Participation, Representation, and Social Justice: Using Participatory Governance to Transform Representative Democracy

The direct incorporation of citizens into complex policymaking processes is the most significant innovation of the third wave of democratization in the developing world. Participatory governance (PG) institutions are part of a new institutional architecture that increases the connections among citizens and government officials. This article draws from a single case of participatory governance to explore how its particular mechanisms work to transform representative democracy. In the cases examine here, PG institutions are grafted onto representative democracy and existing state institutions. These are state-sanctioned venues that require the intense involvement of citizens and government officials, without which the programs would grind to a halt. These features can expand citizen participation, enrich political representation, and enhance social justice

Re-Engineering the Local State: Participation, Social Justice and Interlocking Institutions

The municipalization of basic social service delivery in Brazil provides significant incentives for local public officials to have a better understanding of their constituents’ needs and requirements both to govern and for political purposes. The broadening of participatory venues under the 1988 Constitution allowed for the establishment of a broad number of public venues that civil society leaders could use to represent their associations. Government officials and civil society leaders have constant contact with each other as each seek to promote polices that advance their narrow and broader concerns. This article focuses on the establishment of three governing principles of five successive governments in Belo Horizonte: Social justice, popular participation, and interlocking institutions. The government and its allies in civil society redesigned citizen access points into the state as means to clarifying the signals sent from citizens to government officials, to allow civil society organization (CSO) leaders to act as intermediaries between citizens and public officials and to allow government officials’ to tap into CSO leaders and citizens’ attitudes on a wide range of pressing political issues. These interlocking venues are a key moment of interest mediation, which partially accounts for how Belo Horizonte produces robust social policy change in a context of a highly fragmented party system. Participatory governance is now the key mechanism that allows for constant dialogue among citizens and government officials. This article is part of a larger research project seeking to understand how and why the local Brazilian state was restructured in the 1990s, how citizens are incorporated into state-sanctioned governance bodies, and importantly, how the new institutional environment has helped to transform state-society relations

Participatory Budgeting: Core Principles and Key Impacts

This essay is a reflection piece. I identify key principles at the core of how PB functions and to discuss the scope of change we might expect to see generated by these institutions. I move beyond the idea that there is a specific model or set of “best practices” that define PB. Rather, it is most fruitful to conceptualize PB as a set of principles that can generate social change. The weaker the adherence to these principles, the less social change generated. The second purpose of the essay is to reflect on the impacts generated by PB. How do these institutions matter? My assumption is that ordinary citizens are more likely to be supportive of new democratic processes if they are able to clearly identify positive changes created by their participation in the new democratic institutions. Ordinary citizens are unlikely to continue to participate in new political institutions unless they perceive that these institutions produce tangible, positive changes in their lives. In this short reflection piece, I analyze how PB may affect democratic legitimacy, social well-being, and civil society

FROM PETISTA WAY TO BRAZILIAN WAY: HOW THE PT CHANGES IN THE ROAD

When Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva won Brazil’s presidency in 2002, he and his Workers’ Party (PT) had most observers convinced that this was a watershed moment for the country’s democracy. After all, the PT had built a reputation for over twenty years for good government and ethics in politics. Yet Lula’s government has been severely undermined by corruption scandals, which surprised the most cynical PT-watchers and fostered broad disillusionment among many long-time PT supporters. This article lays out four interweaving strands of explanation for the PT’s fall from grace, involving: the high cost ofBrazilian elections, the strategic decisions of the party’s dominant faction, economic constraints on an eventual Lula administration, and the difficulties of multi-party presidential systems

Good Government and Politics as Usual?: The Schizophrenic Path of the Workers\u27 Party

When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil\u27s presidency in 2002, he and his Workers\u27 Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores; PT) had most observers convinced that this was a watershed moment for the country\u27s democracy. The victory of this former shoeshine boy, metalworker, and union leader symbolized to many the arrival to power of Brazil\u27s excluded masses and the opportunity to put into practice the modo petista de governar (the PT way of governing), lauded as participatory, redistributive, and above all, transparent. Fourteen years of PT government and several astounding corruption scandals later, few illusions remain. The PT was gravely wounded by the scandals, starting with the so-called mensalão (monthly bribe scandal) in 2005. This scandal brought resignations and later jail sentences for the party\u27s top leaders and members of Lula\u27s cabinet as well as renewed calls for reforming Brazil\u27s political institutions as multiple parties were caught taking bribes. Despite punishment for the mensalão\u27s perpetrators, the PT\u27s own efforts to strengthen participatory and transparency institutions, and the promises to clean house by Lula\u27s successor, Dilma Rousseff, even larger corruption scandals followed, imperiling the PT\u27s hold on the presidency and threatening its future

The Difference in Design: Participatory Budgeting in Brazil and the United States

Participatory Budgeting (PB) is conceptually powerful because it ties the normative values of non-elite participation and deliberation to specific policymaking processes. It is a democratic policymaking process that enables citizens to allocate public monies. PB has spread globally, coming to the United States in 2009. Our analysis shows that the types of institutional designs used in the United States are quite different from the original Brazilian programs. What explains the variation in PB institutional design between Brazil and the United States? Most PB cases in the US are district-level whereas in Brazil, PB cases are mainly municipal. We account for this variation by analyzing the electoral system; configuration of civil society; political moment of adoption; and available resources. We use case study analysis to account for this variation in institutional design. We then assess how the different rule design is likely to create a different set of institutional outcomes

Developing Political Strategies across a New Democratic and State Architecture

Under new democratic regimes, civil society organizations (CSOs) alter their political strategies to better engage public officials and citizens as well as to influence broader political debates. In Brazil, between 1990 and 2010, CSOs gained access to a broad participatory architecture as well as a reconfigured state, inducing CSOs to employ a wider range of strategies. This article uses a political network approach to illuminate variation in CSOs’ political strategies across four policy arenas and show how the role of the state, the broader configuration of civil society, the interests of elected officials, and the rules of participatory institutions interact to produce this variation. Data for this article’s analysis come from a survey of three hundred CSO leaders in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte. The survey identified the strategies they employed to promote policy change and direct resource allocation in the arenas of participatory budgeting, health care, social services, and housing. Sociographs generated from survey results reveal a distinct clustering within each policy arena of the strategies employed by CSOs, providing further support to the usefulness of the analytical framework

The Brazilian experience: democracy, at its fullest, saves lives

Brazil is a deeply unequal democracy which enjoyed an economic boom in the 2000s – and is now suffering from a recession and the threat of austerity cuts. Michael Touchton, Natasha Borges Sugiyama and Brian Wampler analysed the factors that led to falls in infant mortality. They found that while competitive local elections were important, they alone were not enough. Citizen participation in how services are run, social welfare programmes and well-run local government mattered more

Participation and the Poor: Social Accountability Institutions and Poverty Reduction in Brazil

Democracy, according to a large body of research, contributes to human development by improving citizens\u27 lives (Prezeworkski et al. 2000; Gerrign et al. 2012; McGuire 2010; Baum and Lake 2003; Gerring et al. 2015). Broad evidence demonstrates that democracies provide higher standards of living, on average, for their citizens than authoritarian countries (Boix 2001; Brown and Hunter 2004; Brown and Mobarak 2009; Besley and Kudamatsu 2006; Lake and Baum 2001). But what is it about democratic practice that enhances the quality of its citizens\u27 lives? Proponents argue that democratic practices such as competitive elections, checks and balances, and protection of individual rights contribute to government\u27s responsiveness to citizens\u27 demands, which in turn improves the quality of government performance and citizens\u27 well-being (Rueschemayer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992; Przeworkski et al. 2000; Fox 2015; Sen 1999; Diamond 1999; Gerring et al. 2015; O\u27Donnell 1998). But many new democracies are beset by weak party systems, low voter knowledge, entrenched clientelistic practices, fragmented states, and partial protection of the rights formally guaranteed by new constitutions. These limitations often combine to hinder the ability of democratically elected governments to improve basic human development (Przeworski et al. 1999; O\u27Donnell 1998; Weyland 1996; Cleary 2010). And yet, some new democracies are new improving and expanding public goods provisions, which enhances citizens\u27 basic social well-being and helps them to develop basic capabilities (Sen 1999; Gerring et al. 2015). In this article, we identify three casual pathways that establish a close link between democracy and human capabilities to provide a more robust accounting of how specific features of democratic regimes lead to specific improvements in human development. It is important to note that we control for elections\u27 potential influence on local poverty rates, but we argue that elections are too distant from ongoing policy cycles to impact poverty directly. Instead, we present evidence for specific institutions and policies\u27 role for reducing local poverty in Brazil. We also control for economic growth, which represents the dominant explanation for poverty reduction in Brazil and around the world