Participatory citizenship in the making? The multiple citizenship trajectories of participatory budgeting participants in Brazil

ABSTRACT

Most scholarship on participatory budgeting (PB) has highlighted its impact on democratic processes and redistributive outcomes, but there is also an implicit argument associating it with citizenship learning processes at the individual and collective levels. As a mechanism for social interactions, it is often called a ‘school of citizenship’ nurturing the development of ‘better citizens’ who participate as agents and members of a political community. This relation is, however, more ambiguous in practice. The article looks at this relationship and at the rise of so-called participatory democratic citizenship. Drawing from surveys conducted among PB participants in two Brazilian cities in 2009 (Porto Alegre) and 2014 (Belo Horizonte), the article shows that, at the individual level, multiple trajectories of citizenship can emerge among participants and can coexist in participatory processes. Contrary to the common wisdom, the article brings to light the complexity of differentiated citizenship learning processes among individuals active in participatory mechanisms. These cases thus show that PB does not necessarily contribute to the creation of a civic community, that is, a durable and active form of social organization that fosters the rise of a participatory and democratic citizenship.

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory budgeting
• democratic citizenship
• citizen trajectories
• Brazil

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Fabiene Fernandes Diogo and the team of students who conducted the survey at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, as well as Alejandro Angel Tapias, Nicolas Lévesque, and Maude Leclerc for research assistantship during the course of the project in Belo Horizonte. I am also grateful to Luciano Fedozzi at the Universidade Federal de Rio Grande do Sul for having shared his data on the Porto Alegre cycle with me for this comparison to be possible. Previous versions of this article have been presented at conferences and the argument has benefited from the generous comments of Stephanie McNulty, Wagner Romão, Adrián Gurza Lavalle, Paolo Spada, Pascale Dufour, and the participants of the CPDS International Conference in Montreal. All mistakes remain mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This story is based on an interview conducted with Rogério at two moments in time, in August 2008 and then in August 2014, in Belo Horizonte.

2. The preliminary data used for this study are based on findings about the profile of 967 PB participants in the 2009 PB cycle in Porto Alegre. The study was conducted by a team of scholars associated with the Observatorio das Metropoles and the Observatorio da Cidade de Porto Alefre (ObservaPOA), in collaboration with the Universidade Federal de Rio Grande do Sul and the Municipality of Porto Alegre (Fedozzi et al., 2013). Data in Belo Horizonte were collected by the author with the support of a team of students at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais during the 2014 PB cycle in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. The study was conducted face-to-face with 473 respondents during the participatory assemblies of the second round in the 19 subregions held in 4 out of the 9 city administrative regions (Barreiro, Leste, Centro-Sul and Nordeste).

3. In both municipalities, PB was first brought by a PT-led coalition that stayed in power for several years, allowing for the mechanism to take root in citizens' and administrations' practices. In Porto Alegre, the PT lost the municipal election in 2004. PB's fate was at the centre of the electoral campaign, and the newly elected PPS-PTB (Partido Popular Socialista-Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro) centre-right government of Mayor Fogaça promised that it would keep it alive, which they did while downsizing their support (Melgar, 2014). In Belo Horizonte, it was in 2009 that the PSDB-PT (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira – Partido dos Trabalhadores) coalition in power since 1993 broke apart, and that the PT became the opposition in municipal government. PB's fate was also a central theme of the 2009 campaign, and incoming Mayor Lacerda promised that the mechanism was there to stay. In both cases, PB was soon complemented with new and sometimes seen as competing models of citizen participation (Governança Solidaria Local (GSL) in Porto Alegre, and Planejamento Participativo Regionalizado (PPR) in Belo Horizonte) and PB activists (often associated with the PT) contend that PB has lost its strength and is no longer what it was. PB and its participants, indeed, had to adapt to the new participatory architecture (Montambeault, 2015b), but the mechanism was essentially maintained and continued to attract participation at the local level. While its critics contend that the mechanisms are no longer efficient spaces for participation, the assertion is based on a reduction of public spending in this programme, and not on the core institutional features of the programme.

4. The term regional refers to the decentralized administrative unit used by the local Brazilian administration, and it corresponds to a district.

5. See, for example, Wampler (2007), Baiocchi et al. (2011), and Montambeault (2015a).

6. There is a growing body of literature that looks at participatory citizenship building through the lenses of citizen competences acquired through the process. This understanding moves the debate beyond the idea that participation creates social capital à la Putnam, or that it contributes to socializing participants to politics. It actually looks at the sets of skills, grammar and attitudes developed among individuals who participate in deliberative instances such as PB (See, for example: Abers, 2001; Lerner & Schugurensky, 2005; Schugurensky, 2007; Talpin, 2012).

7. An interesting perspective to understand the motives behind social engagement has been developed by Olivier Fillieule, who looks at engagement through an interactionist approach, as both an individual and a dynamic phenomenon (2001). I borrowed his concept of engagement trajectory to illustrate the idea following which the practice of citizenship as agency is potentially observable in individuals over the long run and beyond PB itself.

8. Another 33% of the respondents were in the next category in Belo Horizonte, earning from 2 to 5 times the minimum salary, which corresponds to the lower middle-class sector. Very few upper middle-class and wealthy citizens participate in PB in both cities.

9. The responses to this question were numerous and were thus grouped into categories that correspond to the larger motive identified: (1) Demands: To get a service or a public work for my community and to a specific demand for a public work, (2) Sense of community: To help my community, (3) Knowledge and control: To learn more about PB and to monitor the municipal government, (4) Democracy and participation: To contribute to the definition of municipal priorities with the government and because I like to participate. In Porto Alegre, another category was included: (5) Recruitment: When the main reason they participated was that they were asked to by some group/person.

10. At the time of this study, the data on the total number of participants to the 2015–2016 PB cycle (held in November–December 2014) were not yet available.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this project has been funded by an Emerging Scholar grant from the Fonds de la Recherche du Québec—Société et Culture (2012–2015).