The Porto Alegre Experiment

Book excerpt: With its experiment in participative budget-making over the past decade, Porto Alegre has institutionalized the direct democratic involvement, locality by locality, of ordinary citizens in deciding spending priorities. This book examines how this democratic innovation works in practice and asks the difficult questions. Can local participation in public management really strengthen its efficiency? Is genuine participation possible without small groups monopolizing power? Can local organizations avoid becoming bureaucratized and cut off from their roots? Can neighborhood mobilization go beyond parochialism and act in the general interest?The book also raises the bigger question about what lessons can be learned from Porto Alegre to renew democratic institutions elsewhere in the world.