Panel on the prospects of participatory budgeting around the world

Panel on the prospects of participatory budgeting around the world
Latin American Study Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 16 March 2006

Within a relatively short period, from 1990 to 2005, participatory
budgeting (PB) has evolved dramatically. What was once an obscure
process of popular participation championed by a few left parties in
South America as a step towards reinventing socialism has become a "best
practice" in the mainstream international development community's toolkit
for reducing
poverty and practicing good governance. Depending on how strictly one
defines PB, it has expanded from Porto Alegre and about a dozen other
cities mostly in Brazil to somewhere between 250 and 2,500 locales
throughout Latin America alone. The smaller figure would include those
cities where PB began as a local government initiative, while the larger
figure would include all the municipal governments recently required by
national laws to consult civil society organizations on budget
priorities, such as Bolivia's 327 municipalities, Nicaragua's 153
municipalities, and Peru's 1,821 districts, 194 provinces, and 25
regions.

Rethinking Participatory Budgeting After Porto Alegre
Benjamin Goldfrank, University of New Mexico, USA

This paper attempts a preliminary analysis of the more recent efforts at
introducing participatory mechanisms into local government budget
processes. I will present the major normative perspectives on PB --
orthodox left, radical democratic, liberal, and conservative -- as well
as a number of sometimes corresponding analytical perspectives and then
examine
these perspectives through a broad comparison of national experiences in
Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Peru, and next with an
analysis of case studies in fourteen non-Brazilian municipalities.

A
couple of general lessons emerge from this study. First, national legal
mandates for PB have not created widespread local success in encouraging
citizen
participation, fiscal transparency, and effective municipal government.
This is partially because designers of national laws had other goals in
mind (possibly in addition to these goals) and partially because of local
obstacles, including reluctant mayors or opposition parties, weak fiscal
and administrative capacity of municipal governments, and
fragmented, conflict-ridden civic associations. Second, despite the
foregoing, PB has succeeded along the dimensions listed above in some
remarkably diverse locales, from small, poverty-stricken, indigenous,
rural villages to major cities with residents of various ethnic,
sectoral, and class identities.
While carefully identifying necessary and/or sufficient conditions will
require further study, success seems correlated with several factors in
varying combinations: the mayor is either indigenous or from a party on
the left (or both), opposition from local political elites is weak or
non-existent, project funding and/or technical assistance are
provided by national or international aid organizations, the
municipality has revenues sufficient to make significant investments in
public works or programs, and there is a tradition of participation and
cooperation within and among local civic associations and/or indigenous
customary organizations that has not been destroyed by guerrilla
warfare or clientelist politics.

Learning from Latin America: Participatory Budgeting Travels North
Daniel Chavez, Transnational Institute (TNI), The Netherlands

During the past five years participatory budgeting has become a
buzzphrase among urban planners, progressive local officials and left
politicians in several European and Canadian municipalities. Several
cities, including large provincial capitals such as Seville in Spain, are
actively adapting the Brazilian-born model of participatory local
planning and management to their own context. In some cases results are
quite promising, while in other cases attempts to develop participatory
budgeting have ended abruptly amid administrative and political chaos.
The presentation will focus on the objective and subjective conditions
that enabled the rise and evolution of participatory budgeting in Latin
American cities and discusses its replicability in Northern urban
contexts.

Participatory budgeting in the context of global economic change
Aaron Schneider, University of Sussex, UK

The presentation will very much be conversation that the author has been
wanting to have around participatory budgeting in the context of global
economic change. It is based on research work developed on the public
finance role of participatory budgeting in articulating a new kind of
state that embeds itself in certain social sectors. The author sees this
as a way of responding to global pressures that are manifest in public
finances, and that reflect changing patterns of production, distribution,
and exchange. The presentation will focus on the Porto Alegre case,
including survey data and statistical results, drawing out the
implications for other levels of government and countries under fiscal
stress.

Deepening Democracy or Enhancing Cynicism: Participatory Institutions in Brazil
Brian Wampler, Boise State University, USA

Participatory decision-making venues proliferated in new democracies over
the past decade as governments and civil society organizations sought to
incorporate citizens directly into policy-making arenas. The purpose of
this article is to step back and assess the effects of PB on effects to
extend citizenship rights, establish accountability, and deepen
democracy. In the most successful cases, citizens are able to influence
political outcomes, thereby challenging long-standing political practices
such as clientelism and personalism. In the least successful cases, PB
has a corrosive effect, enhancing cyncism about democracy due to the
failed attempt to incorporate citizens into a participatory institution.
This survey is part of a larger NSF post-doctoral fellowship on
Participatory Budgeting programs.