The first significant case of participatory budgeting—a method of allowing residents to decide how a portion of a local government budget is spent—implemented in Porto Alegre in Brazil in 1990, and which has since spread across Brazil and the world
Context
How governments make decisions and spend money are major themes in terms of the functioning of democracies. Citizen participation in decision making is generally accepted as beneficial in terms of increasing democratic accountability, enhancing social cohesion, increasing effectiveness and relevance of policies and services, enabling residents to develop skills and networks, and increasing community sustainability and resilience. Participatory budgeting involves citizens in the decision making processes of how their governments spend their money. First initiated in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the practice is now being used in the USA, Spain, and the UK, as well as in other countries.
Practice
In 1989, Porto Alegre, a city of 1.3 million inhabitants, was undergoing a sustained period of population growth. However, the majority of that growth was happening in the periphery of the city in informal settlements. Participatory budgeting was initiated by the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers Party) to address the political, economic, and social exclusion of its informal and low income residents. According to the campaign to promote the proposal by the PT, participatory budgeting would adhere to four basic principles:
- direct citizen participation in government decision-making processes and oversight;
- deter corruption through administrative and fiscal transparency;
- improvements in urban infrastructure and services, especially aiding the indigent; and
- a renewed political culture in which citizens would serve as democratic agents.
The processes for deciding how the budget would be distributed went through a number of evolutions, all based around a cyclical annual framework. The process begins in March with citizen mobilisation within community groups and other resident organisations, preparatory meetings to collect demands and priorities, followed by an analysis of the previous year’s budget results. Delegates are elected to attend the regional and thematic assemblies as the next stage of the process. The city is divided into 16 regions, and there are 5 budget themes: transportation and circulation, education leisure and culture, health and social welfare, economic development and taxation, and city organisation and urban development. Following a number of assemblies where the priorities for spending are established by delegates, the Participatory Budgeting Council approves a proposal for each theme and region of the city. Due to the budgeting autonomy of the municipalities in Brazil, the percentage of the municipal budget distributed through the participatory budget system varied up to 21%. Participation in the process increased and decreased according to the popularity of the PT and the amount of investment available for amenities in the city. Following years when there was more investment, the participation in the process increased. As it became clear that being part of a community organisation was the only way to get involved in the process, the number of resident organisations increased rapidly. Over the decades that participatory budgeting was in operation however, the overall participation declined. This has been attributed to both a lack of political support, and a lack of processes to involve residents in longer-term city planning. The reduction in political support led to a reduction in funding available for distribution, and following successive changes in governments, in 2017 participatory budgeting in the city was discontinued.
As the first city to implement such a programme, participatory budgeting was prioritised by the Porto Alegre’s administration for a number of decades and was groundbreaking in its involvement of low-income residents in decision making. Since then, a version of participatory budgeting can be found in more than 7000 cities. In Lisbon, Portugal, the city remodelled its participatory budgeting process to cover only ‘proposals that contribute to a more sustainable, resilient and environmentally friendly city’. Participatory budgeting indicates that systems of economic justice are a necessary step in achieving climate justice.