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Abstract
Brazilian democratic innovation is gathering considerable international attention, spawning a growing interest in replicating the institutional designs of its participatory governance institutions in countries with very different political histories and cultures of governance. Drawing on ethnographic research in the north and north-east of the country, sites to which innovations developed in the south of Brazil have been institutionalized in very different political and cultural landscapes, this article examines the micro-politics of citizen engagement in two participatory governance spaces. Understanding the contributions that Brazilian experience can make to democratic theory and practice, we suggest, requires a more nuanced examination of how democratic spaces and cultures of politics are mutually constructed in practice, and how different forms of power shape this process.
Acknowledgements
This article is the fruit of intense conversations and insights gained as part of the Olhar Crítico project. We are especially grateful to our Olhar Crítico colleagues and co-authors Renato Athias, Silvia Cordeiro, Nelson Giordano Delgado, Raimundo Nonato and Jorge Romano. Any errors of omission or judgement remain ours. This work was supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) through the DFID Brazil Social Inclusion in Policy and Planning Programme and the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability; and by a doctoral scholarship from the Economic and Social Research Council [ESRC award PTA-030-2004-00724].
Notes
1. A study for the German development agency GIZ concluded that by 2010 up to 1,469 experiences that could potentially be described as participatory budgeting had been introduced across the world, including around 300 in Europe and North America (Sintomer et al. 2010). See also Fung and Wright (2003).
2. For a fuller discussion of this historical rupture and its significance, see Shankland (Citation2010), Chapter 2.
3. Olhar Crítico brought together broad analyses of shifts in citizen-state engagement with case studies of democratic experiments in Northern and Northeastern Brazil (Romano et al. 2007a, Romano et al. 2007b, Cornwall et al. 2008). Two of the latter evolved into longitudinal ethnographic studies of participatory institutions in the health system, with which the authors of this article remained closely involved over the following half-decade, and which provide the empirical focus of our analysis.
4. Anthropological studies of Brazilian participatory institutions remain rare, despite the emergence of a flourishing school of political ethnography (see Goldman 2006, Montero et al. 2012
5. A more detailed account of this work, including the methodology used and the scope of the studies, can be found in Cordeiro et al. (Citation2007), Cornwall (Citation2008), Cornwall et al. (Citation2008), Shankland (Citation2010), Shankland and Cornwall (Citation2007) and Shankland and Athias (Citation2007).
6. For a fuller discussion of this historical rupture and its significance, see Shankland (2010), Chapter 2.
8. See, for example, the BBC report ‘Brazil’s leaders caught out by mass protests’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22947466, accessed 19 June 2013).
9. A more detailed account of this work, including the methodology used and the scope ofthe studies, can be found in Cordeiro et al. (2007), Cornwall (2008), Cornwall et al. (2008), Shankland (2010), Shankland and Cornwall (2007) and Shankland and Athias (2007).
10. Minutes of the Conselho Municipal de Saúde, 8 April 2010.
11. Complaint lodged on 4 July 2011 with the Conselho Municipal de Saúde by a representative of the disabled people’s association.
12. Minutes of the Conselho Municipal de Saúde, 8 June 2010.
13. As Leonardo Avritzer has pointed out, unlike other sectors such as health, the infrastructure sector never established participatory governance institutions and there was therefore a lack of adequate mechanisms for citizen-state dialogue when the government launched its recent wave of investment in high-visibility mega-projects (see http://www.cartacapital.com.br/sociedade/o-que-as-manifestacoes-no-brasil-nos-dizem-1313.html, accessed 20 June 2013). There is a Datafolha survey that lists the causes cited (see http://rudaricci.blogspot.com/2013/06/datafolha-84-dos-participantes-do.html); it doesn’t list health and education but these are widely referred to in quotes from protestors.