The Participatory Democracy Project at the Watson Institute explores the changing role of citizens and civil society in policymaking and governance at the local, national, and international levels. The project is led by Gianpaolo Baiocchi, who is associate professor (research) of international studies at the Institute, associate professor at Brown’s Department of Sociology, and author of Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre (Stanford University Press, 2005).
The project is composed of two complementary parts, both in the spirit of critical public engagement, advocacy, and support for social change. First, the project tracks the evolution of participatory budgeting and disseminates stories, experiences, and lessons associated with participatory budgeting experiments. Second, the project seeks to critically interrogate the discussion on civil society and participation and allied topics like human rights and democracy promotion.
Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgeting consists of a process of democratic deliberation and decision-making, in which ordinary citizens decide how to allocate part of a public budget – for instance, through a series of local assemblies and meetings in the context of a municipality. Studies have suggested that participatory budgeting can lead to more equitable public spending, higher quality of life, increased satisfaction of basic needs, greater government transparency and accountability, increased levels of public participation (especially by marginalized residents), and democratic and citizenship learning.
The municipality of Porto Alegre, Brazil, developed the best-known participatory budgeting process, starting in 1989. Since its emergence in Porto Alegre, participatory budgeting has spread to hundreds of Latin American cities, and dozens of cities in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. More than 200 municipalities and public institutions are estimated to have initiated participatory budgeting.
Following the publication of Militants and Citizens, which captured the lessons of Porto Alegre, the project has launched a website as a resource and forum on participatory budgeting and other forms of participatory democracy. Research and advocacy on the subject continues within a network of urban scholars and activists.
Interrogating the Civil Society Agenda
An engaged research network of scholars and activists focused on the future of democratic politics will gather for the third in a series of conferences dedicated to “Interrogating the Civil Society Agenda” in May 2009 at the Watson Institute. May’s conference, “Beyond Good Governance,” will take a critical look at development prescriptions – especially the uncritical promotion of civil society – that have emerged from bilateral and multilateral organizations ranging from the United States Agency for International Development to the World Bank and others. The discussion expands to the global South an earlier set of critiques based on the Latin American experience.
The previous conference in the series, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2008, focused on “two faces of social struggles in the Americas today: the proliferation of civic participation through so-called third sector organizations and governmental programs, on the one hand, and the increased visibility of ‘less civil-ized,’ more contentious collective action, on the other.”
This ongoing research effort, supported in part by the Ford Foundation, will result in a book that takes stock of the “civil society agenda” today.
Also forthcoming in 2009/10 is a book by Baiocchi, Watson Institute Faculty Fellow Patrick Heller, and Marcelo Kunrath Silva of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, titled Making Space for Civil Society. Heller is also co-author of co-author of Social Democracy and the Global Periphery (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Cities against Poverty: Brazilian Experiences
Baiocchi is also partnering in a research project on "Cities against Poverty: Brazilian Experiences" with the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research and the Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento.
Supported by the Research Council of Norway, this international collaborative is conducting statistical analyses over three years to trace the impact of local anti-poverty measures in the 10 largest cities of Brazil. The project is also carrying out qualitative research in two of the best performing cities and two of the worst performing cities, in order to suggest the political factors causing the different poverty outcomes.
“Brazil is internationally known for its extraordinary inequality and for the poverty that affects the majority of the population,” the researchers write. “It is also recognized for its ability to innovate in terms of democratic-participatory governance. This coexistence of perceived poverty and democratic governance is a paradox.
“On the one hand, for the last 15 years poverty and inequality have been decreasing in proportions unparalleled in the history of the country. On the other, this reduction does not seem to be directly related to the experiences of democratic-participatory innovation. Facing this situation, the project will pursue the following question: what has been, and is, the role of the local governance and the cities in poverty reduction?”
The research will not only analyze this question, but also recommend public policies for effective poverty reduction.