Participatory budgets in Brazil and Portugal: comparing patterns of dissemination

ABSTRACT

The dissemination of citizen participation in policymaking has increased considerably worldwide, as in the case of participatory budgeting, considered as the best-known democratic innovation in this field of study and practice. In order to share empirical knowledge about participatory budgets, the article provides a comparative analysis of patterns of dissemination in Brazil and Portugal. These countries were selected for being paradigmatic cases in the dissemination of participatory budgets. The comparative analysis of sociopolitical contexts and institutional designs sheds light on similarities and differences on democratic frameworks, political and non-political agents, target public, approach to participation, and main goals. Findings point to similarities in the passage from the dictatorial to the democratic regime in both countries, and differences in the role of political parties and social agents behind the dissemination. It is within such sociopolitical contexts that non-associated citizens are the target of participatory budgets in both countries, although they are differently approached because address different goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory budget
• dissemination
• comparative analysis
• Brazil
• Portugal

Acknowledgements

This work is the result of the Research Project “New Forms of Political Participation: Protests and Institutional Participation in Brazil and Portugal in Comparative Perspective” funded by FCT/CAPES, 39/2014.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Roberto Falanga is Postdoc Research Fellow of Sociology. His key research interests are participatory democracy, policy analysis, and the impacts of global financial crisis in Southern Europe. He has published in journals such as Clinical Psychology and Universitas Humanas, and published the Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance.

Lígia Helena Hahn Lüchmann is Professor at the Department of Sociology and Political Science, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Her key research interests are civil society, associativism, participatory institutions and democracy. She has published in journals such as Revista Dados, Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, and Revista de Sociologia e Política.

Notes

1 The network was created in 2007. Data from a research conducted by the authors of this article in 2012 identified 14 PBs in northern states; 79 in northeastern states; 9 in centre western states; 151 in southeastern states; and 100 in southern states. More information at: http://www.redeopbrasil.com.br/home/.

2 More information about local PBs is available at www.portugalparticipa.pt.

3 According to de Souza (2015), although PT did not adopt PB at the federal level, other participatory institutions (e.g. regional conferences and national councils) were equally promoted. For instance, under the leadership of the PT leader Dilma Rousseff, the National Social Participation Policy (“Política Nacional de Participação Social”) was created in 2014 (Cayres 2015).

4 Gugliano (2016) argues that out of the 42 PBs in the state of São Paulo, only 23 were led by PT in 2012; while in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, 21 out of 29 were promoted by PT. On the national scale, data from 2014 shows that 45% of the local PBs were run by PT; 26% by the “Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement” (“Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro”); 7,5% by the Brazilian Socialist Party (“Partido Socialista Brasileiro”) and 4% by the Party of the Brazilian Social Democracy (“Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira”), and other few PBs by 11 small political parties (Fedozzi and Lima 2013).

5 Acknowledgments to Gustavo Venturelli and Heloísa Domingos for this ouput.

6 The “Participatory Budgeting Portugal” project (“Orçamento Participativo Portugal”), funded by the Equal Initiative promoted by the European Commission in 2008 was one of the first co-led projects in this field by the University of Coimbra and the NGO In Loco (see: www.op-portugal.org). Their partnership has been reinforced through several initiatives for different publics. The European Economic Area-funded project between “Portugal Participates: roads to societal innovation” (“Portugal Participa: caminhos para a inovação societal”) (see: www.portugalparticipa.pt) and the European Union-funded international project “Empatia” (see: www.empatia-project.eu) are their most recent projects. The former, which focused on the implementation of pilot participatory processes in a sample of Portuguese municipalities, managed to start up a national network of municipalities that have adopted participatory processes – similar to those that already existing in Brazil and in Mozambique – which annually awards a best practice.

7 Similar societal dynamics occurred in other cities, where the autonomous initiative of social and political sectors made decision-makers decide to implement PBs. It was the case of town councillors playing a decisive role for the implementation of the PB in Chicago (Secondo and Lerner 2011), and social groups in Guelph, Canada (Pinnington, Josh, and Schugurensky 2009).

8 The PB of Lisbon was acknowledged by UN-Habitat in 2009 (Cabannes 2009) and OECD in 2010 (OECD 2011, 216) as an effective democratic innovation, and in the same year the Eurocities organization shortlisted the PB as a notable participatory practice (more information at: http://www.eurocities.eu/eurocities/eurocities-awards/awards2009).

9 The PB distinguished the allocation of financial resources for major and minor projects in 2012 (respectively €1.5 million for minor projects up to €150,000 each, and €1 million for major projects up to €500,000 each). The PB further altered the allocation of funding for small projects in 2016, aimed at equally distributing € 300,000 to each one of the five territorial units of the city (Historical Center, Center, North, East, and West)

10 More information about the winning projects is available at: https://op.lisboaparticipa.pt/projetos-vencedores.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia: [Grant Number SFRH/BPD/109406/2015]; FCT/CAPES.