes with reflections on the consequences this conflict could have for contemporary political theory, especially with respect to the role of associations in the processes of democratisation and the setting forth of a new way of doing politics by means of deliberative procedures.

scholarly journals Unraveled Practices of Participatory Budgeting in European Democracies

2021 ◽  
pp. 287-313
Author(s):  
Juraj Nemec ◽  
David Špaček ◽  
Michiel S. de Vries
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Local Democracy ◽  
Participatory Budgeting ◽  
Porto Alegre ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
The Status

AbstractThe goal of the final chapter was to summarize lessons about the worst and best practices, causes, and effects of (successful or unsuccessful) participatory budgeting, delivered by the country case studies included in this book. The information collected serves to check to what extent participatory budgeting as practiced in the countries involved presents a real attempt to change municipal budgets toward addressing the needs of marginalized groups and to improve decision-making based on local democracy and participation, or whether these processes as such are to be judged to be more important than any output and outcomes. All in all, the practices of PB as they evolved in European countries out of the innovative original as developed in Porto Alegre in the 1990s can be seen neither as a process of policy diffusion nor as a process of policy mimesis. The terminology of participatory budgeting remained, but the goals and tools to achieve the goals resulted only in marginal changes in the status quo in municipalities in European countries practicing participatory budgeting, instead of resulting in radical changes to increase spending in favor of marginalized groups. Participatory budgeting in selected European countries is far away from the level of “best practice” in which local democracy and participation are promoted. However, it is also not possible to conclude that all experiences are just “trivial pursuits”.

scholarly journals Presupuesto Participativos (PPs) e Instituciones Participativas (IPs) en Brasil: Criterios (y marco) para la evaluación de experiencias y casos

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valdemir Pires ◽  
Carmen Pineda Nebot
Keyword(s):  
Comprehensive Assessment ◽  
Participatory Budgeting ◽  
Participatory Institutions ◽  
Criteria For Evaluation

<p align="justify">En este artículo se identifican diversos criterios relevantes para la evaluación de los presupuestos participativos y las instituciones participativas que son adoptados actualmente por gobiernos tanto de Brasil como de otros lugares del mundo, destacando la importancia de una evaluación global que integre todos estos criterios. Finalmente, se recomienda prestar especial atención a la evaluación de la deseabilidad de esas instituciones, que no siempre son percibidas positivamente por las teorías sobre la democracia.</p> <p align="justify"><b>This paper identifies relevant criteria for evaluation of participatory budgeting and participatory institutions that are currently adopted by governments of both Brazil and elsewhere, highlighting the importance of a comprehensive assessment that integrates all these criteria. Finally, it is recommended to pay special attention to assessing the desirability of these institutions, which are not always positively for theories on democracy.</b></p>

scholarly journals INVOLVEMENT OF THE POPULATION IN SOLVING LOCAL ISSUES: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE EXPERIENCE OF THE ALTAI TERRITORY

2020 ◽  
pp. 28-33
Author(s):  
Nikita Vadimovich Boev ◽  
Alexander Yakovlevich Trotskovsky
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Participatory Budgeting ◽  
Territorial Development ◽  
Porto Alegre ◽  
Russian Version ◽  
Local Initiatives ◽  
Urban Problems ◽  
The Government ◽  
Latin American Countries

The article defines initiative budgeting — the Russian version of the participatory budgeting method widely known abroad, which appeared in the late 1980s in Porto Alegre (Brazil). The emergence of participatory budgeting was a response to the need for citizens and government representatives to work together in solving urban problems. The successful experience of Porto Alegre first began to be replicated in Brazil, and then in other Latin American countries. As a result, participatory budgeting began to spread around the world. In Russia, the most common practice of initiative budgeting was the program for supporting local initiatives, which was launched in the Stavropol territory, demonstrating the possibility of actually involving citizens in solving local issues and improving the quality of the dialogue between the government and the population, increasing citizens «satisfaction with local government procedures and trust in them. The paper presents the experience of participation of the Altai territory in the practice of initiative budgeting, which is considered by the authors in the context of modern concepts of regional research and formation of strategies for territorial development.

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