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Ten years ago, Rebecca Abers published the first scholarly book in English on participatory budgeting in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre: Reinventing Local Democracy (2000). Since then, a score of books have come out on the subject, including one by this author, as well as numerous scholarly articles and doctoral dissertations. Empirical trends have been no less striking: “cases of participatory innovation … are surprisingly common and appear to represent a growing trend toward experimentation with participatory forms of democracy in local governments throughout Latin America” [Selee and Peruzzotti, ix].

All this attention reflects widespread concern with multiple ‘quality deficits’ among contemporary Latin American democracies [Diamond, Plattner, and Brun (2008); Diamond and Morlino (2005); O’Donnell, Cullell, and Iazzetta (2004)]. The ‘Participatory Promise,’ celebrated in many of the first generation of studies of participatory budgeting in Brazil (i.e. 1990s to early 2000s), resurrects the hope that human agency — democratic human agency — can and does matter even in the face of Latin America’s longstanding social inequalities, democratically debilitating corruption, and political clientelism [In addition to Abers (2000), a list of such ‘first generation’ book-length studies would include Avritzer (2002); Avritzer and Navarro (2003); Baiocchi (2003); Chavez and Goldfrank (2004); Fedozzi (2000); Nylen (2003); and Vilas Boas (1994)]. By and large, the first generation studied successful cases of PB, mostly in Brazil and many focusing on Porto Alegre. Findings indicated that PB tends to uphold the Participatory Promise that participatory reforms can be efficacious in ‘democratizing democracy.’

Ten years and many more empirical cases later, some of us are not so sure. A second generation of studies of PB and other mechanisms of participatory innovation (PI) — some of which are listed below — has since brought to bear a range of sophisticated and varied methodologies and applied them to cases of both success and failure, and of various ‘in-between’ outcomes. And while many analysts continue to study experiences of local-level PIs in Brazil, Porto Alegre’s PB is no longer presented as the norm; on the contrary, it is widely recognized as something of an anomaly.

With a few exceptions, there appears to be a near consensus around certain items. Most agree, for example, that PB and other PIs are not instances of direct, delegative, or participatory democracy, but constitute instead “a new layer of representation” [Melo in Selee & Peruzzotti, 30], “one that involves a heightened level of interaction between government officials and participants” [Wampler, 223].

Another point of consensus concerns the all-important notion that no institutional design of PB or any PI is universally applicable to all situations. For example, it is clear that PIs go nowhere without the consistent support of the relevant chief executive (mayors or governors). The political-institutional designs of most Latin American countries, especially at the local level, put few checks and balances on executive prerogative [See Selee and Peruzzotti, pp. 10-11]. Therein lies the paradox of many Latin American PIs: the executive has the power to implement PIs, the ultimate effect of which is to “divest power for allowing organized participation” [Rivera-Ottenberger in Selee & Perozzotti, 100]. So a mayor instituting PB not only needs to construct and maintain an entirely new set of institutions and practices, but also to subject him/herself to greater public transparency and scrutiny (i.e. new ‘societal’ checks and balances).

How and why would any rational executive do such a thing? While first generation authors focused to a greater degree on the role of participatory democratic (primarily, ‘new’ leftist) ideology, second generation authors tend to stress the role of “short-term strategic considerations” [Selee and Peruzzotti, 10] like building and managing electoral alliances with civil society organizations (CSOs) that have a prior history of popular mobilization. To the extent that strategic logic prevails, however, executive support for PIs — and therefore their long-term sustainability — can be expected to ebb and flow with the changing political context, as opposed to waxing and waning ideological commitment.

Most of the literature indicates that the success and sustainability of PIs rests on a dynamic balance between, on the one hand, a committed chief executive and administration, willing and able to invite civil society activists into decision-making processes while also keeping them from undermining those processes by claiming partisan, clientelist or other ‘special’ relationships with PI administrators; and, on the other hand, an equally committed group of civil society activists/participants who are sufficiently autonomous from the administration to be able to play the dual roles of coalition partners within these new institutions and loyal opposition when and if they perceive their interests to be threatened. So while executives can, and do, attempt to design and implement PIs ‘from above’ (perhaps because they are sincerely enamored with the Participatory Promise, or because of electoral positioning), to do so without active and autonomous CSO participation is likely to result in ‘hollow’ institutions peopled by ideologues, political sycophants, uncommitted bureaucrats, and ultimately resentful citizens who will walk away from the experience feeling even more disengaged and disillusioned than they were to begin with.

A potential problem in these ‘context matters’ conclusions is their apparent eclipsing of the Participatory Promise that human agency matters even in the face of daunting structural and institutional rigidities. Of the books introduced above, Reiter’s analysis is the most extreme in this regard: Brazil’s culturally and institutionally embedded social inequalities and “the pervasive attempts of historically included sectors to perpetuate and defend their inherited privilege” [1] undermine all well-intentioned efforts at inclusionary reform. In between the limiting cases of voluntarist agency and structural determination, Selee and Peruzzotti [10-11] find a broad range of “intermediate paths to institutional innovation [that] generated a meaningful process of political change” and were championed by embattled political elites attempting to “reaffirm their legitimacy or rebuild their political coalitions” in less than ideal socio-political contexts. Ultimately, it is Avritzer’s analysis of different types of PI, each with a different degree of participatory intensity and depth, and the socio-political contexts within which each type flourishes and/or flounders, that constitutes a giant leap forward in theorizing which expressions of participatory human agency work best in particular structural contexts, and which are likely not to work at all. Similarly, Wampler’s exploration of the reasons for success and failure associated with eight different PB experiences in Brazil — combining historical-institutionalist analysis of socio-political context with rationality approaches to human agency — is exemplary of this second generation of studies.

For a complete review of the following five books, see my forthcoming book review in Comparative Politics.

Leonardo Avritzer, Participatory Institutions in Democratic Brazil (Baltimore/Washington: Johns Hopkins University Press/Woodrow Wilson Center, 2009).

Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).

Bernd Reiter, Negotiating Democracy in Brazil: The Politics of Exclusion. Boulder: FirstForum Press, 2009).

Andrew Selee and Enrique Peruzzotti [eds.], Participatory Innovation and Representative Democracy in Latin America (Baltimore/ Washington: Johns Hopkins University Press/Woodrow Wilson Center, 2009).

Brian Wampler, Participatory Budgeting in Brazil: Contestation, Cooperation, and Accountability (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007).

References:

Rebecca Abers, Inventing Local Democracy: Grassroots Politics in Brazil (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 2000).

Leonardo Avritzer, Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University, 2002).

Leonardo Avritzer and Zander Navarro [eds.], A inovação democrática no Brasil: O Orçamento Participativo [Democratic inovation in Brazil: The Participatory Budget] (São Paulo: Cortez Editores, 2003).

Gianpaolo Baiocchi [ed.], Radicals in Power: The Workers’ Party (PT) and Experiments in Urban Democracy in Brazil (New York: Zed Books, 2003).

Jorge G. Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993).

Daniel Chavez and Benjamin Goldfrank, The Left in the City: Participatory Local Governments in Latin America (London: LAB/TNI, 2004).

Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino [eds.], Assessing the Quality of Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).

Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner, and Diego Abente Brun [eds.], Latin America’s Struggle for Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

Luciano Fedozzi, O poder da aldeia: Gênese e historia do Orçamento Participativo de Porto Alegre [Power in the village: the genesis and history of the Participatory Budget of Porto Alegre] (Porto Alegre: Tomo Editorial, 2000).

William R. Nylen, Participatory Democracy versus Elitist Democracy: Lessons from Brazil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Guillermo O’Donnell, Jorge Vargas Cullell, and Osvaldo M. Iazzetta [eds.], The Quality of Democracy: Theory and Applications (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004).

Renta Villas Boas. Participação Popular nos Governos Locais [Popular Participation in Local Governments] (São Paulo: Instituto Pólis, 1994).