Deliberating for sustainability: lessons from the Porto Alegre experiment with participatory budgeting

Figures & data

Table 1. Profile of participants in PB, 2000.

	City average	All participants	Delegates	Councillors
Women	55.4%	56.4%	55%	27%
Low income	11.4%	30.3%	23.7%	21.4%
Afrodescendant	15.4%	28.1%	21%	22%
Low education	15.8%	60.3%	39%	36%
Age 16–24	24.3%	17.6%	N/A	N/A

Source: Baiocchi (2005, p. 15) and Fedozzi et al. (2013, p. 29) for Age.

Table 2. OP demands per municipal department, 1990–2007.

Municipal department or secretariat and related Thematic Demand Prioritized	Frequency	Percentage of total OP demands
SMOV (street paving)	1.566	26.20
DMAE (water and sanitation)	1.043	17.50
DEMHAB (housing)	760	12.70
SMT (transport)	548	9.20
DEP (drainage)	423	7.10
SMED (education)	313	5.20
SMAM (green areas)	273	4.60
SMS (health)	231	3.90
FASC (social assistance)	229	3.80
SMIC (industry and commerce)	206	3.40
SMC (culture)	135	2.30
SME (sport and recreation)	97	1.60
DMLU (urban sanitation)	47	0.80%
SPM (planning)	32	0.50%
Others	73	1.20%
Total	5.976	100.00%

Source: WB (2008, p. 54).

Table 3. Porto Alegre: participatory budgeting district thematic priorities.

Source: Adapted from Marquetti et al. (2012).

Table 4. Municipal budget distribution by sector, 1989–2000 (millions of Reais).

Sector	1990	1992	1997	2000
Urban development, basic services and environment	134.7	189.3	307	385.8
Economic development	2.7	3.1	6.6	8.6
Social services (health, education, housing, welfare)	91.2	152.6	314.8	361.6
Culture, recreation and tourism	2.6	5.5	17.09	15.1

Source: Menegat (2002, p. 195).

Table 5. Percentage of investment projects completed and Total Investment in the OP in Porto Alegre.

Year	1990–1999 average	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2005–2010 average
Percentage of projects completed	97%	90%	80%	77%	68%	77%	28%	9%	45%
Total annual investment in R$	N/A	N/A	N/A	79 million R$	52s million R$	86 million R$	47 million R$	36 million R$	47.5 million R$

Sources: For percentage or projects completed: Marquetti et al. (2012, p. 21) (for years 1990–2004), WB (2008, p. 47) (for years 2005–2006) and Melgar (2014 p. 130) (for years 2005–2010). For total investments: Silveira Campos and Silveira (2015, p. 116).

Table 6. Evolution of social and environmental indicators in Porto Alegre.

	1989	1991	2000	2010
Households with access to treated water (Cabannes 2004 and ObservaPoA 2017)		94.70%	98.13%	99.35%
Unaccounted-for-water (Hall et al. 2002 and ObservaPoA 2017)		50.37%	34.37% (2002)	25.39%
Households with sewage connection (Cabannes 2004 and ObservaPoA 2017)	46.00%		84.00% (2002)	94.26%
Proportion of treated waste water (Menegat 2002 and ObservaPoA 2017)	2.00%		27.00%
Households with access to solid waste collection (IBGE, 2010)		96.99%	99.37%	99.72%
Green areas (m^2 per person) (Menegat 2002)	12.50		14.30
Households with paved streets (ObservaPoA 2017)			79.42%	88.10%
HDI (Human Development Index) (ObservaPoA 2017)		0.660	0.744	0.805
Life expectancy at birth (ObservaPoA 2017)		69.87 years	73.65 years	76.42 years
Under 5 child mortality (ObservaPoA 2017)		23.40	17.30	11.85

Table 7. Survey of public perception of OP in Porto Alegre by percentage of population, 2006.

	Totally agree (%)	Somewhat agree (%)
OP is very important	65.88	23.61
OP broadens democracy	57.26	26.66
OP increases government efficiency	51.71	29.16
OP is pro-poor	53.6	30.11
Improves quality of life	56.91	28.57

Source: World Bank (2008, p. 37).

Figure 1. Participants in the PB Process in Porto Alegre (ObservaPoA 2017).

Figure 2. The Composition of the COP in Porto Alegre (2004⁸).

Table 8. Basic indicators of civil society organisations, Porto Alegre, 1988–2009.

	1988	1998	2009
Neighbourhood associations	300	540	686
Housing cooperatives	11 (1994)	51	N/A
Popular councils (district-level associations that coordinate neighbourhood associations)	3	11	N/A

Source: Baiocchi (2003, p. 58) and Souza (2010, p. 43).

Table 9. Principal institutional challenges and solutions to Porto Alegre’s participatory budgeting process.

Challenge	Importance and consequence	Possible solution
Lack of a municipal ordinance that formally institutionalises the OP process and allocates 100% of investment budget to the PB.	Reduces long terms sustainability and allows unsupportive government to weaken the OP, as it occurred in 2005.	Creation of a municipal ordinance that institutionalises the OP and grants it a control over 100% of the investment budget. The ordinance must be rigid enough to ensure the long-term sustainability of the OP but flexible enough to allow for the OP process to be continuously adapted and improved democratically.
Limited scope of PB as it only deals with project-specific capital investments and lack of cooperation with other municipal institutions that have wider focus	Segmented, sectorial planning, which only attends to specific short-term demands.	Strengthen the link between municipal institutions and the PB, so they can co-develop ordinances and long-term development plans to address wide-scale multi-sectorial issues. Alternatively, the PB can be expanded to directly control the rest of the budget and the formulation of municipals plans and ordinances.
Low participation of some groups such as middle and upper economic classes, entrepreneurial professions, Caucasians and the youth.	Reduces the number of voices, ideas and opinions heard, which can lead to some issues gaining greater attention than others. It also reduces the breadth of people that end up participating and supporting the OP in the face of possible government changes.	Inclusion of Actor-Based Assemblies and Forums so underrepresented and/or vulnerable groups can participate and have a voice (such as Assemblies and Forums for entrepreneurs, youth and the elderly). Installing term limits for delegates and councillors as well as randomly selecting a percentage of them can also lead to further plurality. Finally, better participatory methodologies in assemblies and councils can foster greater inclusiveness.
General lack of financial literacy and capacity of participants to monitor and assess budgets and complex infrastructure projects.	Reduces the effectiveness of the OP’s participatory monitoring process.	Improvement of investments in capacity building for financial literacy and ensuring the city budgets and the PISs are simple and user-friendly.
Complexity of the PB process.	Reduces the willingness to participate due to the lack of understanding of the complex process.	Improvement of investments in capacity building and communication to widen citizen’s knowledge and understanding of the OP.
Monitoring gap in terms of project design, development and implementation.	While OP projects can respond to citizen demands, their implementation is a top-down process, which can be unresponsive to local conditions and preferences.	Expansion of the PB’s participatory process to project design, development and implementation and improvment of the transparency of the entire process.

Table 10. Evolution of socio-economic indicators in Porto Alegre 1991–2000.

	1991	2000	2010
Poverty	9.78%	8.49%	3.82%
Extreme poverty	2.37%	2.37%	0.92%
GINI coefficient	0.57	0.60	0.60
Per capita income (Reais)	1021.93	1399.50	1758.27

Source: Atlas Brazil (2017).

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