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This chapter explores the relationship between democratization and decentralization. In Mexico, the government promoted deliberative citizen participation nation-wide in rural municipalities, well before national electoral democratization. Mexican decentralization empowered municipalities, but it turns out that municipal governance systematically excludes millions of rural people who live outside of the town centers that usually control municipal affairs. Those villages are most directly governed by sub-municipal authorities. In some states and regions these truly local authorities are chosen democratically, representing villagers to the municipality, in others they are designated from above, representing the mayor to the villagers. This chapter explores rural citizens' efforts to hold local governments accountable through three different comparative research strategies: analysis of resource allocation decision-making processes in a representative sample of local rural governments in the state of Oaxaca; comparison of changing municipal-sub-municipal power relations in four rural states (Oaxaca, Guerrero, Hidalgo, and Chiapas); and a nation-wide comparison of the state level laws that govern this invisible ‘sub-municipal regime’.

Chapter 6 moves the analysis to the case of Recife, in Brazil. This city presents two cases in one, and as such allows a unique time-based comparison that adds to the space-based comparisons undertaken throughout the book. The chapter shows that Recife’s two distinct experiences of participatory budgeting, implemented under different local governments, reveal contrasting patterns of state-society relationships: the first one (1993–2000 under a PMDB/PFL coalition) closely corresponds to an ideal type of clientelism, while the other one (2001–2009, under the PT) has the characteristics of disempowering co-option. These varying outcomes thus represent a variation on the mobilization axis, which is best explained by the important changes introduced in the institutional design by the PT in 2001. The sociopolitical context, however, sustained an unequal partnership and political control practices in both experiences.

Chapter 7 presents the most successful case, Belo Horizonte, showing how it more closely corresponds to a case of democratic success, with democratic cooperation emerging between state and society actors. This is best explained by two main elements. On the one hand, the institutional design adopted in Belo Horizonte fostered collective organization of groups of citizens to define the common good. On the other hand, the sociopolitical context within which the process was implemented fostered the autonomy of participants and, rather than sustain strategies of political control, led to development of an equal partnership (understood as such) between state and society actors in the participatory process.

This chapter takes up this theme in more transnational terms, examining the extensive “repurposing” of participatory-budgeting routines in the context of mainstream experiments in inclusive local governance. The “pasteurized” version of PB favored by the multilateral agencies is seen to have traveled far and fast, but the transformative potential of the original seems to have been lost along the way.

This chapter centers on the storied site of PB’s “invention.” Though still an inspiration to many, the Porto Alegre experience illustrates the political slipperiness of the PB concept, which under more conservative administrations has become a hollowed out version of its former self. Policy models are consequently not always what they seem, even in their sites of authenticity.

This chapter examines the concept of “participatory budgeting” (PB). Since the centuries-old political institutions are ailing, perhaps a dose of modern technology could revive them; and since people are indifferent to public meetings and polling stations, perhaps they would show up for something online. Using the PB process, people decide how to spend part of the city budget through an annual series of neighborhood, district, and citywide assemblies. At these meetings, community members and elected budget delegates discuss community needs and set spending priorities. The United Nations and World Bank name PB a best practice of democratic governance. Most PB processes concern municipal spending, but states, counties, schools, and housing authorities have also begun using it for their own budgets.

Democratic innovations, variously described as ‘empowered participation’ or ‘civic innovation’, are designed to increase and deepen citizen participation in the decisions that affect them directly. This chapter reviews current understanding of participatory processes such as citizens’ assemblies, citizens’ juries, deliberative polling, participatory budgeting, study circles, town meetings, and online dialogues; and considers their impact along with an analysis of the implications of different participatory designs on democratic qualities and policy outcomes. One of the limitations of the burgeoning literature on democratic innovations is the tendency to focus on exemplary cases, which often underplays the variety of conditions that need to be in place for the success of these forms of public engagement. Close attention is given to the different approaches taken with participatory budgeting and randomly selected mini-publics in diverse contexts, to illustrate both the substantial potential of democratic innovations to improve democratic politics and their vulnerabilities to misapplication.

This chapter examines how the concept of “participatory budgeting” has become a global phenomenon. It traces the genealogy of participatory budgeting, from its original formulation as a tool of grassroots democracy in Brazil in the mid-1980s to its emergence as a best practice for intergovernmental organizations such as USAID and the World Bank, especially in the area of good governance. It explains how participatory budgeting evolved into a model of participatory democracy that deemphasized associations and collectives in favor of the individual citizen. It also considers the notion that political and economic elites colonized “pure” participation in order to legitimate the expansion of capitalist markets, suggesting that regulation and governance questions are always a part of public participation and that participatory practices are never exactly utopian.

This chapter discusses how in the US, the number of participatory budgeting (PB) participants and dollars allocated has roughly doubled each year since 2011. PB is also being considered for a growing range of budgets, including for districts, cities, school districts, universities, housing authorities, agencies, court settlements, community benefits agreements, and even community grants from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Since launching Joe Moore's process in 2009, PB has been brought to forty communities across the country. Democratic innovation is evident through people organizing public forums, writing to their elected officials, sharing videos and materials with friends, and meeting with school and university administrators.

This chapter talks about how a small but growing group of advocates worked to bring participatory budgeting (PB) to the US. They initially associated with Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Mike Menser at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Baiocchi was a Brazilian transplant to the US, while Menser was a philosophy professor, union organizer, and fan of urban agriculture and economic democracy. In 2009, the group launched the first PB process in the US. Through public talks, they met with Joe Moore, a member of the city council, who took interest in PB but remained doubtful of its success in Chicago without the mayor's support. However, after it occurred to him that he had direct authority over a modest pot of money, Moore decided to launch the first US experiment in PB-style democracy as a means of reengaging his frustrated constituents.

The concept of participatory budgeting was developed as a means of bypassing corrupt local elites and creating better governance in developing countries. Applied in the global north, it attempts to give power back to communities to set spending priorities within their neighbourhoods. This chapter examines two attempts at participatory budgeting for the arts in Birmingham – the city council’s Arts Champions scheme and a participatory action research project led by the author. Two key problems highlighted by the case studies are identified. First, funders being reluctant to hand full control to neighbourhoods over how spending is undertaken, with a tendency to push communities toward the funders’ spending priorities. Second, and related to this, is a lack of capacity at neighbourhood level to move beyond the “ideas generation” stage, toward having the confidence to design and commission cultural projects to realise those ideas. This speaks to wider problems in deprived communities – notably education, skills and confidence – that cannot be tackled simply by adding cultural activity.

In Brazil, political participation is a recent phenomenon. In the late 1970s, social movements and some NGOs began to demand what they called a ‘right to participate’ in the control of the state and the decision-making processes of public policy. The Federal Constitution from 1988 created many instruments to involve stakeholders directly in the formulation and management of specific policies by foreseeing direct participation in them. Probably the best known mode of participation is participatory budgeting. It was first implemented in Porto Alegre in 1990 and, then, expanded to many cities in Brazil and the world. New forms of relationship between citizens and the state have been attempted – with success – at the various levels of government and in the treatment of a variety of public issues. But severe difficulties in the political representative system and the problem of social inequality are still subsistent.

City and local governments have welcomed public participation, in short-term ways, on issues such as crime prevention, affordable housing, urban planning, service provision, and general budgeting. They have been reluctant, however, to include citizens in substantive, long-term collaborative governance. At a time of budget constraints, multifaceted social problems, declining public trust, changing citizen expectations, and social media transparency, public administrators are motivated to experiment, but only incrementally. Drawing from interviews with reformers, this chapter discusses ad hoc strategies of citizen involvement directed toward specific policy problems, environmental commitments to participation involving multiple forms of citizen engagement, educational innovations such as citizens’ academies, and power-sharing innovations such as participatory budgeting. While some participatory innovations dissipate after a few months, others take root in a self-sustaining civic environment. Factors relevant to sustainability include divisions of labor between citizens and city managers, persistent outreach, substantive work done by citizens, and real power-sharing opportunities.

This chapter explores the vital role of policy networks in the transnational (re)construction of the PB field, concluding that these are nevertheless invariably connected to centers of political power.

This chapter addresses the issue of whether participatory budgeting (PB) in the US would repeat the same pattern from Brazil—by being a “pro-poor” program, in which poor people participated more often and won more funding. For the first few years in the US, the answer was a definite maybe; poor people in the US did not flock to PB. Unlike the favelas (shantytowns) of Brazil in which basic infrastructure improvements funded by PB are a top priority, streets in the US are already paved, and fixing potholes is a middle-class concern. Instead of satisfying basic needs, PB has often provided an outlet for creativity, such as underpass murals, artistic bike racks, and dog parks. PB is not inherently pro-poor in the United States, but it can inspire altruistic voting on behalf of projects that benefit other communities.

This chapter explores how, in September 2013, the White House reached out to the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) group to survey how the federal government could support PB. The early success of PB in the US provided a new model for beefing up the participation side of open government. White House communications contacted the PBP along with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and together they explored how federal housing and community development funds could be allocated through PB. The PBP also decided to focus more on developing the common tools and resources that could enable PB to grow dramatically across the US and beyond. They also designed new training methods and toolkits to enable community members to play a stronger role in both advocacy and implementation.

Chapter 3 explores political and cultural dimensions of the sharing city. It discusses the centrality of urban spaces to political and protest movements such as the Arab Spring and Occupy; and how such movements now equally depend on public cyberspace. It explores ways in which sharing can underpin democracy in practice, building social capital, supporting a healthy public realm, and challenging the hold of consumerism on identity. It focuses on communal forms of sharing, for example considering the role of collaborative leisure, and taking a close look at streetlife and other opportunities for the development of interculturalism. Finally it examines ways in which sharing is emerging in the practices of urban governance, highlighting key challenges to urban democracy in land ownership and taxation.

This concluding chapter reexamines the pitfalls and unrealized promises of public participation in a context of severe structural inequalities. Focusing on remedies suggested in the other chapters of this book, it argues that critical perspectives on participation are necessary in order to leverage the opportunities for challenging inequalities resulting from fiscal and political crises. The chapter outlines four questions that can pave the way for new research on participation and public deliberation: probing how cultural discourses around participation are intertwined with historically specific political environments; recontextualizing and historicizing what is really “new” about the new public participation, including the concepts of participatory budgeting and Asset-Based Community Development; linking the new public participation to larger trends in the reinforcement of inequality in the present moment; and reevaluating the continuing promise of participation, such as in the case of empowerment projects, despite mixed, complex results.