Inventing Local Democracy: Grassroots Politics in Brazil 9781626371378

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INVENTING LOCAL DEMOCRACY

INVENTING LOCAL DEMOCRACY ◆

GRASSROOTS POLITICS IN BRAZIL REBECCA NEAERA ABERS

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2000 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2000 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Abers, Rebecca. Inventing local democracy : grassroots politics in Brazil / by Rebecca Neaera Abers. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 1-55587-893-8 (alk. paper) 1. Porto Alegre (Brazil)—Politics and government—Citizen participation. 2. Local government—Brazil—Citizen participation—Case studies. 3. Political participation—Brazil—Porto Alegre. I. Title. JS2425.P67 A24 2000 320.981'65—dc21 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America

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The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. 5 4 3 2 1

00-022608

For Thomás, who changed everything

Contents

ix xi

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments

1

Introduction: Participation, Empowerment, and State-Society Relations

Part 1

1

Context

2

Urban Politics and Neighborhood Organizing in Brazil

25

3

Transforming Local Governance: The PT and the Challenges of Participation

47

Part 2

From Ideals to Practice: Building Participatory Policy

4

Participation and Governability

65

5

Building Political Support

91

Part 3 6 7

Integrating the Excluded

Who Participates? Inequality and the Participatory Budget Process

115

Mobilizing Neighborhoods

135

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Part 4 8 9 10

Emerging Political Capacities

From Clientelism to Cooperation: Strengthening Civic Organizations

157

Building “Enlarged Thinking”

177

Resisting Co-optation, Contesting Government Control

195

Part 5 11

Contents

Conclusions

Overcoming the Dilemmas of Participatory Democracy

Methodological Appendix Glossary of Portuguese Words and Phrases Acronyms and Abbreviations References Index About the Book

217

229 233 235 239 257 269

Tables and Figures

Tables 2.1 Social Statistics for Porto Alegre and Other State Capitals

37

6.1 Household Income of 1991 Porto Alegre Population and of Budget Participants, in Minimum Salaries

123

6.2 City Population, Participation in 1995 Regional Assemblies, and Median Income of Participants Surveyed, by Socioeconomic Groupings of Regions

124

6.3 Household Income of Elected and Not-Elected Regional Budget Participants

127

6.4 Percentage of Total Participants Attending Regional Assemblies, by Pre-1989 Organization Categories

130

Figures 1.1 The Dilemmas of Participation

10

2.1 Map of Brazil

36

4.1 Map of Porto Alegre with 1994 Participatory Budget Regions

73

4.2 Schematic Diagram of the Budget Process

86

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Tables and Figures

7.1 Map of the Extremo Sul Region

140

7.2 Map of the Glória Region

143

10.1 Degrees of Citizen Control for Different Budget Decisions 200 11.1 Overcoming the Dilemmas of Participation

218

Acknowledgments

In many ways, the findings presented here are little more than a consolidation of the information, interpretations, and inspirations I acquired in more than a hundred interviews with people in Porto Alegre and other cities. Although I cannot name them all here, I particularly thank those with whom I regularly exchanged ideas over a period of several years: Betánia Alfonsín, Cesar Beras, Davi Schmidt, Isabel Torres, Jorge Maciel, Luciano Fedozzi, Naia Oliveira, Regina Pozzobon, Robério Garai, Sérgio Baierle, Talito Halberstadt, and Vera Amaro. Although they would be unlikely to agree among themselves, the ideas of each of them are present in this book. My other central inspiration for this work was my Ph.D. adviser, John Friedmann. He generously provided me with both close attention and spacious intellectual liberty. In Porto Alegre, I benefited from the kind assistance of a number of organizations. Centro de Assessoria e Estudos Urbanos (CIDADE) not only gave me an immense amount of practical help but also provided a forum for constant intellectual exchange. The municipal administration of Porto Alegre kindly opened its doors to my perpetual snooping. In particular the Coordinação de Relações Comunitárias (CRC), Gabinete de Planejamento (GAPLAN), Centro Administrativo Regional (CAR) Glória/Cruzeiro, and CAR Extremo Sul supplied extensive information and operational support. Above all, I am enormously grateful to the grassroots organizations that trustingly invited me to their assemblies and meetings. The members of the Conselho Popular da Grande Glória, the Glória and Extremo Sul Regional Budget Forums, and the Municipal Budget Council graciously put up with my intrusive presence month after month. xi

xii

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Acknowledgments

I must also thank those who read and commented on all or part of the material presented here: Alberto Lourenço, Allan Heskin, Carole Pateman, David Harvey, Debbie Lerner, Ernest Abers, John Friedmann, Judith Tendler, Leonie Sandercock, and Mieke Meurs. In addition to their offering useful comments, Sue Branford, Mimi Keck, and Dan Eades played a critical role in helping this book reach publication. Leanne Anderson was a kind and understanding interlocutor at Lynne Rienner Publishers. Funding for the field research was generously provided by the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, the Inter-American Foundation’s Doctoral Field-Research Program, the Tinker Foundation, and the UCLA Latin American Center. The UCLA Graduate Division provided funding for writing the dissertation upon which this book is based. A fellowship with the Political Science Department of the University of Brasília, funded by Coordenacão de Aperfeiçoamento do Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) and Ministério de Administração e Reforma do Estado (MARE), paid me while I was writing the final version. Many friends and relatives have helped me along the way. I am especially grateful to those who have made their homes into cozy way stations where I frequently settled in between travels: Mimi, Ernest and Sylvia, Vera, Marise, Carolina, Paulão, and the kids. Most of all, my greatest thanks go to Alberto Lourenço, whose contribution to this project spans the realms of intellect and passion. His infectious curiosity, his enormous patience, his critical insight, and his calming warmth have helped me more than I can possibly express. —Rebecca Neaera Abers

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1

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Introduction: Participation, Empowerment, and State-Society Relations Utopia is to be considered experimentally by studying its implications and consequences on the ground. These can surprise. What are and what would be the most successful places? How can they be discovered? According to which criteria? What are the times and rhythms of daily life which are inscribed and prescribed in these “successful” spaces favorable to happiness? That is interesting. —Henri Lefebvre, “The Right to the City”

On a cold winter night in June, hundreds of people file into a hangarlike meeting hall next to the big church in Belém Novo, a neighborhood in the far south of the city. People rushing in from the rain cram into the anteroom to receive their voting cards. In the main hall, giant teetering puppets portray a woman’s fruitless attempts to convince a city official not to close her day-care center. “If only people like me had some say in government,” she sadly proclaims. By the time the program is over, the hall is full. After a spate of announcements by government officials, community members take the floor. One woman laboriously thanks the mayor, who is seated at the front table, for the new sewer lines in her neighborhood. A man angrily complains that a new health clinic has yet to be completed. Another addresses the assembly, rather than the city officials: “Vote for Slate Number One!” he cries. “Only Dona Elza and her companheiros will defend the needs of our region!” After ten people have spoken, the mayor makes a speech. “You should not be thanking the government,” he declares. “You should be thanking yourselves, for all the hard work and organization that has gone into this.” When he is finished, it is time for the election. Hordes of people surround two boxes in the center of the room. When they finally move away, gov1

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Introduction

ernment representatives count the ballots as the candidates look on. Someone takes the microphone. “Slate Number One has 70 percent of the votes,” he says. “It has won three out of the four seats on the Municipal Budget Council.” Cheers fill the hall. For many poor residents of urban Brazil, the mere fact that the government was holding a public meeting so far away from city hall would be amazing enough. That this occurred in a nonelection year would be all the more astounding. But what was most extraordinary about this assembly was that it was only a small part of a complex system of citizen participation that occurred not only in Belém Novo, but throughout the city, and not just on this night, but all year long. The election of the municipal budget councillors—four in each of sixteen regions of the city—was the culmination of a four-month-long mobilization process. Hundreds of neighborhood meetings, where residents decided which capital improvements—paved streets, water and sewer lines, new schools, and health posts—they needed most, had already taken place. Delegates from each neighborhood had formed regionwide budget forums that had painstakingly determined which projects should be given priority. Now that the council elections were over, the work had only just began. The councillors would deliberate on the city budget as a whole, from capital expenditures to payroll. Regional delegates would negotiate the details, monitoring the implementation of the projects they prioritized. The city is Porto Alegre, a metropolis of 1.3 million people in southern Brazil, where the Brazilian Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT) has held office since 1989. The complex process of decisionmaking just described is called the “participatory budget.” By 1995, more than 15,000 people attended budget assemblies annually. Nearly 1,000 of them worked year-round as delegates or councillors. The vast majority were poor and working-class people from neighborhoods lacking the most basic infrastructure. Most had little previous experience in community organizing. Collective action on such a large scale and involving such an organizationally complex decisionmaking process contrasts with the image of Brazilian civil society portrayed by most observers today. The 1990s were largely considered a time of dwindling social movements, especially those representing poor neighborhoods. In the 1980s, urban neighborhood movements were a central theme in Brazilian studies, as the transition from authoritarian rule was accompanied by a “popular upsurge” of activism on diverse fronts (O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986). But as democratization progressed, the intensity of these movements dissipated. Research on neighborhood movements began to focus on their inability to “promote social transformation”

Introduction

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3

(Evers, 1981; Cardoso, 1983; Jacobi, 1989), and theorists began to emphasize the growing importance of developing strong “representative institutions” rather than grassroots democracy (O’Donnell, 1993; Weffort, 1992). These changing preoccupations also reflected a growing realization that democratization had not eliminated traditional vices of governance in Brazil. Patronage politics boomed with expanded electoral competition, as traditional elites gained renewed access to the state resources that had been cut off during military rule. Clientelism—a political system based on the exchange of favors between elected officials and their supporters—pervaded Brazilian politics from the national to the local level (Hagopian, 1996; Diniz, 1982). Social scientists realized that neighborhood associations often served as the nuts and bolts in machine politics. Many neighborhood leaders made a practice of working out deals with local politicians, promising to mobilize electoral support for them in exchange for access to public employment, neighborhood services, or capital improvements (Gay, 1990; Banck, 1986). Instead of promoting democratization, neighborhood organizations thus seemed to contribute to the elitism, parochialism, and backdoor decisionmaking that had long characterized governance. The “participatory budget” directly targeted clientelism by transforming the way city revenues were distributed. Like most Brazilian cities, Porto Alegre had long been dominated by traditional, populist elites that were accustomed to benefiting personally from the way that municipal revenues were used. Clientelism depended on control of public coffers and the ability to distribute funds selectively to those who mobilized political support. Some authors have argued that overcoming clientelism is the most difficult and resistant political problem in Brazil (Hagopian, 1996). Creating an open discussion about city expenditures to which all were invited and from which all had an equal right to benefit dramatically challenged this system. Although budgeting is often seen to be an arcane aspect of governing, the participatory budget brought to light issues that were of the utmost importance to poor people. In neighborhood assemblies, budget discussions focused on capital improvements in basic infrastructure. The capital budget of Porto Alegre had historically gone to highly visible “big projects,” which could provide kickbacks to major campaign supporters. Middle-class neighborhoods concentrated in the downtown regions were well served with paved streets, running water, sewers, storm drains, schools, health care, and public transportation. Poor neighborhoods farther away from the center largely went without such basic resources. By creating forums of public

4

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Introduction

debate on how municipal infrastructure and services were allocated, the Porto Alegre administration thus keyed into the most central needs of poor urban residents. In recent years, “participation” has become a catchword in policy circles from a variety of ideological perspectives. With large loans from multilateral institutions such as the World Bank often requiring a participatory component, state government programs throughout Brazil now include citizen councils or forums of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) (Serrano-Berthet, 1996; Tendler, 1996). Since 1994, Brazil’s federal government has implemented the much publicized Comunidade Solidária program, which calls for small-town councils to monitor the distribution of federal funds (Ribeiro, 1996). Left-wing parties, such as the Partido dos Trabalhadores, or Workers’ Party—which governs Porto Alegre—have also promoted greater citizen control over all aspects of government decisionmaking. Similar tendencies can be observed worldwide. These projects have had mixed results. All too often, power holders refuse to devolve genuine decisionmaking control to citizens. Where they do, civic groups representing the poor are often insufficiently organized to take advantage of the opportunity. Participatory forums are easily manipulated by elite interest groups and corrupt politicians who appropriate decentralized decisionmaking for their own benefit. This study seeks to explain why citizen participation in Porto Alegre, unlike many other cases, mobilized and empowered the poor. Rather than benefiting elite groups, government spending, for the first time in Porto Alegre’s history, favored the most impoverished neighborhoods. Rather than attracting only better-off citizens, most participants in the participatory budget were poor. With the creation of open citizen budget forums, not only did the distribution of public resources become more transparent and accountable to the Porto Alegre citizenry, but also a revitalization of civic life took place. While neighborhood movements remained in a “slump” in other Brazilian cities, Porto Alegre became a vibrant locus of organizing and activism. By showing why this occurred, I will attempt to broaden the understanding of the practical possibilities for implementing participatory democracy.1 In the next few sections of this chapter I present an overview of some theories of participation and develop a basic framework for identifying participatory policies that empower the poor and politically excluded. I then identify three major problems that have occurred in empirical cases of participatory policymaking, laying out the obstacles that the Porto Alegre administration would have to overcome in order to construct an empowering participatory program. To explain

Introduction

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5

how it indeed overcame those obstacles, the chapter then explores some theories of state action and of collective action and considers how, when conditions permit, state and civil society can interact in a mutually reinforcing “synergy,” ultimately promoting the democratization of both.

Defining an “Empowering Participatory Policy” Proposals for direct citizen participation in government decisionmaking have a long history in both political theory and policy practice. One frequently used argument for participation is what Goulet (1989) calls the “instrumental” approach: involving citizens in policymaking and implementation will make for the more effective achievement of policy goals. Civic associations are good at monitoring the everyday activities of government and business, promoting cooperation among disparate groups, and accessing and articulating certain types of “local” information and knowledge. The participation of beneficiaries will also increase their sense of ownership of projects, thus ensuring that they continue to invest in them over time, for example by maintaining infrastructure improvements long after government investments have been made (Cohen & Rogers, 1992; Oakley, 1991; White, 1982). Yet the argument for participation goes beyond its potential for promoting good, efficient public decisionmaking. Modern political theory has long examined citizen participation in governing from the perspective of empowerment. That is, participation is not only a matter of transferring public responsibilities to civic groups but also about increasing citizen control over the state and of improving the capacity of ordinary people to understand and decide about issues affecting their lives more generally. On the one hand, direct democratic forums are spaces where traditionally excluded groups can gain access to the state, making decisions affecting their lives that would normally be made by their representative. It thereby increases the control citizens have over government. At the same time, participation contributes to the political development of individuals. Participatory forums provide an environment in which people can gain skills, knowledge, and organizing capabilities that help them both to control the state more effectively and to respond to problems themselves without the state’s interference.2 Many authors further argue that participation not only promotes individual development but also fosters social consciousness and political community. As people discuss their position on particular issues with others, they step out of their

6

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Introduction

narrow understanding of their own self-interests into a perspective that takes collective needs and interests into account as well.3 It is not surprising that in government and policy circles, radically different types of programs are called “participatory.” Most of them, however, probably could not be described as contributing to the empowerment of poor people. Participatory policies differ according to who is invited to participate, the tasks participants are engaged in, and the decisionmaking power that participants have. Many “citizen advisory boards” are made up of community leaders, “eminent residents,” or skilled professionals that government officials—the mayor, the city council, the president— nominate. In other cases, participation is open to representatives from a government-defined list of community associations, civic groups, labor unions, or professional organizations. Only in some cases does participation involve open assemblies in which all area residents are welcome to attend and where smaller commissions are made up of people elected by those residents. Those who defend participation from an “instrumental” perspective probably are not concerned with making participatory spaces as open as possible. Those spaces are designed to provide information to the government and to reduce the costs of implementation. But from an empowerment perspective, participation should increase the control that most citizens, especially members of disadvantaged groups, can have over government decisions. From this perspective, the more open a process is to the participation of what Stiefel and Wolfe (1994:6) call “those hitherto excluded from such control,” the better.4 The full participation by all residents of a given territorial unit should not, however, be a requirement for empowerment. The idea of total participation, as originally proposed by Rousseau (1950, orig. 1762), is both impractical and potentially coercive. It is impractical because face-to-face assemblies do not work where issues affect large numbers of people; moreover, people cannot be expected to have the time to acquire specialized knowledge about all the complex issues that affect their lives. Some form of representation or delegation is therefore necessary (Barber, 1984:272; Mansbridge, 1980:278–289). Total participation can be coercive because, even if opportunities for participation exist, many people may not want to get involved. Numerous scholars argue that rather than insisting that all people discuss all issues, all policy arenas should simply be open to the control of those who want to participate. This will ensure both that government decisionmaking is accessible to ordinary people (control) and that all people have the opportunity to gain experience in public decisionmaking (development). Who Should Participate.

Introduction

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7

The Tasks of Participants. At one extreme, people may be invited to partic-

ipate only in the execution of a government policy that they have had little influence in formulating. Residents of low-income neighborhoods may be asked, for example, to spend their weekends building storm drains or other basic urban infrastructure, according to the specifications defined by a city agency. At the other extreme, participation may involve the definition of policy goals and objectives. Participants may discuss how environmental regulations should be defined, what type of economic development projects should be implemented, or (as in the case of the participatory budget) how public spending should be distributed among projects and sites. Often, participatory policies lie somewhere between these two, with participants having some input into both policy design and implementation. Instrumental visions of participation typically involve little more than local resident involvement in policy implementation. But an empowerment perspective of participation would favor those programs in which participants focused on defining policy goals as well, because doing so would give citizens greater control over the state. Participatory decisionmaking forums also vary dramatically with respect to the amount of real control that participants actually have over government decisionmaking. This point is made effectively by Sherry Arnstein in her classic (1969) article, “A Ladder of Citizen Participation.” Arnstein defined eight levels of participation. The first two levels, Manipulation and Therapy, she calls “Nonparticipation.” The next levels, Informing, Consultation, and Placation, are “Degrees of Tokenism.” Only Partnership, Delegated Power, and Citizen Control can be called “Degrees of Citizen Power.” Arnstein argues that public policies rarely provide for “Citizen Control,” where “have-not citizens obtain the majority of decisionmaking seats, or full managerial power.” As rare as it may be, this last conception of participation is what most democratic theorists have in mind when they propose that participation in public policy will empower those who are traditionally excluded from political decisionmaking. With these three points in mind, an “empowering participatory policy” would be one that (1) is broadly open to those who were “hitherto excluded” from public decisionmaking; (2) involves the discussion of government policy goals and agendas, rather than merely the implementation of predesigned programs; and (3) involves effective citizen control, through which those who participate have real deliberative power. Even these points fit on a sliding scale. An open policy can always be more open, if efforts are made to ensure the dissemination of information and to facilitate the participation of those The Power of Participants.

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Introduction

who may not have the time or knowledge to participate. The policy goals discussed can be narrow or broad, ranging from specific issues or small localized projects to the discussion of larger policy goals and guidelines. The extent of citizen control can also vary: participants may gain final decisionmaking power over some aspects of a policy arena but not others, or they may have official power over issues that they do not have the knowledge or the time to deliberate about effectively. Understanding that these characteristics are relative, I will hereafter refer to an “empowering participatory policy” as one that fulfills to some degree each of these three requisites. There is always room for more empowerment.

The Problems of Participation Although political theorists have spent much energy imagining participatory systems of decisionmaking that empower the “hitherto excluded,” the literature on participatory experiments has suggested that even when policymakers intend to create public forums giving real decisionmaking power to those who are traditionally excluded from government decisionmaking, obstacles often prevent participatory policies from actually empowering the poor. Much of this literature on practical experiences with participation comes out of the poverty programs created in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, about which there was a great deal of academic analysis and debate. Case studies have also been conducted in European and Third World contexts. Taken together, these studies identify three general groups of problems of participation that can impede the creation of participatory policies that, according to the above definition, empower the hitherto excluded. The first group can be generally labeled implementation problems. Often, reformist groups within governments, in many cases with empowerment objectives in mind, call for participatory programs. But frequently these groups are not capable of implementing their ideals either because they cannot mobilize the administration toward participatory policy or because they fear the political backlash that may result. There are three types of implementation problems. First, the bureaucratic necessities of reaching goals rapidly and of measuring success in terms of time and money efficiencies rarely fit within the lengthy time periods needed to mobilize participants. The “uniform norms and standards” (M. Wolfe, 1982:102) required for bureaucratic operations are at odds with the flexibility necessary for participatory programs. Second, the implementation of a policy usu-

Introduction

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ally must be negotiated within a government structure where a number of groups have influence over government action. For example, city planners design participatory policies, but the agencies that implement them refuse to relinquish power to citizen forums. Agency heads support participation, but public employees resist it. The efforts of an executive branch might be undermined by a legislature refusing to release funds for such purposes. Third, handing over real power to groups representing the poor raises opposition from powerful groups outside government. Business groups accustomed to influencing how public resources are allocated or how economic activities are regulated can often undermine the electoral or administrative viability of a government administration. They can threaten to relocate or to boycott the government, refusing to take part in competitive bidding. Since the media are controlled by business groups, their ability to influence electoral outcomes is great. Forced to negotiate with business groups for the sake of electoral survival, many wellmeaning participatory governments end up overruling the decisions made by citizen forums.5 The second major group of problems identified in studies of participatory experiments can be called inequality problems. Even when governments do give citizen forums real decisionmaking power, disadvantaged social groups are less likely to participate. People with low incomes generally have less free time to attend assemblies and less spare change to ease the burden of travel to assembly places and the cost of taking time off from work. Those who lack formal education may have limited capacity for understanding complex policy issues. They have a disadvantage in arguments or debates with technically qualified participants. Women are doubly constrained by domestic responsibilities that reduce their free time, the lack of child care, which limits their ability to leave their homes, and social norms prohibiting political activism. To make things worse, members of all disadvantaged groups—women, the poor, racial and ethnic minorities— often do not have the self-confidence to voice their opinions in public spaces, even if they do find the time and money to attend. In this context, elite groups often dominate participatory forums. Betteroff groups are not only more likely to be present at assemblies but also can manipulate information in ways that may convince less-welloff representatives to support their views, even when it is not in the interest of the latter to do so. The inequality problem also appears within socially uniform groups, however, since those individuals with more experience in political mobilization are likely to have greater efficacy in open participatory forums. Many authors thus suggest that participatory systems can simply reproduce the elitism and inequali-

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Introduction

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ties of representative systems. Worse, they can create new elites made up of “professional participants” while most people continue to be excluded from decisionmaking.6 The third group of obstacles to empowering participation can be called co-optation problems. As already noted, most participatory programs do not provide for citizen control of government. Many have argued that their purpose is instead to create a veneer of public legitimacy and popular support around policymaking and to demobilize potentially destablizing civic leaders. Even where representatives of the poor and of other groups traditionally excluded from government decisionmaking are included in participatory forums, the inclusion can be a means of controlling those groups, rather than giving them power. Citizen forums can draw potentially combative civic leaders into a government-controlled sphere. The result can be the demobilization of independent community organizations, as potential “troublemakers” are kept busy working on the projects that government determines are “safe.”7 As if each of these three groups of problems was not enough on its own, taken together they present a series of dilemmas for those who wish to formulate empowering participatory policy, because counteracting any one of them can aggravate another. Figure 1.1 schematically represents these policy dilemmas. In the first place, political strategies that seek to implement participatory projects while

Figure 1.1

The dilemmas of participation

LI TY

INCREASED AUTONOMY GIVES CONTROL TO MOST ORGANIZED

-O

UA

GOVERNMENT CONTROL REDUCES CIVIC AUTONOMY CO

EQ

PT AT I

IN

ON

GY TE RA IC ST V L CI Y CA ES OM TI C LI DU ON PO RE AUT

GI PO VE LI S C TIC O A OR NT L ST GA RO RA NI L T TE ZE O GY D MO ST

IMPLEMENTATION

Introduction

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11

making concessions to groups within and outside the government administration can have implications for both the inequality and the co-optation problems. As the left side of the triangle suggests, governments, for the sake of protecting political coalitions, often give more space in participatory forums to the groups with which they ally. This aggravates the inequality problem, giving special privileges to groups already powerful enough to elicit compromise from reformist governments. As the right side of the triangle indicates, governments sometimes seek to gain control over the participating civic associations in order to prevent them from making decisions that might bring on the wrath of powerful elites. This control would lead to co-optation. As the bottom of the triangle suggests, efforts to resolve the cooptation and inequality problems can also be contradictory. On the one hand, if, in order to avoid co-optation, autonomous civic groups are given absolute power in decisionmaking forums, inequalities in organizational strength can be reinforced if those groups represent some parts of the population more than others. On the other hand, government interventions in the participatory process in the attempt to resolve the inequality problem can lead to co-optation. If the government makes special efforts to encourage civic groups to form in areas where they are weak, those efforts may lead to an undue control over how participants organize. Rules to ensure minority representation limit the decisionmaking power of the majority. Any student of democratic theory will note that these contradictions have profound roots, reflecting the tensions between social inequality and political liberty that have been central issues in modern political thought. All this suggests that creating an empowering participatory policy requires more than just a good theory or a good policy design. Institutionalizing participation in contexts where a small elite has traditionally controlled government requires transforming the state in ways that harm the powerful and benefit the powerless. The balance of power must change and a broadly distributed, highly representative, autonomously organized civil society must form that is capable of taking on participatory responsibilities. But in most places, reaching both of these objectives in the foreseeable future seems close to impossible. How then to get there from here? Some have argued that if participatory policies are to genuinely empower the excluded, they should not be initiated from above, but must result from bottom-up demands by social movements that have organized without the interference of the state. From this perspective, there is no place for stateinitiated participatory policy, since the state necessarily represents elites. But this conclusion implies that where civic organizations are not strong enough to force new governing patterns on the state, tradi-

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Introduction

tional modes of decisionmaking must prevail. State actors can play no role in changing traditional governing structures and in helping civic organizations representing the “hitherto excluded” gain power. In this study I will argue against that view, suggesting that it is possible, under certain conditions, to promote empowerment “from above.” Doing so, however, requires navigating all the dilemmas described above and necessarily leads to further contradictions and complications. By examining each of the three “problems of participation” in turn, I hope to explain (with qualifications) how in the case of Porto Alegre a state-initiated policy did succeed in empowering disadvantaged groups. It created public forums characterized by “citizen control,” fostered participation in those forums of economically disadvantaged and historically unmobilized groups, and, to a large extent, created an environment in which those groups mobilized autonomously, even to the point of challenging the goals of the very government actors that had created participatory spaces in the first place.

State Action, Civic Mobilizing, and State-Society “Synergy” To explain how a state policy can empower the poor, one must examine how states act and what causes citizens to engage in collective action. Understanding how a reformist government can mobilize the political resources for a policy that contradicts prevailing traditions and that largely benefits the poor (resolving the implementation problem) requires a conception of the constraints on and possibilities for state actors seeking to challenge the status quo. Explaining how that policy, once implemented, can mobilize the poor to participate (resolving the inequality problem) requires an understanding of what drives people to act collectively. Much of the discussion on these issues is reserved for later chapters. Here, I will simply outline the basic conceptions of state action and civic mobilizing that will be examined in more detail further on. Both mainstream pluralist and orthodox Marxist perspectives envision the state as a function of social forces, with virtually no capacity to act in its own right. From the pluralist perspective, the state is no more than the reflection of competing interest group negotiations: “Policy emerges behind the backs of state officials as the result of a series of uncoordinated impacts upon government, directed from all sides by competing forces” (Held and Krieger, 1984:10). Marxist conceptions also see the state as a product of social forces,

Introduction

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although those forces are not understood as freely competing groups of equal power. Since society is dominated by the capitalist class, so is the state. Although Neo-Marxist reformulations—such as the work of Miliband (1969) and Poulantzas (1978)—adjusted this argument to account for the fact that not all state actions are in the direct interest of particular capitalist class factions, the formulations still conceive of the state as essentially a reflection of and ultimately determined by the struggles within society (Held and Krieger, 1984:3; Skocpol, 1985:5). This position leads to pessimistic conclusions with respect to the capacity of the left to change the structure of the state by winning elections. The only way to transform the state into a structure that benefits the “hitherto excluded” is through social struggle outside the realm of the state. A growing body of theorists, however, have argued that the state should be understood as an actor in its own right. The state is made up of “state actors” who, these authors argue, are principally guided by their own interest to survive in power. Social forces do not have an automatic influence over the state, nor do state actors always operate in ways that benefit dominant social groups. Conceptions of state actors as having their own interests as well as a source of power that is distinguished from the economic power of social classes or from the mobilizing power of pluralist interest groups have been put forth in diverse ways by Block (1980), Skocpol (1985), Offe and Ronge (1982), and Held and Krieger (1984), among others.8 From this perspective, the state is potentially capable of acting against the interests of dominant social groups. These authors note, however, that the capacity of state actors to make autonomous policy moves is constrained both by the institutional structures within which they act and by the balance of social forces. Skocpol argues that the ability of state actors to reach their goals depends on the existence of a force of loyal and skilled professionals within the bureaucracy, on plentiful financial resources, and on the operational autonomy to deploy those resources. Because of these institutional requirements, the capacity of state actors varies within the state, depending on the institutional characteristics of particular agencies and levels of government and depending on the policy arena in question (Skocpol, 1985:15–18). Others suggest that state actors working in their own self-interest will tend to promote policies favoring those social forces that are dominant in society. The dependence of the state on economic development, because of the legitimacy that it brings to particular regimes and the tax base that it creates, means that state policies tend to promote capitalist development through policies that favor the interests of the capitalist class (Offe,

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1973; Block, 1980).9 At the same time, the wealth of the capitalist class gives it the capacity to exert pressure on policymaking in its favor. In particular, “the capitalists tend to own the means of persuasion, such as the mass media and . . . have the resources to bribe state managers” (Block, 1980:231). A conception of state action must therefore account for both the fact that state actors are driven by interests that do not necessarily coincide with any particular interest outside the state and the fact that social forces and institutional structures limit the spectrum of choices that state actors make and pressure them to make decisions favoring dominant groups in society. Held and Krieger’s conception of power expresses this idea well: Power is not merely the voluntarist expression of the capacity of an actor to influence the conduct of others, nor is it merely structured power following from institutional bias. Rather, power is the facility of agents to act within institutions and collectivities—to apply the resources of these institutions and collectivities to their own ends, even while institutional arrangements narrow the scope of their activities. (1984:18)

The implication is that state actors are able to make strategic choices. When a new group comes to power, it can adopt various strategies for political survival. Certainly, maintaining the status quo is one option. But state actors can also use the information-gathering and income-generation powers of the state to define and implement alternative strategies that benefit different groups within society without necessarily leading to the new regime’s political overthrow or electoral defeat. Such strategic action involves a utilization of the “autonomous” power of the state and a consideration of the possible modes of acquiring political support within society. Where state actors can both maximize that autonomous power and come up with creative new ways to generate political support, they can potentially transform governance in ways that cannot simply be understood as a natural result of existing forces outside the state. One of the objectives of this study is to show how in Porto Alegre, the PT administration promoted policies that directly benefited social groups—specifically neighborhood movements—that were not strong enough on their own to pressure the state to do so. I will seek to show how such a policy preference fit into the PT’s alternative political strategy for maintaining control over local government in the city. One of several reasons that the PT was politically successful in Porto Alegre was that, through participatory policy, it fostered the organization and strengthening of a large number of neighborhood-

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based civic groups in the city. This argument dramatically opposes the “society-centered” views of the state that see state actions as a reflection of the balance of social forces. I will suggest here that not only does the state have some autonomy to act in ways that contradict the interests of dominant social groups, but also it has the capacity to promote the organization and strengthening of weaker social groups as a way to guarantee long-term societal support for reforms. A great deal of work has been conducted on the state’s capacity to influence the economy.10 Fewer scholars in the “state autonomy” school have examined the role the state can play in civil society. The literature on corporatist traditions has explored how the state can control labor organization (Schmitter, 1974; Stepan, 1978; Y. Cohen, 1989). But little work has focused on the role of the state in promoting other forms of civic organizing, such as popular associations and social movements. The literature on collective action, however, has long noted the importance of the state in creating the conditions for collective mobilization and organization. There are two ways for the state to promote civic organizing, although only the first has been the subject of much discussion by theorists of collective action. Scholars such as Tilly (1978) and Tarrow (1994) have argued that state actions can change the “opportunity” structure that promotes or discourages the formation and expansion of social movements. The state, by responding to the demands of the organized, by diminishing repression, or by both, can create an environment in which collective action is more likely to occur. I will rely on theories of collective action to explain that the participatory budget promoted the mobilization of poor people and their organization into new networks of civic groups by creating such an “enabling environment” for collective action. These ideas are rooted in a general conception that relates collective action to how people weigh the costs and benefits of “joining up” versus remaining inactive. The first to discuss collective action from this perspective was Mancur Olson (1965). Olson argued that rational, self-interested individuals are unlikely to engage in collective action unless they are encouraged to do so by an offer of direct benefits only to those who participate. Without the existence of such “direct and selective incentives,” the rational response, Olson argued, is to “free ride,” that is, to receive the benefits of other people’s participation without incurring the costs of participating oneself. Although Olson’s work thus seems to condemn collective action, in fact, it brought up the role of incentives in explaining why people join associations and social movements. In large groups, creating incentives for collective action is difficult, but as Ostrom (1990:6)

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Introduction

notes, Olson suggests that in smaller groups, where each person’s actions are “noticeable,” the free-rider problem might be overcome. Although many scholars of social movements have questioned the understanding of individual behavior that is the basis of Olson’s work, the idea that people join up according to a form of “cost-benefit” calculus has been prevalent in the literature on collective action. Innumerable works have questioned the description of individuals as pursuing only narrowly defined self-interests and have suggested that “incentives,” although essential for convincing people to join up, do not necessarily need to benefit only those who participate. People enter into collective action because of feelings of solidarity and ideological beliefs as well as to receive personal benefits.11 Yet this broadening of motivation does not mean that people do not make cost-benefit calculations when they decide whether to join up. On the one hand, individuals are much more likely to participate when they believe that doing so will bring results for themselves, for their broader communities, or for others with whom they feel solidarity (that is, they must feel that their actions are “noticeable”). On the other hand, even when participation brings certain benefits, not all individuals will have the same capacity to participate, because the costs they incur to do so vary according to individual traits and group membership. These ideas will help explain how participatory policy promoted civic organizing in Porto Alegre: the policy was successful because it both increased the perceived benefits and reduced the costs of collective action. A final objective of this study is to show how, as civic groups mobilize and gain strength in response to state actions, they can increase their potential to influence the state as well. Most of the work on the state’s influence on civic groups in Latin America has focused on clientelism and corporatism and has emphasized the capacity of the state to control and co-opt those groups. But I suggest that a different path is possible: the state can promote the formation of civic groups over which it then does not necessarily have full control. One of the results is that those groups can come to demand changes in the policy agenda of the state itself. A number of authors have argued for an understanding of state-society relations as an interactive process. The state may have substantial influence over social formations, but those formations may also have a life of their own, which state actors cannot control. In this sense, both the state and society are partially autonomous from each other and neither evolves as a pure function of the other. This is what Kohli and Shue (1994:294) refer to as the “recursive” or “mutually transforming nature of state-society interactions.” Several articles in a volume edited by Migdal, Kohli, and Shue

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(1994) show how such interactions can lead to both positive and negative policy outcomes. A collection of articles edited by Evans (1996) similarly focuses on “state-society synergy.” Under certain conditions, a virtuous circle can occur where state programs promote strong civic associations, which in turn promote strong state programs. Although how such “synergetic” relations occur has not yet been the subject of much theoretical debate, empirical evidence sheds some light on how state-initiated participatory policies may lead to outcomes other than co-optation. If state-sponsored programs can promote autonomous civic organizations that have a “life of their own,” it is likely that those organizations will have a recursive effect on state policy rather than simply being controlled by it. A final purpose of this study is to show how this recursive effect occurred among Porto Alegre participants. I argue that where the mobilization, organization, and learning processes that grew out of the “enabling environment” for collective action were most successful, the capacity of the new organizations to hold their own and even to pressure for changes in the PT administration’s policy increased. In this way, the civic mobilization sparked by the budget policy began to grow into a social force of its own, a force that the government could not totally control. These ideas challenge much of the prevailing thinking about the relations between the state and civic associations. Most of the work on social movements and civic groups has emphasized the important role “civil society” plays as a political and social space that lies outside of state influence. It is in civil society that people can develop their capacities for “political self-management” (Castells, 1983). Much of the social movement literature has focused on the need to preserve “autonomy” and to avoid “co-optation” at all costs, even if this effort means avoiding negotiations or cooperation with state actors. Yet, as several articles in Escobar and Alvarez’s (1992) volume on Latin American social movements have suggested, the idea of autonomy needs to be rethought in the context of democratization, when progressive political parties and reformist state actors have begun to emerge. When activists formerly belonging to civic movements—such as a large portion of petistas—win elections and take control of state agencies, the clear distinction between the state and civil society begins to blur. This important point is made by Tendler (1995), who notes that the boundaries between private and public are often unclear when the same individuals migrate back and forth between nongovernmental organizations, universities, social movements, and government administration.12 The idea of “state-society” synergy further emphasizes these blurred boundaries, suggesting that state

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Introduction

actors can have a positive impact on civic organizing and that contact between state and civil society can potentially lead to changes in state institutions that benefit civic groups. It is important, of course, to remain cautious. Co-optation is always a risk for civic groups that decide to work with state actors. However, the proposal explored throughout this study is that other options are also possible: under certain conditions, state actors can promote rather than co-opt civic associations. The objective is to determine what those conditions are and how they might be reproduced.

The Politics of the Possible Detailed in-depth case studies of unusual experiences in local governance can be beneficial for a better understanding of the more usual conditions and can reveal how it might be possible to change them. Recent studies of politics and policymaking in Brazil have focused on the resilience of traditional forms of clientelism, corruption, and authoritarianism, all of which perpetuate inequality and exclusion. Although these works do portray an accurate description of political life in most of Brazil, they do not provide insight into avenues for changing it. Indeed, the impression that emerges is that traditional forms are so deeply ingrained that change is virtually impossible. In recent years, when the much-hoped-for democratization led only to the strengthening of traditional elites and to a blossoming of new clientelist activities, such pessimism has become more widespread than ever. Studying a rare exception to these processes can help us forge tentative guidelines for engaging in what Alvarez and Escobar (1992:325) call “the politics of the possible.” Without assuming that policies can be simply transferred from context to context, I hope that with this examination of a largely successful attempt to change entrenched political traditions, we can gain some insight into what types of changes might be possible elsewhere. Writing about what one considers to be a successful political process can, however, be dangerous. Just as criticisms can easily be confused with critical distance, descriptions of success often seem propagandistic. Throughout this study I have tried to maintain a critical perspective on what I consider to be a broadly successful experiment in transformative politics. Any positive transformation will have contradictions, imperfections, and failures. The temptation is often either to focus on the inadequacies or to ignore them altogether. I have attempted to take a middle ground, drawing lessons from imperfections, without seeing them as signs of some grander failure.

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Empowerment and democracy fit on a sliding scale. More is always better, but that does not mean that we should not appreciate modest gains, understanding them as windows of insight into better possibilities. In order to examine the complex processes involved in implementing the participatory policy in Porto Alegre, I have combined multiple types of qualitative and quantitative research techniques. I used data analysis to consistently cross-check all facts and their implications among different sources and types of sources. 13 The research—which involved nearly two years of fieldwork between 1993 and 1997—incorporated a sample survey, in-depth interviews, participant observation, and document collection. I conducted long interviews in Porto Alegre with 56 current and former government personnel and 40 local activists and participants. In other cities where the PT held office, I conducted 23 in-depth interviews with government personnel and other key informants. By means of the sample survey, carried out in collaboration with two local NGOs and the municipal administration and involving 622 budget participants, I sought to develop a socioeconomic and organizational profile of the average participant. I also attended over a hundred community meetings and assemblies and collected hundreds of documents ranging from newspaper articles to internal government memoranda, NGO studies, and financial and spending data. The research involved an examination of the general history and politics of the policy at the citywide level and two focus studies in “budget regions.” By means of these focus studies I examined the effect of the policy on neighborhood associations in two different contexts: (1) the Glória region, where neighborhood movements had a long history of activism and protest, and (2) the Extremo Sul region, where clientelist neighborhood associations dominated and where civic activism was unheard of before the participatory budget policy. More details on the research and on the methodological logic behind it are presented in the Methodological Appendix. Subsequent chapters are divided into four parts, with the first providing context and concepts within which to analyze the policy and three parts that examine each of the three problems of participation identified above. In Chapter 2, I discuss the history of local government policymaking and of neighborhood-based civic organizations in Brazil in general and in Porto Alegre in particular. In Chapter 3, I examine the history and the ideology of the Workers’ Party, its experience in municipal governance throughout Brazil, and the conditions leading to its winning of the mayoral elections in Porto Alegre in 1989. In both chapters I analyze the setting within

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Introduction

which the Porto Alegre administration would carry out its innovations, discussing the unfavorable circumstances it would have to overcome and the favorable conditions that would help it do so. Part 2 examines how the PT overcame the various problems of implementation outlined earlier, showing how state actors within the PT administration made strategic choices that allowed them to take advantage of the limited autonomy they had to transform government structures while at the same time maintaining electoral support. In Chapter 4, I describe the history of the administration from 1989 to the present, focusing on the first years of the budget policy. The administration overcame a number of obstacles to governability, ranging from the recuperation of city revenues, to negotiations with workers, to changes in administrative structure. Chapter 5 examines more generally the political alliances that the PT administration formed in order to create a government that could both be victorious in future elections and prioritize popular participation in the meantime. Part 3 focuses on the problem of inequality. Chapter 6 is principally dedicated to an analysis of the sample survey of participants, showing that, contrary to most expectations for participatory policy, the poor and the less experienced with civic organizing made up the majority of participants. In Chapter 7 I seek to explain this unexpected outcome by showing how the administration created an “enabling environment” in ways that fostered the participation of “the hitherto excluded” in the budget process. Looking at the two focus regions, Glória and Extremo Sul, I explore how the budget policy reduced the costs and increased the expected benefits of collective action, thereby mobilizing people, especially the poor, who would not normally engage in collective action. Part 4 examines how the policy not only attracted participants but also initiated a “developmental” process of civic organization and social learning that had implications for both the inequality and the co-optation problems. In Chapter 8, I examine how the mobilization that occurred through the budget policy affected the way neighborhood organizing functioned in the two regions. I show how the policy helped eliminate “clientelist” neighborhood associations, while promoting a more inclusive, participatory activism. I also show how the policy created opportunities for neighborhood groups to develop ties of cooperation and reciprocity with other neighborhoods, thus building up civic networks in poor regions of the city. Chapter 9 examines the extent to which the experience of participation not only promoted cooperation among civic groups but also fostered solidarity among participants from different neighborhoods. I argue that through participation, people gained a much more complex understanding of

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21

democracy as they learned to take into account the needs of the most disadvantaged. Their understanding of democracy incorporated a combination of self-regarding and other-regarding attitudes and partially resolved the inequality problem. Chapter 10 looks at the question of co-optation. I argue that the mobilization and civic organizing that the budget process fostered also helped participants gain the capacity to contest the administration when they thought their demands were not being properly responded to. Finally, in Chapter 11, I outline how the implementation, inequality, and co-optation problems were confronted in Porto Alegre through a complex interplay of state-society relations in which the cumulative effect of participatory political strategy, mobilization, and social learning was the empowerment of the “hitherto excluded.”

Notes 1. Dozens of articles and M.A. theses have been written on the participatory budget in Porto Alegre, mostly by Brazilians. See the annotated bibliography by Andrade and Moura (1999) for an exhaustive listing of these works, some of which are cited directly in this text. 2. For more on the developmental role of participation in this sense, see Pateman (1970:45–66); Macpherson (1977); Gould (1988); and Held (1987). These issues are also explored in more detail in Chapters 7, 9, and 10. 3. These issues are discussed in more detail in Chapter 9. For arguments on how participation raises “collective sensibilities,” see Bachrach (1975); Barber (1984); Graham (1986); and Warren (1992). 4. I accept Stiefel and Wolfe’s (1994) reference to the “hitherto excluded” as a useful term for “who should be empowered.” This conception came out of a wide debate within the UN Program on Participation that concluded that narrower definitions such as “the working class” do not include many disadvantaged groups, or those whom Young (1990) refers to as “oppressed social groups.” Such definitions are particularly important in Third World contexts, where large portions of the population are not incorporated into the traditional working class, but gain their livelihood through what Coraggio (1994) calls the “Popular Economy,” a wide spectrum of microbusinesses, autonomous commercial endeavors, flexible day employment, domestic work, and so on. In rural areas, many people also defy traditional class descriptions, combining subsistence work with part-time seasonal employment. Finally, the idea of the “hitherto excluded” also reminds us to seek the inclusion of women, racial minorities, and other groups that may be excluded from public decisionmaking for a variety of reasons. 5. For more on the implementation problems faced by governments seeking to promote participation, see Chapters 4 and 5. For a survey of Third World experiences where state-sponsored attempts at participation were undermined by these problems, see Stiefel and Wolfe (1994). The literature on “failed” attempts at implementing participation is quite large. For a sam-

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Introduction

ple of accounts in a variety of contexts, see also Boggs (1986:139–169); Cabral and Moura (1996); Couto (1995); Gilbert and Ward (1984); Cunill (1991, 1996); Goulet (1989); Hall (1988); Kahn (1986:145–193); M. Wolfe (1982); Marris and Rein (1982). 6. These issues are discussed in much more detail in Chapter 6. Empirical research on the inequality problem can be found in Mansbridge (1980); Marris and Rein (1982); Oliver (1984); Verba and Nie (1972); Agger (1979); Thomas (1985); Berry, Portney, and Thomson (1993); Coit (1978); Jackson and Shade (1973); Hutcheson (1984). Some authors that discuss the inequality problem from a political theory perspective are Mansbridge (1980); Gutmann (1980); Phillips (1991); Young (1990); Sartori (1987); Cohen and Rogers (1992). 7. For a more lengthy and critical discussion of the co-optation problem, see Chapter 10. Some of the authors that criticize participatory programs for co-opting citizen groups are Goodman (1971); Coit (1978); Gittell (1983); Piven (1970); and Selznick (1949). 8. See Skocpol’s (1985) review of the literature on the state as an independent actor. 9. See reviews of Offe’s ideas in Carnoy (1984) and in Held and Krieger (1984). 10. Much of the research on authoritarianism has, for example, focused on the capacity of military regimes to contradict the interests of the powerful landowning class in favor of more modern economic groups. See O’Donnell (1973); Stepan (1978, 1985); Trimberger (1978). More recently, authors such as Peter Evans (1995) have shown the subtle ways that the structure of state bureaucracies and the connections between state actors and nonstate social groups affect economic development. 11. For a collection of essays on this theme, see Mansbridge (1990). 12. Tendler notes that “‘socially committed’ NGO people flow to the government when they like it—i.e., when it is ‘being reformist’—and back to their NGOs when they don’t like it, when it is repressive or conservative. As a result, NGOs as a group tend to flourish under repressive or otherwise unpopular regimes, and to become decimated under reformist regimes” (1995:15). 13. This is what Diesing (1971:142–169) calls the “pattern model of explanation.” See Methodological Appendix for more discussion.

Part One

CONTEXT

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2

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Urban Politics and Neighborhood Organizing in Brazil

In Chapter 1, I presented some of the theoretical foundations upon which this book has been structured. In this chapter and Chapter 3, I will identify the political conditions within which the PT administration in Porto Alegre implemented participatory policy. Chapter 2 outlines the history of local government and urban social movements in Brazil and in Porto Alegre. Chapter 3 discusses the challenges the Workers’ Party has faced in administering municipal governments.

Clientelist Traditions and Local Politics in Brazil Although the vast majority of studies of Brazilian politics focus on the national level, local politicians have historically played an important role. During the nineteenth century, local politics was dominated by coroneis (literally, colonels), rural oligarchs, who wielded power through patron-client relations. They remained in control by purchasing votes from the highly restricted local electorate and by mobilizing electoral support for state and central government leaders. The latter in turn gave the coroneis access to public employment for their friends and relatives, investments for their towns, and other state resources. After 1891, when the majority of literate men gained the right to vote, this system of troca de favores (exchange of favors) continued, as local bosses traveled the countryside bringing presents to the voters (Queiroz, 1975:160).1 With urbanization and modernization, clientelism was adapted to the new conditions. Today, many local politicians continue to mobilize electoral support both for themselves and for their allies at the state and federal levels through 25

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complex systems of patronage, distributing state resources on a particularistic, personal basis. Not only does this system tend to concentrate power in the hands of incumbents who have access to state resources, but the highly discretionary nature of public resource allocation under clientelism also inhibits systematic planning and the implementation of generalized, egalitarian social policies. One of the objectives of the military regime that took power in 1964 was to replace this political system and the traditional elites that accompanied it with a more “rational” decisionmaking process that would be conducive to technocratic planning and centralized control of state resources, perceived by the regime as essential for economic development. During the first decade of authoritarian rule, the federal government increased its control over urban economic development and social policy through the creation of a variety of national programs. Urban social service provision was not only centralized but also modified to conform to the regime’s new exclusionary economic priorities, which emphasized economic growth over social redistribution (Schmidt, 1983). After the government party, ARENA (Aliança Renovadora Nacional), won a landslide in the 1970 congressional elections and with the economy booming, the regime decided it was safe to hold more-competitive elections in 1974, allowing media access for opposition candidates and lowering the level of intimidation at voting time. Although the regime did well in federal deputy, state legislature, and municipal elections, the opposition won sixteen out of the twenty-two federal Senate seats up for election (Hagopian, 1996:156). The Senate vote reflected growing discontent with the regime, which had brought economic growth but also declining real wage values and worsening social conditions. The regime’s response was not to cancel what was to be the first step in a long, controlled process of political liberalization, or abertura, but to attempt to increase the chances ARENA would dominate the electoral process. In addition to a complex set of decrees changing election rules to ensure ARENA’s victory, the regime sought to bolster its support through more traditional means. Hagopian’s (1996) study of patronage politics during the authoritarian period in Brazil shows that after 1974, pork barrel politics grew dramatically. The regime began to borrow heavily on the international market so as to fund a buildup in major social programs such as sanitation, education, and social assistance. According to Hagopian, this large increase in government spending was channeled through clientelist networks reaching down to the local level, where traditional politicians could mobilize votes for the regime. State and local political

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bosses were given much greater discretion in the allocation of federal transfers (Hagopian, 1996:150–160). The final years of the military regime thus involved a significant strengthening of local elites. For a few years, this effort returned electoral majorities to ARENA but failed to prevent rising opposition to the regime: in the late 1970s a strong, highly unified, broad-based opposition that demanded the end of the dictatorship emerged. As the regime faltered, it desperately sought to regain favor by channeling more resources through patronage networks. In 1981, the regime ended the earmarking of shared taxes and by 1983 had increased federal transfers to levels higher than before the dictatorship (Nickson, 1995:119). In doing so, it further strengthened state and local political bosses, who held the purse strings. The local oligarchies that had dominated politics at the time of the 1964 coup thus came out of the authoritarian period stronger than before. Clientelist politics did not end with the shift to a civilian regime in 1985, even with the opposition party, the PMDB (Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro), in the presidency. As a broad confederation of opposition forces, the PMDB was made up of many traditional elites that, although excluded from the military regime’s coalition, still used patronage politics to build up power where they could.2 After 1985, not only were ex-ARENA politicians elected under new party names to many local, state, and national posts, but also huge numbers of traditional elites formerly associated with the dictatorship “migrated” to the PMDB, whereas more-programmatic politicians increasingly abandoned it to join new center-left parties (Hagopian, 1996:233). In 1987, the traditional elites in the PMDB and in several conservative parties that had grown out of ARENA formed a powerful coalition called the Centrão to influence the drafting of the new constitution, written in 1988 by a Constituent Assembly made up of the Congress elected in 1986. The strength of traditional elites in the negotiations helps explain why the new constitution gave even more power to states and municipalities. There was, however, little dispute over the issue (Santos and Barbosa, 1988:126–127). The dominant traditional elites wished to bolster clientelist networks by channeling more resources to the local level. But decentralization was also widely endorsed by groups that had opposed the authoritarian regime. Centralization was associated with dictatorship, and local autonomy with the increased potential for government accountability to civic groups and social movements. Fiscal decentralization was also fashionable in international circles, where diminishing government bureaucracy was seen as crucial for promoting neoliberal economic goals.

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The 1988 Federal Constitution gave Brazil’s municipalities more resources and greater fiscal independence than local government enjoyed in any other nation in Latin America (Shah, 1991:18; Nickson, 1995:125). Municipalities gained the right to levy two new taxes—a fuel tax and a property transfer tax. Existing municipal taxes, such as the urban property tax and the services taxes, were made more profitable through the elimination of exemptions for federal and state entities and through new definitions of the tax base. Municipalities also received substantial increases in direct transfers from state and federal governments, receiving 22.5 percent of the federal income taxes and 25 percent of the state value-added taxes raised in their jurisdictions. Finally, the Municipal Participation Fund, a revenue-sharing mechanism, was made more redistributive, strongly favoring smaller, poorer municipalities. Along with these increased revenue opportunities, constraints on how municipalities could spend were largely lifted. Although a number of social services continued under the control of state and federal governments, municipalities also gained full responsibility for intracity public transport, preschool and elementary education, preventive health care, land use, and historical and cultural preservation. Specific regulations on how municipalities should meet the needs in these areas are now virtually nonexistent. The only constitutional limits on municipal spending are that local governments must spend 25 percent of their revenues on education and 13 percent on health care.3 All this was clearly a gain for local elites. As Hagopian (1996:251) notes, “The new federalism . . . restores to regional political oligarchies the resources with which to grease their political machines.” However, fiscal decentralization also had important implications for nontraditional political forces, since it provided the financial backing for political innovation. The relative lack of higher-level controls on local policymaking meant that mayors in opposition to the groups controlling state and federal policy could pursue their own goals. Once in office, nontraditional groups had some financial resources and decisionmaking power to promote their own political projects, either by resorting once again to distributing patronage or by seeking to gain broad-based support on the basis of “good government.” In a number of cities and some states in Brazil, the PT and other nontraditional parties built up long-term political support on the basis of such innovative practices. Rather than winning elections through the discretionary distribution of patronage, they mobilized public opinion by implementing effective social policies and making improvements in the quality of life.4 Ironically, the strengthening of conservative local elites in Brazil—and the resulting increased local autonomy—

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had the unexpected effect of providing the opportunity for nontraditional political groups to make gains at the local level.

Neighborhood Organization in Brazil: “Combative” Versus “Clientelist” Associations Neighborhood associations have long played a central role in mobilizing political support for clientelist politicians in Brazil. Clientelist neighborhood associations are typically created and led by a small group of better-off residents of poor neighborhoods who have some credibility among fellow residents because of their personal connections to politicians. Formally registered in the local cartório (notary’s office), and with an executive committee elected by an assembly that usually includes only a small fraction of residents, the association claims to “represent” the community. In most cases, the association has little participation by residents beyond a select initial clique. Usually, the president remains in the top post for years, perhaps without even calling further elections. Most often, he is what is known as a cabo eleitoral (ward boss, or vote getter) for a particular politician or political party. His main activity is to round up the vote at election time for local bosses and their parties (Alvarez, 1993; Banck, 1986; Gay, 1990). Although neighborhood-based clientelism is founded on the exchange of votes for promises of benefits for the community and its leaders, the bosses do not always pay their part of the bargain. Indeed, as Chubb (1982) suggests, clientelism may actually work better when resources are too scarce to be distributed to all supporters. Under such conditions, voters feel all the more obligation to prove to those with access to state resources that they are loyal supporters. In neighborhoods dramatically lacking in basic services and infrastructure, rounding up votes on the basis of promises is not all that difficult. Poor people are grimly aware that they have little real influence over political decisionmaking. In this context of generalized disempowerment, promises, even if unfulfilled, are better than nothing. In fact, it is not necessarily in the interest of a candidate to resolve a neighborhood’s problems: doing so will only break a bond of obligation that is based on hope. In the end, neighborhood associations, although they may succeed at collecting small benefits for a few residents—perhaps a public job for the association president—are usually unable to bring about genuine changes in their communities. A crucial aspect of clientelist relationships is that they discourage the broad-based participation of neighborhood residents. Troca de

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favores involves one-on-one negotiations between an eminent association leader and local politicians. The more general population is asked to participate only by following the instructions of the leader at voting time. These negotiations are founded in personalistic negotiations with those who are more powerful, rather than in protest and pressure. Services are not demanded but are politely requested and come at a price. Mobilization and protest are shunned in this context (Alvarez, 1993:195). From the perspective of democracy, clientelist associations are therefore problematic for two reasons. On the one hand, in preserving a conception of social benefits that are not “rights” of all citizens, but are “gifts” contingent on political support, clientelist associations help bolster a system in which power is limited to a few political bosses who have discretionary control over state resources. On the other hand, by emphasizing “vertical” relations between patron and client rather than “horizontal” relations among residents, clientelist associations discourage general civic activism, limiting “participation” to those who are well enough positioned to negotiate with politicians (Graziano, 1976).5 Clientelist neighborhood associations began to appear in Brazilian cities in the 1940s in the form of the Sociedades de Amigos do Bairro (Societies of Neighborhood Friends), or SABs. In that period, Brazil was beginning to urbanize, and large populations swelled city suburbs bereft of government services. Networks of SABs appeared in urban areas, as poor residents sought the extension of social services in their neighborhoods. Local politicians sought to use their control over state resources to remain in elected office. In this context, there developed a case-by-case bargaining system through which it became common practice for neighborhood organizations in poor areas to present petitions to local politicians requesting government attention to demands and showing, with the number of signatures presented, the electoral force of those making the demand (Kowarick and Bonduki, 1988:143).6 Over the course of the 1950s and early 1960s, SABs expanded dramatically in Brazil’s booming cities (Alvarez, 1993:195; Singer, 1980). During the military dictatorship that began in 1964, most forms of collective demand making were repressed and activism in the SABs declined substantially. According to Boschi (1987:48), between 1968 and 1976, 66 percent of the neighborhood associations in Rio de Janeiro either severely reduced their activities or stopped functioning altogether. After 1974, however, when the regime increased its efforts to mobilize electoral support at the local level, neighborhood activists gained confidence. New social policies and diminished repression suggested that civic organizing would be rewarded. At the same time,

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the economic situation worsened, with high inflation and a slowdown of growth rates. Under these new conditions, civil society was reactivated on a variety of fronts. Contesting shrinking wages, a radical labor union movement organized, particularly in São Paulo’s industrial region. The student movement was reinvigorated, and a series of issue-based movements began to appear. The Catholic church publicly rallied against the regime, and networks of CEBs (Christian Base Communities) helped neighborhoods organize and disseminated ideals of equality and citizenship. In the poor urban periphery, neighborhood organizations began to mount vast protest demonstrations demanding basic sanitation, transportation, and housing. Of all the civic associations created in São Paulo between 1920 and 1986, 68 percent were created after 1970 (W. Santos, 1993:83). By 1980, there were an estimated 8,000 neighborhood associations throughout Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro alone, 120,000 people were affiliated with neighborhood associations (Boschi, 1987:41). Many of the new neighborhood associations distinguished themselves from their clientelist predecessors by mobilizing large numbers of neighborhood residents, engaging in mass protest rather than behind-the-scenes negotiations, and by making alliances with other associations to promote broader changes rather than focusing only on localized issues. Scholars began to examine with great excitement these “urban social movements.” The vast majority of studies saw the booming neighborhood associations as a new type of emancipatory movement with the potential to bring widespread social change. The big question guiding research was whether they could play a major role in the struggle against the capitalist system. The academic left had until this period focused on the economy, where the labor movement was a primary agent of change, as a sphere of social struggle. However, some authors (such as Kowarick, 1985) argued that the “collective consumption” movements had “anticapitalist” characteristics. Most analysts, however, accepted Manuel Castells’s more modest conclusions. Because the movements had little impact on production, Castells rejected the idea that they “might constitute a new central social movement able to transform our history,” but he did attribute to them the potential for bringing about social change (1983:328). During the first part of the 1980s, much of the literature on neighborhood associations focused on their roles as disseminators of a new democratic political culture opposed to clientelism. An essential part of this culture was an oppositional attitude toward the state (Castells, 1983; Frank and Fuentes, 1989). Unlike the co-opted SABs, the new neighborhood organizations focused on protest and sought to achieve their demands without compromise. In contrast to the

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closed, personal, and hierarchical character of clientelist organizations, the neighborhood movements were seen as promoting a culture of solidarity, egalitarianism, and participation.7 As the decade went on, however, many observers began to challenge this idealistic vision of the urban movements. In the first place, researchers increasingly recognized that outsiders played a crucial role in helping poor neighborhoods organize. In the 1970s, CEBs provided a privileged space of community organizing at a time when more ostensibly political activism was repressed. 8 Other “external agents,” such as doctors, lawyers, architects, nongovernmental organizations, leftist militants, and political parties, played an important role in popular education, organizing, and technical assistance (Cardoso, 1983; Jacobi, 1989; Scherer-Warren, 1993; Mainwaring, 1989; Mammarella, 1993). Although the role of these groups has generally been looked upon as highly positive in the formation of urban social movements, the importance of such a broad spectrum of intermediaries challenged the proposal that the movements were “spontaneous” and “autonomous,” as the literature declared. Over the course of the 1980s, many empirical studies, moreover, revealed that the new movements were nearly always willing to negotiate directly with the authorities (Somarriba, 1993). Even the idea that protest represented “antistate” sentiment was questioned. Jacobi’s study of health and sanitation movements in São Paulo during the late 1970s explored a complex interplay of protest and negotiation, where the government officials actually encouraged mobilization in the poor neighborhoods so that the government could get credit for responding to people’s needs (1989:59). The blurring of protest and negotiation made it far less clear whether the new movements were co-opted or autonomous. Scholars also began to challenge the idea that the movements had a broader transformative potential. Instead, many argued, they seemed to be consumed by their localized and immediate goals. As Jacobi (1989:150) notes, “most of the Urban Social Movements have not acted to transform society . . . but have acted principally as groups exerting pressure on the state, to obtain responses to their demands.” The movements, he argues, had very limited objectives. They had restricted impact and a short life cycle, which ends as soon as demands are fulfilled. Thus, after a period of near euphoria in the scholarly world, in the 1980s these ambiguities brought about what Telles (1987:70) describes as a “badly disguised sense of disappointment” among observers of Brazilian urban social movements. Whereas earlier, many observers had seen the traces of a new political culture of solidarity

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and autonomy, more-recent works have identified in urban social movements the same vices of alienation, self-interest, and dependence on the state that are associated with traditional, clientelist forms of neighborhood associationalism. Recent works have sought a balanced approach, developing a more “realistic” conception of the role of the urban movements. Several authors have shown that the new urban movements combine forms of protest and resistance with other forms of action that more closely resemble the clientelist legacy (Boschi, 1987; Telles, 1987, 1988; Mamarrella, 1993; Somarriba, 1993; Henry, 1985; Alvarez and Escobar, 1992). Cardoso (1983:266) notes that the popular classes are uncomfortably inserted within a “double game” of struggling for their rights as citizens and seeking to improve the material conditions of their life. The result is a contradictory set of strategies: an ideology of democracy, egalitarianism, and rights coexists with a variety of strategies for obtaining neighborhood benefits. Those strategies range from protest to negotiation and even troca de favores where necessary. Nevertheless, what we might call “fully clientelist” associations continued to exist during the 1970s and 1980s, although they were largely ignored by academics. Boschi’s study reveals that a very large portion of associations surveyed during the 1970s in Rio de Janeiro had only limited regular participation by formal affiliates and relied greatly on personal contacts with government and party officials (1987:48–50). Yet such organizations were not as clearly manipulated and co-opted as the earlier literature on the SABs had suggested. Gay’s (1990) study of a poor neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro shows in great detail how a clientelist association functions in an era of increasing democratic competition. With growing numbers of politicians competing for association endorsements, the latter developed greater bargaining power vis-à-vis the state and the ability to switch ranks should a politician’s promises not come through. The association Gay describes retains many of the vices of earlier associations: there is little neighborhood participation, with activities centering around the personalistic negotiations between the association “president” and local politicians. But in the new climate, it has been able to secure some real, though limited, material gains for the community. Despite these ambiguities, it remains useful to distinguish between two “ideal types” of neighborhood action ordinarily found in Brazilian cities, even if many associations seem to fluctuate between them over time. Clientelist organizing involves personalistic exchanges and is characterized by little participation on the part of the community. It reinforces a hierarchical, unmobilized civil society and a relationship with the state that is discretionary, based on gift

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giving and promises rather than on rights. In contrast is what we may call “combative” organizing. 9 Founded on a conception of equal rights and citizenship, combative organizing involves broad-based citizen mobilizing geared toward pressuring the state to provide benefits without compromise. It is usually initiated by, but is not limited to, protest. When negotiation with the state occurs, it is carried out by a participatory committee accountable to the broader community. Of course, it is much easier to distinguish a “combative” from a “clientelist” association at times of resistance and protest, when the former typically mobilizes large numbers, but this difference should not prevent us from attempting to identify nonclientelist forms of negotiation and partnership. Although clientelist and combative organizing sometimes overlap within the same associations, a large number clearly fall into one or the other camp. In particular, very few “fully clientelist” associations have the mobilizing power for, or the ideological interest in, protest. “Combative” movements, in contrast, may occasionally engage in clientelist “favor exchanges” but that often happens in isolated circumstances and is usually the subject of much criticism. A much more common problem with combative organizations is not that they revert to clientelism, but that they suffer from what Piven and Cloward (1979) have referred to as the Iron Law of Oligarchy: in the postprotest phase, broad-based mobilization declines as leaders spend their time in direct negotiations with the government or in larger political projects and have less time or opportunity to organize their neighborhoods. Indeed, in the late 1980s, such demobilization began to occur in Brazilian cities. The massive participation that had characterized the earlier phases declined. Although there is little longitudinal data available on participation in neighborhood movements, it is clear that the impact of popular activism is not nearly so visible as in the early and mid-1980s. The causes of this apparent decline are debatable. Many have suggested that with democratization, there is no longer an enemy (the authoritarian state) unifying and invigorating oppositional movements. Others point to a generalized disillusionment with democracy in the face of the durability of traditional political forms and of the fact that the formally democratic state seems to have little to offer materially to the poor in this period of intense economic crisis. Another explanation is, simply, the “activism burnout” that is normal after any intense phase of mobilization and after basic demands (formal democratization) have been met.10 Whether a decline in civic activism occurred in quantitative terms in the 1980s is difficult to tell with certainty, given the dearth of comparable data.11 However, what

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is quite clear to most observers is that by the end of the decade the combative neighborhood-based movements and the large-scale protests and mobilizations that they promoted had a significantly reduced role in urban politics. Even though on the grand scale the vast majority of their demands remained unfulfilled in the 1980s— with major health, sanitation, housing, land tenure, and transportation problems continuing to plague the vast peripheries of Brazil’s metropolitan areas—neighborhood-based organizing and protest were no longer the privileged space of political activism that they had been a decade before.

Local Politics and Neighborhood Organizations in Porto Alegre Porto Alegre is a regional capital and at the turn of the nineteenth century represented the only major area of industry outside the Rio–São Paulo region (see Figure 2.1). In the 1950s, the city began to gain national importance as an industrial center (Singer, 1974). In more recent years, services and commerce have replaced industry as the major source of income and employment for the city (Alonso and Bandeira, 1988). The municipality has a population of 1.3 million people and is the center of a metropolitan area about twice that size. The central city contains a dense downtown area from which radiate the city’s principal avenues. The central and eastern parts of the city are dominated by a large middle-class residential district and many hillside favelas (slums). To the north is the industrial region of factories, working-class neighborhoods, decrepit housing projects, and slums. The southern part, where a large but isolated housing project created during the military regime is located, is principally rural, dotted by many impoverished tiny settlements. By the river’s edge there are fine upper-middle-class neighborhoods; to the far south, more than twenty-five kilometers from downtown, the fancy riverside vacation spots of other eras, now abandoned because the river is too polluted to swim in, have become poor bedroom communities. Since the 1940s, population growth, increasing land concentration, and the mechanization of agriculture have put pressure on Rio Grande do Sul’s rural population. With no access to new land and little employment in the countryside, a “rural exodus” occurred, leading to a boom in the population of Porto Alegre. Whereas in 1940, the city had less than 300,000 inhabitants, by 1960, it had more than 600,000 and by 1980, more than 1 million. Between 1950 and 1980, the city nearly tripled in size (IBGE, 1989). Urban development laws

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Figure 2.1

Map of Brazil

and a tight land market, however, made it extremely expensive to build housing in the city (Baierle, 1993:93). Today, much of the more than 40 percent of land in the municipality that is vacant is owned by a small number of proprietors (Lima, 1993:61; Barcellos, 1986:19). At the same time, almost a third of the population lives in subhabitações, or inadequate housing. According to Alfonsin (1997:121), there are more than 250 favelas, where about 400,000 people dwell, in Porto Alegre. Compared to other major cities in Brazil—especially those in the north and northeast of the country—the quality of life in Porto Alegre is relatively high. Table 2.1 presents social statistics for Porto Alegre as well as other state capitals: Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio de

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Social Statistics for Porto Alegre and Other State Capitals Porto São Alegre Curitiba Paulo

Human Development Index

0.885

0.882

0.853

Rio de Belo Janeiro Horizonte Recife 0.847

0.826

0.644

Household heads earning less than two minimum salaries (percent)

33

32

27

40

43

56

Households without sufficient water supply (percent)

4

4

2

4

6

20

Households without access to sewer system (percent)

16

22

10

9

14

61

Source: Souto, Kayano, Almeida, and Petrucci, 1995. Note: Statistics based on the 1991 Census.

Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and Recife. Besides the UN Development Program’s Human Development Index (HDI)—which combines statistics ranging from average income to sanitation—the table shows some components of the index. As is clear from the table, social conditions in Porto Alegre are close to those in other cities in southern Brazil, such as Curitiba and São Paulo (Souto, Kayano, Almeida, and Petrucci, 1995). The 1980s, however, was a period of difficulty for the city. During that decade, Porto Alegre was the only metropolitan region in Brazil other than Rio de Janeiro where the proportion of the population living in poverty increased (Rocha, 1994:126). Those living in favelas or subhabitações increased from 15 percent of the population in 1980 to 28 percent in 1989 (Ferretti, 1993:270). To understand the history of local politics, it is necessary to comprehend not only the social conditions of the city but also its political history. Rio Grande do Sul is the birthplace of trabalhismo, the Brazilian version of Latin American populism.12 The central Brazilian populist figure was Getúlio Vargas, a powerful Rio Grande do Sul politician who became Brazil’s president in a 1930 coup and established in 1937 the repressive Estado Novo regime. Vargas skillfully combined authoritarian tendencies, which attracted support from much of the Brazilian traditional elite, with an appeal to the working class. Vargas was responsible for the creation of two parties, the con-

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servative PSD (Partido Social Democrata), which emerged during the Estado Novo, and the populist PTB (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro), which he founded after being deposed from the presidency in 1945 (Skidmore, 1988:4–5). Whereas the PSD was supported by the rural oligarchy and the conservative elite, the PTB was geared toward workers and corporatist union organizations. Its founding supporters were principally union leaders and progressive intellectuals (Bodea, 1992:20–23). Trabalhismo, like all Latin American populist movements, rested on ambiguous ground, calling for social solidarity and workers’ rights, while seeking to co-opt and control workers’ organizations, maintaining a highly hierarchical party structure, and mobilizing mass support through the charisma of powerful leaders and clientelism. Both trabalhismo and the PSD were strongly driven by patronage politics (Weffort, 1980:53). Although trabalhismo focused on workers’ issues and on organizing (and co-opting) union organizations, it also played an important role in building up neighborhood associations in Rio Grande do Sul’s cities. According to Baierle (1993), the city’s first neighborhood associations were formed in the 1930s. In 1959, a statewide umbrella organization of SABs, the Federação Riograndense de Associações Comunitárias e de Amigos de Bairro, or FRACAB, was created largely to coordinate clientelist relations between the associations and trabalhista political leaders (Baierle, 1993:97–98). As in the rest of Brazil, during the dictatorship most surviving SABs in Porto Alegre supported the military regime. FRACAB was taken over by ARENA supporters. Many neighborhood organizations were created in this period in order to build political support for local candidates. The local government did its best to keep these associations under its control without investing substantially in infrastructure. Indeed, one director of the Municipal Department of Housing was rumored to have said in classic clientelist form, “problema resolvido é voto perdido,” a resolved problem is a lost vote (Baierle, 1993:115). In the late 1970s, combative neighborhood associations began to emerge in Porto Alegre just as they did throughout Brazil’s cities. FRACAB itself, now under the control of the PMDB, promoted a new style of organizing. It sent out a group of radical lawyers to help neighborhood organizations resist forced removal. At the same time, local nongovernmental organizations and groups connected to the Catholic church helped neighborhood groups organize. In 1979, an upsurge of organizing occurred throughout the city, with successful efforts to resist forced removal and to obtain urban infrastructure. In

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the northern part of the city, Federação de Orgãos para a Assistência Social e Educacional (FASE) staff worked closely with the residents of Vila Santa Rosa. With the help of the local architects’ union, FASE developed an urbanization project that would avoid the removal of residents and mobilized them to pressure the government to implement it. In the same period, in Vila Tronco, one of the tightly packed favelas of the Cruzeiro region, a highly organized association emerged in reaction to the destruction of sixty shanties by the prefeitura. Twenty-five thousand people signed a document demanding that residents be allowed to stay in the area and that urbanization projects be implemented (Baierle, 1993:140–146). In the early 1980s, a new organizing trend emerged in Porto Alegre, as neighborhood activists, often with the help of FRACAB, began to collaborate in order to be more effective. The search for broader-based organizing began in the Cruzeiro region, where the events in Vila Tronco had mobilized nearby associations. In 1979, the União de Vilas da Zona Sul was created, unifying several associations in the region. Later, a subset of these formed the União de Vilas da Grande Cruzeiro. In the north of the city, a number of commissions and organizations linking neighborhood associations were created, ranging from a Free and Public Education Movement in 1983 to community councils and commissions. During this period, the Glória region, focused on in later chapters, emerged as a third major pole of neighborhood activism in the city. Activists I interviewed all told similar stories of how they moved from localized demand making to a more unified regional project. One of the founders of what would eventually become the Conselho Popular da Grande Glória described the process this way: We would have our meetings and Mayor after Mayor would come along and say that there wasn’t enough money to bring water to such a high hillside. . . . Then, when we realized that we wouldn’t get anywhere this way, we began to talk with the nearby neighborhood associations that had the same problems that we had. I’ll never forget, one Saturday afternoon in 1982 we had a meeting to discuss the water problem, inviting all the associations in the Glória area. . . . It was a big surprise, because there were never so many people here on my street. People came from the whole region, almost all of the associations. . . . And it was beginning with these meetings that we decided to create a community council, of all the associations in Glória. (Marcos)13

In Glória, the early 1980s was a period of intense activism, as the neighborhood movement engaged in a series of battles with the municipal administration. The most dramatic event was a blockade

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organized by residents of the southern end of the region who sought to force the municipality to bring bus service closer to their neighborhoods. At the time, buses went halfway down Oscar Pereira Road and residents who lived farther up had to walk for miles to get to their homes. In 1984, a well-organized group of activists forcibly took over the bus lines for a few weeks, until the company agreed to extend the bus route. As such regionwide neighborhood movements appeared in Cruzeiro, Glória, and the Zona Norte, the leadership of these groups began to put together a citywide organization to coordinate the actions of the various associations and promote broader political and social change. The União das Associações de Moradores de Porto Alegre (UAMPA) was established in 1983, “when a group of community leaders, support organizations, and party organizers decided to give formal expression to the forces of opposition that had taken root in about one third of the Neighborhood Associations of the city” (Baierle, 1993:164). Dominated by party activists from the PDT (Partido Democrático Trabalhista) and the PT, UAMPA’s major objective during the remainder of the 1980s was to broaden the debate in the neighborhood movement beyond immediatist and localist concerns. With petistas heading the organization hierarchy until 1988 and electing the president in both 1983 and 1986, UAMPA became the major reference of left-leaning neighborhood organizers in the city. In 1986, the first full elections in capital cities in more than two decades brought Alceu Collares to the mayor’s office in Porto Alegre. It was a moment of great expectations among progressives in the city. Collares’s party, the PDT, was the postdictatorship successor to the PTB. It had a strong support base in the neighborhood associations. Despite its populist bent, it was a center-left party with a social justice discourse. Once in power, the PDT gained the support of petistas who saw in the Collares administration the first chance for a new kind of local politics. UAMPA and the regional councils that were dominated by leftist activists in the PT and the PDT called off the protests that had marked the previous administration and decided to work with the new mayor, who showed much interest in attending to their demands. Over the course of 1986, Collares held a series of meetings with UAMPA and the city’s neighborhood associations to discuss the reformulation of the municipal council law. The formal decisionmaking councils, which had been in existence since the 1970s for areas such as transportation, public employment, and the Master Plan, were fully under control of the mayor. The government had majority represen-

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tation in them, and “community” representatives were nominated by the executive. After a public audience with association leaders, Collares agreed to hold a citywide seminar of neighborhood organizations in order to discuss the creation of new, more open and participatory councils. More than a hundred organizations attended the meeting, mostly neighborhood associations (Moura, 1989:67). At this meeting, the basic ideas of how the council system should be changed were laid out. UAMPA, the major player in the discussions, called for a system of representation that would give 60 percent of the council seats to neighborhood associations, 30 percent to professional and union organizations, and only 10 percent to the government. The bill that the mayor finally presented to the City Assembly at the end of the year contained most of the proposals supported by UAMPA.14 The City Assembly took over a year to vote on the bill and ultimately rejected it. Much to the movement’s dismay, not only did Collares fail to lobby for the bill, but also a number of PDT city deputies voted against it. The fact that the Collares government was “all ears and no action” had by then begun to dawn on the combative neighborhood activists. Indeed, as Baierle (1993:223) notes, Collares turned out to be highly skilled at the politics of demobilization: by listening to the movements’ demands and agreeing wholeheartedly, the mayor was able to gain the support of neighborhood organizations without actually promoting policies in their interest. Although the bill was defeated, the discussion process helped neighborhood activists develop ideas about what kind of participatory decisionmaking they wanted. It was out of these debates that the first proposals for participation in budget decisions were made. There was a growing recognition that controlling public spending was key. Neighborhood associations had long been frustrated by the repeated response from the municipal government that there was no money to fulfill their demands. As a leader from the Glória region put it: We would arrive in every department and they would say “There is no money.” So we began to think, well why is there never any money? Doesn’t money come into the city’s bank accounts? Yes, they tell us, it comes in, but this money is already allocated. No one had ever told us that the budget for one year is decreed in the year before! (Julipo)

During the Collares administration, one local NGO, FASE, began to circulate documents that explained how the municipal budget was defined, where the revenues came from, and so on. UAMPA held a series of meetings on the subject and attempted to convince the

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mayor to meet with the movements to discuss how they could participate in the budget process. Such meetings, however, never took place. In the final six months of Collares’s term, near election time, the administration suddenly began to invest in poor neighborhoods in an effort to rally support for the PDT. The mayor held assemblies with neighborhood organizations to discuss which projects should be given priority and built a number of major public works in poor areas, particularly in the most mobilized parts of the city. The spending spree, however, was not enough. Not only had Collares lost legitimacy among the combative neighborhood movements, but he had also gained a negative image throughout the city. There were widespread rumors of corruption and highly inefficient spending. The prefeitura was in shambles, with so little money that it was unable to provide basic services even to middle-class neighborhoods. The result was that in the 1988 elections, although the PDT did well in the City Assembly, taking nearly one-third of the house, Collares’s successor was unable to win more than one-quarter of the valid votes. At the same time, the combative neighborhood movement was also in crisis. Baierle argues that UAMPA had, by the late 1980s, become a very bureaucratic organization, which in its emphasis on “big issues” failed to respond to the more everyday needs that motivated favela residents to mobilize. During its entire history, UAMPA was characterized by an effort to go beyond the localist and immediatist framework of the community struggles, an effort that appeared both in the fact that on registering each small conquest it noted that definitive solutions would only come with a broad-based social revolution, and in the permanent pressure on new neighborhood-based militants to engage in broader based oppositional struggles. (Baierle, 1993:164)15

Although it was supposed to be a coalition of neighborhood organizations, UAMPA was in fact dominated by the prevailing ideology on the left, giving preference to labor struggles and seeing neighborhood-based efforts as secondary in the pursuit of socialism. The result was that UAMPA had little appeal to those neighborhood activists seeking improvements for their neighborhoods. It became, essentially, a “vanguard” organization. At its height in the early 1980s, only one-third of the existing neighborhood associations in the city were affiliated with UAMPA and the majority of them did not participate effectively. In 1988, only 37 percent of member associations actually participated in the citywide UAMPA congress, and in the 1990

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congress, only fifty-nine associations participated, substantially fewer than in the mid-1980s (Baierle, 1993:181).

Conclusions This chapter has suggested that by the end of the 1980s, local clientelism was on the rise in Brazilian cities, particularly in Porto Alegre. In the context of decentralization and electoral democracy, local politicians had increasing control over state resources. In many capital cities, where mayoral elections were once again held in 1985, the new executives that took office reinvigorated clientelist traditions of closed-door decisionmaking and personalistic favor exchange, privileging elite groups at the expense of the poor. This occurred despite a decade of “combative” activism at the neighborhood level, where large-scale protests demanding basic infrastructure in poor neighborhoods brought on a wave of optimism on the left. By the end of the decade, combative neighborhood organizing was on the decline, while clientelist associations seemed stronger than ever. These aspects of local politics would seem unfavorable to the emergence of participatory democracy. Other factors, however, suggested that a “window of opportunity” was opening. Some of the same conditions that strengthened the power of local bosses would give alternative groups the chance to transform local governance. Most important, the 1988 constitution gave municipalities a great deal of autonomy, both financially and with respect to what kinds of policies could be implemented. Although where traditional elites remained in office, this autonomy usually led to a bolstering of local clientelism, where alternative groups could get elected, they had the power to use state resources in new ways. Furthermore, although neighborhood movements did not have the combative energy of earlier years, the period of popular upsurge led to the emergence of new political groups, such as the Workers’ Party. In Porto Alegre, the frustrated experience of the Collares government led to a refinement of ideas. One result was the proposal that neighborhood movements participate in the formulation of the city budget. Chapter 3 will explore further this window of opportunity, discussing how one alternative political group, the PT, confronted the limitations and possibilities of municipal governance. Understanding these conditions and their particular characteristics in Porto Alegre will be essential for explaining why the PT was able to implement participation there.

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Notes 1. Most definitions of clientelism emphasize three characteristics: (1) relations between people of unequal status, (2) reciprocity or exchanges of favors, and (3) face-to-face contact between actors (Martz, 1997:10). On coronelismo and early forms of clientelism in Brazil, see, in addition to Queiroz (1975), Leal (1975) and R. Graham (1990). 2. The only exception to ARENA’s domination of state government during the military regime was in Rio de Janeiro, where PMDB politician Chagas Freitas won the governor’s office in 1965 and built up a powerful clientelist machine that lasted until the 1980s (Diniz, 1982). 3. For a summary of the new constitutional regulations, see Shah (1991). 4. Two well-known non-PT cases of such successful “good government” experiments are the state of Ceará, where the PSDB (Partido Social Democrata Brasileiro) has held office since 1987, and the city of Curitiba, where the PDT (Partido Democrático Trabalhista) has been in power for many years. See Tendler (1996) on the case of Ceará and Garcia (1993) and Menezes (1996) on Curitiba. PT experiences are discussed in Chapter 3. 5. For more on “horizontal” and “vertical” relationships in clientelist associations, see Chapter 8. 6. Such actions came in contrast to the urban organizing of the preVargas period, which had been dominated by anarchists strongly averse to negotiating with the state (Kowarick and Bonduki, 1988:143). 7. The literature on the role of urban social movements in promoting a “new political culture” is quite large. See, for example, Durham (1984); Jacob (1989); Telles (1987); Mamarrella(1993); Scherer-Warren (1987); Calderón (1987); Vigevani (1989). A more recent articulation for Latin America in general can be found in Escobar (1992). 8. On the relation between CEBs and the urban movements, see Krischke and Mainwaring (1986). See also Nobrega (1988) and Doimo (1984). 9. The term combative is often used by movement activists themselves to distinguish their modes of action from clientelist associations. 10. O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986:55–56) point to all these reasons and argue that the “popular upsurge” that accompanies democratic transition is “always ephemeral.” 11. The first quantitative study of associationalism in Brazil was carried out by the census agency in 1988 (IBGE, 1990). Another similar study for metropolitan regions was carried out in 1996. Both of these studies show a higher degree of membership in neighborhood associations in the south of the country. Neither, however, distinguishes beyond mere membership to identify the percentage of people who actively participate. 12. Latin American populism is different from what has been referred to as the “populist movement” in the United States. Whereas the former is hierarchical, involving co-optation and control of mass organizations, the latter focuses on decentralized decisionmaking and the “return to the grassroots.” See Boyte and Riessmann (1986) and chapter 4 of Boggs (1986) for discussions of the U.S. form. Conniff (1982) describes the Latin American version and Weffort (1980) the Brazilian version.

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13. Note that the names of all local activists and budget participants I interviewed have been changed. See Methodological Appendix. 14. For discussions of the process of formulating the bill, see Moura (1989) and Baierle (1993:219–233). 15. At the first UAMPA congress in 1985, the organization passed resolutions to take part in the “Continental Day for the Non-Payment of the Foreign Debt,” to call for the creation of a National Constituent Assembly, to participate in the Rio Grande do Sul Agrarian Reform movement, to call for a broadening of the amnesty program, and to call for “the end of racial discrimination in the world” (referring specifically to the liberation of Mandela in South Africa) (Baierle, 1993:164–165).

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Transforming Local Governance: The PT and the Challenges of Participation

The Partido dos Trabalhadores In the mid-1970s, as the authoritarian regime showed signs that the abertura was coming, intellectuals and politicians on the left began to debate the possibility of the formation of a new party. With only two legal parties, ARENA and the MDB (Movimento Democrático Brasileiro), a broad political spectrum ranging from left to center worked within the MDB. Although some participants in this still largely intellectual debate feared that the creation of a new party would split the opposition, a number of players from a variety of backgrounds thought that the creation of a new popular party with a strong grassroots base was critical if political institutions were to be fundamentally transformed (Keck, 1992:58). These discussions among left-wing members of Brazil’s elite were essentially preempted by the emergence in the late 1970s of a massive radical labor union movement in the industrial region around São Paulo. The movement was born out of frustration with the conformism and co-optation of official labor unions, which—still largely structured on the corporatist model of the Vargas era—were tightly controlled by the state. A “wage recovery campaign” that began among metalworkers’ unions in the São Paulo industrial district was initially unsuccessful, but as striking became more intense, management began making concessions. A snowball effect led to a vast wave of strikes all over Brazil in 1979 (Keck 1992:65–66; Keck 1989). At first, the leaders of the São Paulo union movement intended to remain within the MDB. However, as MDB politicians failed to support the strike movement, many of the radical union leaders became 47

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convinced that an autonomous workers’ party should be formed. The issue was hotly debated at a series of union conferences in early 1979. As consensus among the radical union leaders grew, they began to negotiate with intellectuals and MDB politicians on the left about the creation of such a party. On December 20, 1979, the long-awaited legal reform allowing the creation of new parties was passed; in 1980, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party) was unofficially created; and in 1982, the PT achieved official recognition.1 Although the original impetus driving the formation of the PT was within the radical union movement, several other popular movements and radical groups joined the party. The PT soon consisted of a network of party nuclei, which, though strongest in the industrial and urbanized southeast, spread throughout the country. These nuclei included groups associated not only with the industrial union movement, but also with Christian Base Communities, urban neighborhood movements, peasant unions, leftist revolutionary groups, and human and civil rights activists. Early on, these groups organized into a wide (and constantly fluctuating) variety of national and regional tendências, or factions, that have intensely disputed party ideology and program proposals ever since. Critical to understanding the PT is recognizing that the party’s emergence represented an important break from earlier Brazilian leftist political groups. The various communist parties of Brazil had been principally formed by elite groups from within the military and the intelligentsia. This “old left”—particularly the Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB)—often appeared to condone existing power hierarchies, fully supporting the presidencies of Getúlio Vargas, Jucelino Kubitscheck, and João Goulart. The radical guerrilla uprising of the dictatorship years also had little grassroots base. During the military regime, the organizational structure of this “old left” was all but destroyed through violent political repression. Those militants that survived also underwent a profound ideological change: exiled in Europe, many of them were deeply influenced by the democratic ideals of Eurocommunism (Konder, 1980). The weakening of old political institutions on the Brazilian left that might have been able to co-opt the radical union movement allowed for the emergence of a party with a strong, relatively autonomous grassroots base.2 “The initiative in constituting the PT arose within a new, post1964 working class that, having no experience of Stalinism or populism, understood on the basis of its own experience of class struggle the necessity of an independent political organization” (Lowy, 1987:455). Previously in Brazil the parties that had claimed to defend the

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interests of the poor and working class were either traditional communist and socialist parties or center-left populist parties such as the PTB. The PT was dramatically different. Whereas the socialist parties were tightly organized, vanguardist organizations and the populist parties were characterized by the hierarchical leadership of charismatic politicians, from the outset the PT promoted a bottom-up, participatory organizational structure. At the base were the nucleos, where party members discussed and deliberated party action. Each nucleo elected a delegate to local conventions, where decisions were voted upon. Delegates from the local conventions would meet at state conventions, which in turn elected delegates to national conventions. Thus the party directorship at the national level was directly tied through a pyramid of mediations to the grassroots base (Alves, 1993). Given the heterogeneity of groups constituting the party, it is not surprising that the official ideology of the PT was quite vague, combining the experiences of a variety of social movements with the thinking of socialist intellectuals. There was consensus on some key issues. The party was brought together by a general commitment to democracy that shunned the elitism, dogmatism, and revolutionary vanguardism of earlier Brazilian socialist parties. Two themes were central. In the first place, there was what the PT called the “inversão de prioridades” (inversion of priorities) of government policymaking. The party demanded an end to clientelist and authoritarian traditions that benefited elite groups and called for government policy to address the needs of the poor. In the second place, there was participação popular (popular participation). In the late 1970s, debates within the union movement about the possibility of creating a new party already stressed internal democracy and decentralization. The idea that the party should not attempt to replace autonomous movements was also emphasized from the beginning (Gadotti and Pereira, 1989:44–45, cited in Silberschneider, 1993:79).3 Two organizational models of participatory movements inspired the party founders. On the one hand, there was the progressive Catholic church and its decentralized network of CEBs. The CEBs had a “constant emphasis on local initiative and participation, with a prevalent idea that higher-level organizations precluded active participation at the base and permitted the manipulation of popular demands by those whose interests were elsewhere” (Keck, 1992:49). Although the CEBs never directly affiliated with the PT and, indeed, maintained a generalized suspicion of political institutions, they always kept close ties with the social movements that supported the party. And although the PT, as a national party, was necessarily more centralized than the CEBs, the progressive church’s respect for move-

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ment autonomy and self-organization entered into party discourse as central themes. A second model harked back to the Paris Commune and the European experiences with worker councils. The council communism vision of small groups formed in neighborhoods and workplaces that would be incorporated into a “pyramidal” system of delegation—through which representatives with revokable mandates would communicate the groups’ positions up to the highest level of decisionmaking—became the organizing principle of the party and a central motif in proposals for governing. These concepts did not translate immediately into practical policies for governing. The PT’s first experiences in office raised a number of problems about the politics of implementing participation. In 1982, the PT won its first prefeituras in Diadema, an industrial city within the metropolitan region of São Paulo where the radical union movement had been highly active, and in Santa Quitéria, a small town in the northeastern state of Maranhão. In Diadema, a number of participatory experiments were initiated, most visibly, a Transportation Council. But these efforts were eclipsed by intense disputes between the administration and the party. According to Keck (1992:214), in the context of these party disputes, popular organizations were often seen as on one side or the other. The result was that the administration did not trust them enough to make important policy decisions. Such problems were largely perceived by the national party as local concerns, and no generalized debate about the experience of governing took place (215). In 1985, the party won a more important municipality: Fortaleza, the capital city of the state of Ceará. But party conflicts led to even worse results there, ending with the expulsion of the mayor from the PT amid a “widespread perception that the city administration was out of control” (230). Participatory democracy was almost totally abandoned in the Fortaleza case, where the mayor believed that the government should not create formal participatory forums, but should allow civil society to organize autonomously (Silberschneider, 1993:102). In the years preceding what would be the critical 1988 elections, there was some debate within the PT about the importance of direct democracy, but as Silberschneider notes, this debate remained largely abstract, with little discussion either of how participatory forums should be formed or of the conflicts of interest that might emerge. Petistas believed in the necessity of “inverting priorities,” that is, using state resources to benefit the poor. But for those who had been active in the opposition to the repressive bureaucratic-authoritarian regime, distrust of state institutions was also strong. Indeed, as Weffort (1989) notes, social movements, union groups, and left-wing militants, which

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had previously been very much focused on the state as the solution for society’s ills, began, during the military period, to see the state as the problem. There was widespread consensus that the PT should contribute to decreasing the centralized, bureaucratic-authoritarian power of the state and increasing the role of “autonomous” civil society in public decisionmaking. Socialist ideologues formulated more elaborate theories of why direct democracy was necessary. As noted in Chapter 2, prevailing Marxist theories held that the state was inherently favorable to the capitalist class. Only under very special conditions would it be likely to promote working-class interests, even if the left managed to gain control of some part of the state structure. With the abandonment of violent revolutionary strategy and “the frontal assault on the state,” the only option would be to complement action within existing state institutions with the maintenance of a parallel power base outside them (Weffort, 1984).4 The strengthening of new forums of decisionmaking outside the formal structure of the state would be the means of circumscribing the procapitalist tendencies of the state, which otherwise would likely infect policy goals of the left once in power. Since only in this way could the PT successfully “invert priorities” from within a state created for other purposes, participation was strategically necessary for the sake of the PT’s egalitarian and anticapitalist project (Silberschneider, 1993:92). Many petistas (PT militants) imagined that participation would appear in the form of what they called Conselhos Populares, or popular councils. The main model was the very successful grassroots health movement in São Paulo, which had organized into Popular Health Councils. These autonomously created councils “secured official recognition from the state and local health departments but established their own internal rules and selected their own representatives in elections designed and supervised by the movement” (Alvarez, 1993:205). Party documents visualized a similarly organized decentralized “pyramidal” system of popular councils, created on the initiative of local movements, as the principal forums of direct democracy in a PT prefeitura (Gadotti and Pereira, 1989:282–287). There was, however, much disagreement about how the conselhos would be created and about how much power they should have. Silberschneider notes that there were three competing conceptions of the Conselhos Populares that appeared in party documents and debates during the 1980s. Some saw them as parallel structures of power outside the state, similar to the original idea of the Soviets. From this perspective, the government should not take part in the creation of the councils, which should evolve out of the autonomous

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organizing of civil society. Others argued that the conselhos should be initiated by the government and used principally as a way to democratize the decisionmaking process. According to a third, middle-ground view, the government should participate in promoting the conselhos, but with the primary objective of strengthening civil society so that the latter would have, at a future date, the capacity to transform state institutions (Silberschneider, 1993:105–106). There were other unresolved debates: whether councils should be organized according to themes, such as housing and transportation, or whether they should be territorially based; how much decisionmaking power they should have; whether they should be elected by the population or by representatives of civic associations (106–108). None of these issues would be fully resolved until the party gained more experience in municipal governance.

The 1988 Municipal Elections In the 1988 municipal elections, the PT surprised most observers by electing its candidates to mayor in thirty-six municipalities throughout Brazil, including three state capitals, Porto Alegre, Vitória, and São Paulo; six middle-sized industrial cities in the São Paulo region (including Diadema); three smaller industrial cities in the industrial region of Minas Gerais state; as well as in many smaller towns throughout the country. Certainly, the PT’s strong grassroots base and its capacity to mobilize huge rallies and demonstrations helped it make this advance (Alves, 1993:237). But the political conditions in the country at the time were also highly receptive to the emergence of alternative political groups. The nation’s president, José Sarney, was an uncharismatic politician who had come to office after the untimely death of MDB strategist and statesman Tancredo Neves. Sarney had presided over a period of increasingly clientelistic politics and government paralysis. The nation was suffering a decade-long recession, and inflation was out of control. Public opinion surveys taken in 1988 and 1989 showed widespread frustration with the “new republic” and a desire for a less corrupt and more participatory democracy. Many saw the 1988 election results as a protest vote (Moisés, 1990:158). A year later, the two main contenders in the presidential elections came from outsider parties, the winning Fernando Collor’s PRN (Partido da Renovação Nacional) and the close runnerup PT, led by Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. In that year, the two largest parties in Congress, the Partido do Movimento Democrático

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Brasileiro (PMDB) and the Partido da Frente Liberal (PFL), managed to generate only 5 percent of the vote (173). Moisés identifies a number of reasons for the decline of the powerful PMDB and the rise of smaller, more recently formed parties, including the return to a long history in Brazil of fragile parties and weak voter loyalties and the frustration and sense of impotence that were generalized in public opinion in the late 1980s, as the long-hoped-for democratic transition had failed to bring a better quality of life to most people. A 1989 survey revealed widespread public distrust in politicians. When asked to choose between three descriptions of politicians in general, 30 percent chose the statement, “They resolve the problems of their friends and relatives”; 45 percent chose, “They get rich at the expense of the public”; and only 9 percent chose, “They defend the interests of the electorate” (Moisés, 1990:165). At the same time, the population was far from convinced that “democracy” was better than “dictatorship.” Only 42 percent said that democracy is always better, whereas 40 percent either preferred dictatorship or thought that it made no difference (160). However, such answers were not a sign of an antidemocratic political culture in Brazil. To the contrary, when asked if they thought that the country would be better “if the people had the power to decide,” between 71 and 86 percent (depending on the age category) said yes, suggesting a strong desire on the part of citizens to have more influence on public life (Cardoso, 1990:20). Yet nearly 60 percent of those interviewed thought that they had no influence whatsoever over political decisionmaking (Moisés, 1990:161).5 In this context, the PT’s proposals had a great deal of political appeal. By now, the PT had a reputation of combating clientelism and corruption, and its political leaders were totally disassociated from the traditional political elites who had long milked the public coffers. The party was also distinguished from the mainstream opposition to the dictatorship, which had been popular during the transition period but which, once in power, had presided over recession, inflation, and corruption (Keck, 1992:237). The party’s discourse of democracy and participation also appealed to a public that felt it had little control over decisionmaking. These beliefs increased in the late 1980s and 1990s as a series of national corruption scandals, including the eventual impeachment of President Collor, was accompanied by massive demonstrations and protests throughout the country. In this context, the PT took control of the thirty-six municipalities during a critical “window of opportunity” when the public—especially in the southern and southeastern parts of the country—was desperately searching for political alternatives.

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The Problems of Implementing Participation: PT Experiences in Practice Upon taking office, the new PT administrations were beset by a series of problems, which impeded their ability to implement participatory policy. First, almost without exception, the party arrived in office to find largely bankrupt prefeituras. In most cases, local governments were burdened with bloated bureaucracies, with payrolls that ate up municipal resources. Despite huge debts, local governments typically had given out innumerable exemptions that lowered revenues. Raising money and paying off debts would have to come first, before any major projects could be implemented. The 1988 constitutional changes (see Chapter 2) would help the new governments in this task, since increases in federal transfers first became effective in 1989. Implementing the new taxation capabilities would, however, take some time, requiring negotiations with city councils and most certainly raising opposition from those asked to pay more. Thus, developing a participatory system of government was quite difficult, since there were very few decisions to be made: the new PT administrations were highly constrained by circumstances. These financial difficulties often raised tensions between the administration and other groups. In particular, as occurred in the Diadema and Fortaleza cases, many administrations were plagued by conflicts with the PT party leaders who remained outside the government but who expected to influence the mayor’s decisions. In his study of the 1989–1992 PT administration in São Paulo, for example, Couto (1995) notes that petistas inside and outside the government had very different perspectives. Whereas the party hierarchy was principally concerned with “internal power disputes . . . the party program . . . and accountability to the [militant] party base,” the administrations “had to respond, before anything, to the problems of ‘being government’: responsiveness to the electoral base of the party, responsiveness to the population as a whole . . . and the responsibility to the government machine” (131). Since party officials, in the name of party autonomy, could not be nominated to administration posts, there were no incentives to bridge the gap between these two viewpoints, Couto argues. The party demanded that the administration resist “bureaucratic” limitations, seen as accommodation to the economic and political status quo; for example, the party insisted that bus fares not be raised, despite the severe financial troubles (40). The result was much disagreement and struggle between the two sectors, which, Couto and others argue, severely detracted from the administration’s capacity to govern. Such problems were not restricted to São

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Paulo: in twelve of the thirty-six municipalities that the PT won in 1989, the mayor left or was expelled from the party over the course of the term. At the same time, there was also much strife between the PT administrations and party supporters. The municipal employee unions affiliated with CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores), the radical union organization that was most closely tied to the PT, were a particularly contentious group. The unions often strongly resisted attempts by the administrations to contain salaries or to make major changes in the bureaucratic structure of the government. In the case of São Paulo, such conflicts had a devastating effect. Just months before municipal elections, the union demanded wage hikes that the financially strapped administration refused to accept. The clash between the mayor and the union led to a total shutdown of the bus system and firings of public transportation workers. This conflict, which had a direct impact on the lives of millions of city residents, is one of several factors explaining the failure of the PT to reelect its candidate in 1992. Tensions between the administrations and their supporters were aggravated by attacks from powerful elite groups threatened by the existence of a leftist party in the mayor’s office. In São Paulo, private bus companies stopped servicing the city on repeated occasions in order to pressure the government to approve fare hikes. The most intense conflict between the administration and business occurred when the mayor attempted to reform the local property tax law, raising rates and making the tax progressive. Although the City Assembly passed the law, business interests took the municipal government to court, arguing that progressive taxes were unconstitutional. The argument eventually failed to convince the courts but succeeded in tying up the tax reform until after the PT left power. The state and federal governments also made difficulties for the São Paulo administration. Constitutionally mandated federal and state revenue transfers got “tied up in bureaucracy.” At one point, the federal bank, Caixa Economica Federal, simply refused to open accounts earmarked for public housing in São Paulo. Funding for health care was also diverted away from São Paulo during the PT administration (Veja, 1989). Although such problems were particularly intense in São Paulo, headquarters of the nation’s corporate sector, many of the less politically and economically important PT administrations were also severely shaken by pressure from powerful opposition groups. Finally, the administrations usually found that civil society was not organized as well as they had believed. As noted earlier, the late 1980s was a period of declining social movement activity. Only a small per-

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centage of the population was active in neighborhood organizations or union groups. Most civic associations were the closed, nonparticipatory, clientelist type. The petistas hoped that upon coming to power, there would be an upsurge of civic groups that would come to the aid of the administrations. Instead, they found that civic groups continued to make demands but did not seek to work constructively with the impoverished administrations. Kowarick and Singer expressed the growing feeling among the petistas who came to office in São Paulo and elsewhere: “the movements are slow, hesitant and unequal. Still more: they encompass a quantitatively derisory minority and furthermore, neither bring together nor universalize broader and more general interests. They are, in the end, localist, fragmented and partial” (1993:204–205). Initial popular assemblies were flooded by hopeful activists who made long lists of their demands: housing, health care, transportation, paved streets, basic sanitation, all extremely urgent and yet far beyond the capacity of the governments to resolve. Administration officials complained that the activists seemed to show little interest in discussing broader-based issues and policy matters and quickly grew impatient when the new administrations failed to respond to their long-pent-up demands. In most cities, participation declined dramatically in the second year of the administration as the credibility of the PT governments fell.6 The result of all of these difficulties, generally, was that the PT administrations moderated their goals, particularly in the realm of popular participation. In 1989, there had been efforts to create “participatory budget” policies in several cities where the PT won office, such as São Paulo, Santos, Santo André, Ipatinga (in Minas Gerais), and Porto Alegre. Overwhelmed by demands they could not fulfill, most of these prefeituras restricted participatory decisionmaking in the following years. In São Paulo and Santos, the ambitious participatory budgeting efforts of the first years were largely abandoned, and participatory policies were limited to localized efforts with predetermined budgets and policy goals, such as self-built housing projects and neighborhood health councils. In other cities, such as Santo André and Ipatinga, participatory budget forums were given only advisory status on generic “priorities”; final decisions were left to the government. Some of these administrations, most notably that of Santos, went on to regain popularity and to reelect their successors. Good, efficient administrations were able both to gain the crucial support of the middle class and to “invert priorities” as hoped, promoting innovative policies in poor areas. However, such policies went

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through without much popular participation.7 In only a few cities, most notably Porto Alegre and the later Belo Horizonte administration (1993–1996), did large-scale citywide participatory council systems take on a major decisionmaking role.

The PT in Porto Alegre Over the course of the 1980s, activists affiliated with the PT played an important role in the neighborhood coalitions, described in Chapter 2, especially in the founding of the citywide “combative” organization, UAMPA. The converse, however, was not true. “Combative” neighborhood activists did not have a particularly strong influence over local party organizations. Union activists founded the party in Rio Grande do Sul. Articulação, their tendência (faction) within the PT, was led by Olivio Dutra, from the bank employees’ union, who was closely aligned with Lula, the party’s national leader. A second important group in the party included leftist political organizations that had been underground militant revolutionary groups during the dictatorship. As we have seen, former revolutionary socialist groups played an important role in the foundation and structuring of the PT throughout Brazil. In Rio Grande do Sul, Trotskyite groups, led by Raul Pont and the Democracia Socialista faction, were particularly strong within the party. A third group within the Rio Grande do Sul PT consisted of activists coming out of the progressive church movement. These activists were for the most part involved in the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, the landless peasant movement, which was very well organized in Rio Grande do Sul. Church-based petistas were also active, although to a lesser extent, in many urban social movements and neighborhood groups, with a certain presence in UAMPA. Of the three major groups within the PT, the church-based activist group was more important at the statewide level and the least active in Porto Alegre. A fourth group entered into the party only in the mid-1980s and remained for a few years as a “party within the party.” Called the PRC (Partido Revolucionário Comunista) until 1987, it then became a more ordinary faction and was renamed Nova Esquerda. The PRC had a highly revolutionary discourse until the late 1980s, when the fall of the Berlin Wall led the group into a radical rethinking of its political ideology. Over the course of the PT’s first term in office in Porto Alegre, most of the members of the PRC moved into a more

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moderate camp, opposing the revolutionary ideals of the past and proposing a broad politics of alliances. The main leader of this group in Rio Grande do Sul was Tarso Genro. Although the PT was thus made up of four very different political groups, it had a marked capacity for unified action. Indeed, historically the PT was better able to resolve internal disputes in Rio Grande do Sul than in other states. The reasons are not completely clear. Some of the party leaders that I interviewed attributed this success to Rio Grande do Sul’s political history, which, unlike most of Brazil, was characterized by strong, programmatic parties that inspired membership loyalty.8 From the PT’s foundation in Rio Grande do Sul, the party implemented proportional representation in internal party elections, greatly reducing political conflict by giving minority candidates a proportion of the offices.9 The fact that no group feared that it would be totally excluded promoted a cooperative spirit even among factions that virulently disagreed on major programmatic issues. This cooperative spirit would prove much to the PT’s advantage once it took office, allowing it to avoid many of the intraparty conflicts that beset other PT administrations.

The 1988 Campaign in Porto Alegre In the 1988 mayoral primaries, the Articulação allied with the Nova Esquerda, ensuring that Olivio Dutra would be the mayoral candidate and Tarso Genro the vice-mayoral candidate. The result of this alliance was to exclude the Democracia Socialista faction from the slate, even though it and some smaller groups allied with it had the largest number of petista adherents in Porto Alegre. Nevertheless, the campaign went on without major conflicts. The PT entered into a coalition with the much smaller PCB (Partido Comunista Brasileiro). The PCB ran on the list together with the PT for the City Assembly election and would be given leadership positions in the municipal government of the Frente Popular, or the Popular Front. Those who followed the campaign note that until a few months before the election, the public showed little interest. None of the major candidates drew much avid support. The local media had put itself behind the PMDB candidate, who was expected to win the election. But with a very unpopular PMDB president and high inflation and recession at the national level, there was little excitement about the establishment’s candidate. The second major candidate was Carlos Araújo, Collares’s successor from the PDT. But because Collares’s mismanaged administration was so unpopular, the PDT was

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also unable to raise much electoral passion. Without media coverage, however, the PT thought it had little chance of winning the campaign. Olivio Dutra was a federal deputy at the time and a member of the Constitutional Assembly. Critical negotiations were constantly taking place in Brasília, and he resisted leaving the capital to participate in a campaign he seemed likely to lose. About two months before the election, the Frente Popular campaign committee decided to change its tactics. It would no longer wait for the electronic media to pay attention to its candidate. Instead, the Frente Popular would take the campaign out into the street. The party then initiated what would become a tradition in Porto Alegre politics, the arrastão, literally “dragnet.” Party militants would meet at the PT headquarters in the center of town and begin to walk through the streets calling out to passersby and asking them to join the march. What would begin as a small agglomeration would soon grow into a mass of hundreds of people marching, dancing, chanting, and singing. The campaign changed dramatically with this turn to the street, as the Frente Popular promoted an optimistic, festive atmosphere. Massive rallies of people raising red flags drew thousands of people, not only petistas, but also many others who were searching for something new in local politics. Therefore, at a moment when there was much disillusionment in the city with the dominant political groups, the PT appeared as a dark horse. The Frente Popular managed to capture over 40 percent of the valid votes. Since in that year, only a plurality was necessary to win, Olivio Dutra and Tarso Genro were victorious. The PT had entered through a window of opportunity. Yet keeping that window open would not be a simple task.

Prospects for Neighborhood-Based Participation in Porto Alegre In sum, we can see that although 1989 in Porto Alegre was an opportune time for a political group wishing to promote an alternative program, many obstacles lay between that program and the real possibilities for promoting a participatory government that would give significant power to neighborhood-based organizations. In this respect, each of the three major problems of participation was apparent in the conditions facing the new Frente Popular administration. Problems of implementation would appear in two forms. In the first place, the PT had no experience in government administration and would have to pull together at short notice a coalition of able-bodied

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professionals to take control of the government. To make matters worse, Collares had left the administration deeply in debt, with a swollen bureaucracy. In addition, there were deeper problems that seemed likely to affect the government’s ability to promote policies benefiting the neighborhood movements. “Combative” neighborhood organizations were weak in the power structure influencing the PT administration at the time it took office. It thus seemed unlikely that their interests would be heard. Given the proximity of union groups to the mayor and their strength within the party more generally, one would expect that they and not the weakened neighborhood movements would have first access to any participatory forums created. The limits of neighborhood organizing also raised inequality problems for any participatory program targeting neighborhoods. The “combative movement” was vigorous in only a few regions of the city. There were well-organized, experienced movements in Cruzeiro, Glória, and the Zona Norte regions. Some other, more recent, movement organizations had expanded in Partenon, Leste, and Lomba do Pinheiro. Isolated activist associations also existed elsewhere in the city. But this still left huge areas crowded with poor settlements: the northeast and central portions of the city, along with the entire southern zone. In this context, how could the administration ensure that it “inverted priorities,” attending to the needs of the “hitherto excluded,” at the same time as it gave power only to those movements that were most organized? Finally, there were good reasons to fear that a participatory policy instituted by the PT would end in co-optation rather than empowerment. That was certainly the worry of those “combative” leaders who had found that the encounter with the Collares administration had led only to demobilization. What would ensure that the PT could escape long-standing historical traditions of state-society relations, which in Rio Grande do Sul had been characterized by state control and co-optation of civic organizations? As noted earlier, the majority of neighborhood associations in Porto Alegre continued to fit the clientelist, not the combative, form. If the leaders of such organizations did ultimately take part in government-initiated programs, would they be capable of breaking those traditions? These difficulties, however, were accompanied by other factors that, as I will show in the following chapters, ultimately gave the administration the tools to counter political traditions in Porto Alegre, eliminating clientelism, directing government priorities toward the needs of the poor, and empowering neighborhood-based civic groups and other members of the “hitherto excluded.” The first

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factor is the new municipal autonomy (discussed in Chapter 2), which beginning in 1989 would increase both government transfers to municipalities and local government powers of taxation and revenue collection. This financial autonomy gave the administration the basic tools to counter the fiscal crisis left by the previous government and to promote policies directed toward poor neighborhoods without detriment to other interests. Second, the PT came to office at a time of great public support for efforts to combat clientelism and to promote democracy. The frustration with corruption and inefficient governing at the national level would increase over the course of the term, as a series of scandals eventually led to the impeachment of the president. At another time, eliminating corruption and redirecting municipal funds toward investment in small public works in poor neighborhoods might have done little but raise the ire of those interest groups that no longer received kickbacks or preferential contracts. But in a context of public outrage and frustration with the democratic transition, the PT could turn good governance into a political asset. Third, as we have seen, the Porto Alegre PT had the conditions to avoid some of the internal strife that traumatized other PT administrations. Its long history of cooperation among factions and the inclusion in the administration of a friendly coalition of different forces within the party helped in this respect. Finally, although the Collares administration had contributed to the demobilization of the “combative” neighborhood movement in Porto Alegre, the debates initiated by activists during that period did bear some fruit. Petistas in the neighborhood movement had been very active in designing the municipal council law and in the process had engaged in extensive debates about what kind of representation was necessary, how much deliberative power they wanted, what concessions were worth making in negotiations with the administrations, and so on. Even though the neighborhood movements themselves did not have majority power within the PT or much expression in the higher echelons of the new administration, many of their ideas continued to have influence as the PT administration attempted to create its own council system in the following years.

Notes 1. For more detailed descriptions of the origins of the PT, see Gadotti and Pereira (1989); Keck (1992); Meneguello (1989); Sader and Silverstein (1991).

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2. Indeed, the PCB was against the creation of the Workers’ Party from the beginning, believing that there could be only “one workers’ party” and that remaining within the MDB was strategically necessary (Keck, 1992:79). 3. Silberschneider (1993:78–116) includes a lengthy analysis of the PT’s participatory ideology in his study of the 1989–1992 PT administration of Ipatinga, Minas Gerais. Nylen (1996) reflects on the PT’s participatory ideology with respect to the PT administration of Betim, Minas Gerais. Gadotti and Pereira (1989) have compiled a large collection of party documents, many of which express these ideals. 4. Weffort, one of the founding members of the PT, expressed ideas that closely paralleled the Eurocommunist debates discussed earlier, especially those of the later Poulantzas (1978). 5. All these figures became much more positive in a survey taken in December 1989, just after the presidential election, suggesting that the highly mobilized campaign had an effect. In the second survey, taken just months after the first, only 38 percent thought they had no influence over politics (Moisés, 1990:161) and 54 percent said that they thought democracy was better than dictatorship (160). 6. This information is based on interviews I conducted in 1993 with people who had worked in eight different 1989–1992 PT administrations. The results are examined in Abers (1996), where I explain in more detail the “credibility” problems the administrations encountered. 7. Santos was one of the PT administrations that strayed furthest from the “popular council” idea, implementing extremely elitist forms of “participation.” According to Pinhanez, the mayor considered “the greatest triumph we had in the city” to be the creation of a sixty-person “City Forum.” The members were nominated by the mayor and included “people who had symbolic weight for the city: a retired judge, a woman who was the center of philanthropic activities in Santos, the owner of the cinema,” and so on (Pinhanez, 1995:128–129). 8. Bodea (1992) for example, argues that the PTB was a programmatic party fostering strong loyalties and that the power of its leaders did not only come from their charisma and ability to engage in direct contact with the masses, as populist politicians are often described. They were, he argued, also very active in building up a strong party structure. 9. A proportional representation system was not instituted at the national level of the party until the late 1980s.

Part Two

FROM IDEALS TO PRACTICE: BUILDING PARTICIPATORY POLICY

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Participation and Governability

Chapter 1 noted that governments seeking to create empowering participatory policies often fail to do so because they cannot conjure up the political resources to implement participation. As shown in Chapter 3, most of the PT administrations encountered such difficulties: financial limitations and strife between the government and groups such as public employees, the party hierarchy, and political and economic elites reduced the capacity of the prefeituras to implement their dual project of combining the “inversion of government priorities” with “popular participation.” In a study of state-initiated participatory experiences worldwide, Stiefel and Wolfe list six major obstacles that practically all of the “more authentic and less ephemeral state efforts to institutionalize participation” (1994:102–103) encountered as they attempted, and largely failed, to promote genuine citizen control of decisionmaking: (1) reformist state actors are often unable to pressure other actors within the state to support participatory policies; (2) policymakers and participants often have different expectations about the goals of participation; (3) conflicts arise between reformist policymakers and entrenched bureaucracies accustomed to authoritarian or clientelist forms of decisionmaking; (4) inexperience, ideological preconceptions, and weak economic management mean that new governments have only a precarious hold on power, making it difficult to attend to the demands of grassroots supporters—“and thus confirm their loyalty”; (5) other political groups seek to remove the governing party from power; and (6) fear of giving nonparty supporters power over participatory decisionmaking leads to the restriction or total elimination of open participatory forums.1 65

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Overcoming these problems requires negotiating with groups both inside and outside the immediate arena of participatory decisionmaking. Inside that arena, groups proposing participatory policies must gain the support of upper-echelon officials, who often do not agree themselves about government priorities. Political parties supporting the government often come into conflict with administration leadership. Reformers must also gain the support of public employees, who must learn to work in a new fashion, negotiating with participants rather than defining priorities through ostensibly technical criteria. Finally, policymakers must negotiate with potential participants themselves, who may not agree with them about the form or content of participatory decisionmaking. Outside the immediate sphere of participation, policymakers must gain the support of political and economic elites, which can debilitate the administrative capacity of the government and electoral popularity through their control of the media and of essential public services. Furthermore, constitutional requirements usually demand that decisions made by the executive branch be approved, at least partially, by other branches of government, such as the City Assembly. The policies must also gain the support of broader public opinion if reelection is to be possible. These requirements suggest that there are two types of “implementation problems.” Negotiations internal to the participatory process have to do with conflicts between participation and governability. With high expectations from supporters, financial difficulties, and technical inexperience, governments find it difficult to make participatory policy compatible with effective governing. Participants typically resist bureaucratic red tape and strict timelines, and there is no guarantee that the decisions they make will conform with government priorities. At times when providing basic services to the public is a challenge, participation can make governing even more difficult.2 Negotiations external to the immediate sphere of participation have to do with garnering broader political support for participation. The attempt to give greater decisionmaking control to the “hitherto excluded” is likely to bring on the opposition of groups accustomed to influencing government priorities. These groups can threaten participatory policy. For example, contractors, by refusing to enter into bidding competitions for proposed projects, can make it difficult for government to implement participatory decisions. In the long run, political support from diverse sectors of society is necessary if reelection is to be achieved, allowing for the continuation of participatory policies. This chapter and the next one will examine how the Porto Alegre

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PT established governability and built up political support for participatory policy through effective policy design and the construction of a network of alliances. Here I will show how the Frente Popular struggled to gain control of the government bureaucracy during its first four years in office. This chapter focuses on how the participatory budget policy gained support among groups within the participatory process, which helps to explain how the PT administration overcame the first four obstacles on Stiefel and Wolfe’s list. In Chapter 5, examining the administration’s strategy for gaining broader political support for its policies, I will explore how the administration overcame the fifth and sixth obstacles.

Reality Shock: Taking Over City Hall Olivio Dutra’s 1988 campaign directly associated winning city hall with a broader “democratic-socialist” strategy to gain control of the capitalist state by electoral means, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing it: The conquest of the Municipal Government of Porto Alegre should be understood as a moment in the accumulation of political, organizational and programmatic forces in the process of constructing socialism. This means that the concrete proposals that it presents, although made for administrative structures existing within the capitalist perspective, have the political purpose of denouncing them and changing them, contributing to their overthrow. (“Plataforma para a Prefeitura de Porto Alegre,” Diretório Metropolitano do PT, 1988. Cited in Fedozzi, 1995:29)

Within days of coming to office, the new administrators realized that this “conquest” would not be easy. Before they could even begin to pursue their programmatic goals—“inverting priorities” and “popular participation”—they would have to gain minimum control over the bureaucratic structure, which they found in chaos. As the first secretary of finance and his assistant later wrote: On January 2, 1989, we took over the Secretariat of Finance in Porto Alegre. In our memories, it was a terrible day. The worst was happening: how much money does the government have in the banks? What debts are due? What bills must be paid? What is our cash flow? None of these questions had an answer. The lack of control was absolute and we felt as if we were navigating in the dark. Nothing was registered. No report minimally capable of helping us make decisions. After the election results, the Transition Team had met many times with the Secretary of Finance of the previous govern-

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ment. The paucity of data he presented had led us to think that the outgoing administration was hiding information from us. Now we realized that the data simply did not exist. (Cassel and Verle, 1994:28)

The previous administration had left the prefeitura in shambles. The machinery and equipment owned by the government were outdated, when not totally destroyed, making it difficult to carry out even the simplest tasks such as filling potholes or repairing streetlights. Basic supplies—chalk for the schools, aspirin in the health clinics— were out of stock. Payments to goods and service providers were six months behind. There was no centralized database for monitoring how revenues were used. Indeed, as the new secretary of finance said, there was little information about revenues. All this was made more complicated by the double-digit monthly inflation of the period, which caused expenditures to increase at a higher rate than revenues. To make things worse, the previous mayor, just before leaving office, had pushed through an inflation readjustment law that moved municipal salaries well above the already explosive inflation rate of the period. The result was that in the PT’s first month in office, the administration had to spend 96 percent of city revenues to pay city workers. By the end of the year, 98 percent of the first year’s revenues ultimately went to payroll. Under these conditions, how could the administration ensure that collective consumption services were provided to the most needy? And how could popular participation take place when decisions about resource allocation were so severely constrained? The belief that taking office was equivalent to “taking power” was dashed; both investing in poor areas of the city and promoting popular participation suddenly seemed to be distant goals. In February, the administration’s second month in office, it faced its first major political crisis. The city’s private bus companies threatened to paralyze services when the government demanded an audit of their finances to ensure that profits were being reinvested into public transportation, as required by law. The dramatic response of the new administration was to take over six of the bus companies, forcing them to remain in service. After this occurred, the remaining eight companies stopped functioning, but the prefeitura now had control over 70 percent of the city’s bus fleet, including the six private companies and the large municipally owned bus company. The decision to intervene in the companies was endorsed by assemblies with popular and student organizations and the labor unions that had supported the PT. The vast majority of these groups perceived the “intervention” as a strong move by the prefeitura against

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businesses that had been profiting at the expense of working-class people. There was also widespread support in public opinion. One survey taken days after the intervention began found that 83 percent of those interviewed supported the takeover, even though it led to long waits and overfilled buses (J. Lima, 1990:21). Many described the climate within the administration as “warlike.” The party militants with the most administrative experience took on the job of running the bus companies. Union activists and other militants volunteered to help out with administrative work and accounting. Neighborhood activists provided information on routes and schedules. But the intervention proved to be an extremely difficult task. In a 1992 interview, Eno Filho, one of the intervention coordinators, spoke of the difficulties the administration faced: The situation was becoming unsustainable. . . . We were unable to bring together the technical capacity necessary to administer the bus fleet, due to the sabotage and very intense boycott of the owners, who, although no longer directly controlling the companies, had inside supporters who caused damage and losses, to the point of stealing the entire computerized payment system. The day arrived to pay the workers and we didn’t have the means to do so, because the computerized information necessary had disappeared. (Harnecker, 1993:27)

The bus companies were out of control. In addition to the problems cited by Filho, J. Lima (1990) notes that although the public transportation employees’ union supported the intervention, many employees did not, fearing retribution from their employers. This split made it all the harder to provide adequate transportation services to the public. The administration, realizing that it was in far over its head, began to negotiate with the companies. Ten days after the intervention began, the administration agreed to allow a fare hike almost equal to the original demand, although it refused to return the companies to their owners’ control for the time being.3 In the heat of the moment, the negotiations occurred largely without participation of the party, movement, and union militants that had supported the intervention. As a result, these groups felt left out of the process and began to complain that the administration had “sold out” to the companies. Over the remainder of the first year of the administration, tension grew between the “petistas in the party” and “petistas in the administration,” as the party hierarchy accused the administration of “flying solo” in the crucial decision to resolve the transport crisis. The fact that Democracia Socialista, the majority faction of the party,

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stayed largely outside the administration served to increase these tensions. The PT party leadership expressed increasing frustration with what it saw as administration resistance to following guidelines defined by the party. As Arno Augustin, a member of the Democracia Socialista faction interviewed by Harnecker in 1992, noted, “The party believed that its leadership function in the administration implied that not only should it name department heads, but also it should go to the finest details, participating, for example in the discussion on whether a person should resign or not and in the discussion of concrete issues” (Harnecker, 1993:12). Members of the administration thought that the demands made by the party often did not take into account the difficulties that the prefeitura faced. As the mayor and the vice-mayor wrote in a party discussion paper: “There are members of the party that . . . mistakenly proceed as if the solution to the historic problems of the workers were within the reach of a municipal administration and as if the solution to all the exploitation that capitalism has produced were in the hands of the Mayor” (Dutra and Genro, 1989). These differences were articulated over the first year largely through an intense philosophical and political debate among different groups within the PT about what the objectives of the government should be. The tendências on the so-called left of the PT argued that the administration should be a “government of the workers”—giving absolute priority to making policies “with and for” the popular sectors of the city and to using the government machine to contest the capitalist system as much as possible. Others, under the vocal leadership of the vice-mayor, Tarso Genro, called for a “government for all”: effective governing would be possible only if alliances were made with certain sectors of the business class and if the middle class were involved. The administration was elected not by the PT or by workers’ organizations, but by society as a whole and should therefore be accountable to society as a whole. In the context of the tensions arising between the factions, especially after the affair with the bus companies, the leftist groups within the PT interpreted this “universalist” stance as equivalent to selling out to capitalism. 4 In April 1989 Democracia Socialista stated: In this situation, where we control a parcel of municipal power and in which the objective is to accumulate forces in the attempt to overcome capitalism, working with this conception [of governing for all] will inevitably transform us into managers for the capital that we want to expropriate. This idea would be correct only in a situation in which the bourgeois state was destroyed and the workers had constructed their own state. (Democracia Socialista, 1989:17–18)

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Eventually—as will be discussed below—party and administration made peace about the role of each in the government, and as this occurred, the distinction between the two ideological perspectives began to blur. Both sides agreed in the end that the PT administration should be a “government for all, but from the perspective of the workers,” that is, a government that made alliances for the sake of governing effectively, included the middle class as a critical electoral ally, but that gave preference to the poor and to the periphery in policymaking. However, as long as the administration and the party struggled to determine how much power each side would have in the governing process, hot and divisive debates took up much time and energy for both administration personnel and party militants, as dozens of working papers were circulated and innumerable meetings were held to discuss the “profile of the administration.”

The First Attempt at Participatory Budgeting With the first year of the administration dominated by these events, the question of participation in the budget was a side issue. At the time, few thought that the budget would or should become a major focus of participatory action. In the participatory spirit that affected all city agencies, the Planning Secretariat (SPM, Secretaria do Planejamento Municipal) organized meetings with neighborhood organizations to discuss capital expenditure, but did so only a few months before the September 30 deadline to present the proposed budget to the City Assembly. SPM made clear that the process would not greatly challenge the traditional method of developing the city budget. As the first official document on participatory budgeting declared: Considering the shortness of time, that to develop an adequate participatory budget proposal would demand several months; that proposals for the 1990 General Budget and for the 1990–1992 Multi-year Investment Plan should follow the current model; that each Secretariat already has begun to develop its partial budget proposal and that the Executive must send the General Budget and the Multi-year Investment Plan to the City Assembly by September 30th, popular participation should occur in a restricted form, since the community cannot be held responsible for decisions related to the allocation of financial resources in government activities and projects such as education, health and sanitation, housing, urbanism, etc. (Secretaria do Planejamento Municipal, 1989)

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The first round of “informative” meetings occurred in five regions, which were delineated according to the four districts identified in the 1979 Master Plan. In response to protest by neighborhood leaders, who argued that the regional boundaries did not represent the reality of neighborhood organizing, a new set of sixteen regions was defined for a second round of assemblies. Six of the sixteen regions were fairly easy to define. They simply followed the neighborhood membership of already existing Conselhos Populares: the older organizations in the Norte, Grande Cruzeiro, and Grande Glória regions as well as the more recent organizations created in Partenon, Lomba do Pinheiro, and Leste (see Figure 4.1). The remainder came almost by elimination, filling in the empty spaces. In the case of the Centro (Central) region, the negotiators attempted to bring together the large cluster of middle-class neighborhoods around the downtown. Peripheral regions were divided up according to major physical divisions.5 Because of this loose and negotiated system of regionalization, the regions varied greatly in size, ranging from 5,000 residents of the Ilhas (Guaíba River Islands) region—an ecological reserve that has been illegally occupied—to the 300,000 densely packed residents of the Centro region. The majority, however, had between 40,000 and 100,000 inhabitants. In both rounds, news of the assemblies was disseminated mostly through letters to all officially registered associations. Nevertheless, in both cases, those areas where the Conselhos Populares were active sent the majority of participants. At these meetings, each region presented long lists of demands, in many cases calling for paving all the major unpaved roads in the region or building hydraulic systems to bring running water to the poorest settlements. Budget “delegates” were elected in a proportion of one to ten people present. A municipal assembly was then held for the ninety elected delegates, where SPM presented more detailed information on the budget and participants discussed proposals for how to decide which of the hundreds of investment demands presented should be given priority. Deciding that they were still too large a group to work together, the delegates elected a “consolidating commission” of one representative from each region. Representatives were nominated informally, in some cases elected by a region’s delegates, in other cases named by the region’s Conselho Popular. Despite all the warnings by the Planning Secretariat that only the “residual” of the budget would be considered, a large number of investment projects proposed by the representatives were included in the 1990 investment plan. Many describe it as no more than a colossal wish list. Nearly every demand that participants considered “high

Figure 4.1

Map of Porto Alegre with 1994 participatory budget regions

An earlier version of this figure appeared in Abers (1998:45), © John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., and is reprinted here with permission.

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priority” was included, and the plan would have required several annual revenues to implement. It was clearly a conquest—an investment plan that reflected the demands of popular movements—but the movement leadership was neither fully satisfied with the process nor confident that the new prefeitura would actually fulfill its promises. In a meeting organized in late September 1989 by FASE, a local NGO, members of the neighborhood movements evaluated the budget assemblies. The document produced complained that the process had been “confused and improvised” and that the prefeitura representatives had presented information in unintelligible technical jargon. Precise data had not been made available, nor was there clarity on how the process would work. The organizers had never explained, for example, how conflicts between budget priorities defined separately by the various secretariats and by the popular assemblies would be resolved. Most seriously, the document expressed a suspicion that the prefeitura did not really intend to respect the decisions made by the regional representatives and that, rather than seeking to empower civic groups, it wanted to use the participatory process to generate political support for its own programs (FASE, 1989). These concerns intensified over the following months, as 1990 began and the prefeitura had not yet begun to invest in poor neighborhoods. Still strapped for funds, it had not, indeed, made any capital expenditures at all. Many began to wonder if the new administration was destined to follow in the path of the previous government, which had promised to give the movements deliberative power over the capital budget, even meeting with the leadership occasionally, but had never carried out the investments. The leadership of the Conselhos Populares, although generally sympathetic to the Frente Popular, began to get worried. As one noted in an interview: We spent the entire year of 1989 discussing and in 1990, not a single project got started. The administration had explained everything to the community . . . they would come to each neighborhood and ask, “what do you want in first place, what do you want in second place, and in third place?” Then there would be a bigger assembly and they would say, “Of the 300 priorities that you listed, we are going to do 10,” and then they didn’t even do those 10! (Julio)

A few months into 1990, under the leadership of some of the Conselhos Populares, neighborhood organizations held a rowdy demonstration in front of the prefeitura in which they demanded that investment begin. After all the work of the year before, not a single block had been paved. The neighborhood movement, which had

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strongly supported the PT and cooperated with the process up to that point, began to lose confidence in the administration. The administration’s credibility problem became apparent when the prefeitura called a new round of assemblies to discuss the 1991 budget: less than half the number of people showed up than had appeared at the first round of assemblies the year before.

The Road out of Crisis By the PT’s second year in government, the optimistic spirit in which the party had come to office was in freefall. The belief that holding municipal power would allow the party to take new strides in contesting capitalism had been severely challenged by the ordeal of the bus company takeover. The ideal of devolving power to Conselhos Populares also suffered under the inability of the administration to respond even to the limited arena in which the participatory budget process had operated. The party leadership was increasingly frustrated with what it perceived as the administration’s unwillingness to follow the party line. Grassroots movements were demonstrating against what was supposed to be a “grassroots administration.”6 With its most publicized efforts in disarray, it is not surprising that support for the administration was also plummeting. In April 1990, a public opinion survey confirmed these problems. Whereas a year before, nearly 30 percent of the population had considered the new administration “good” or “excellent,” now only 13 percent gave it that rating. In the 1990 survey, 41 percent thought the administration was “bad” or “terrible.” The survey revealed a publicly held image of the administration as incompetent, slow, and inefficient.7 In what would later be referred to as “a grande virada” (the great turnaround), a series of seminars took place in April 1990 in which the administration mobilized to respond to the crisis. These discussions led to a number of administrative, political, and financial changes, which transformed the prefeitura over the course of the following years into a highly popular government that was able to devolve decisionmaking power to citizens in areas relevant to their lives. Four factors were largely responsible for this transformation. Recuperation of Revenues The first and possibly the most important action taken by the prefeitura was to recuperate revenues. As we have seen, when the PT came to office, the city finances were in total disarray. Despite the general

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increase in transfers to local government in Brazil, in Porto Alegre, city revenues had eroded over the course of the previous decade of economic crisis and bad government. In the 1970s, annual city revenues averaged U.S.$134 per capita. Between 1980 and 1985, this average fell to $114, and during the PDT administration, to $109 per capita (Verle and Müzell, 1994:15). Critical to this diminished income was the decline in the municipal property tax (IPTU, or Imposto Predial e Territorial Urbano) receipts—one of the two major sources of self-generated income for the municipality. Whereas the average annual property tax payment in 1973 had been $137, by 1988, the average payment was only $33 (17). In 1989, the situation was particularly difficult because of the law, mentioned above, that radically increased the payroll. The strain of the salary payments was partially compensated by the changes made in the 1988 Federal Constitution. In the first year of the administration, current revenues increased by 22 percent in comparison to the year before largely because of a 44 percent increase in transfers from the state sales tax (ICMS—Imposto de Circulação de Mercadorias e Serviços). Even with this increase, the prefeitura ended up spending nearly 100 percent of its revenues in 1989 on salaries. Huge increases in the city’s revenues would be necessary if the PT were to carry out its goals of investing in the periphery. To get through the first year, before tax reforms that would have to go through City Assembly would take effect, the Finance Secretariat had to be extremely creative. Hiring was virtually frozen and every possible effort at streamlining spending was made. The prefeitura took out short-term loans and refinanced old ones on better terms (Cassel and Verle, 1994:31). Most important, tax collection was closely monitored and those owing back taxes were pressured to pay up. In September 1989, the prefeitura brought fifteen tax reform laws to the City Assembly, of which fourteen were passed, although several were later tied up in court or invalidated by subsequent City Assembly amendments. The most important ones made tax brackets more progressive. The municipal tax on services (ISSQN—Imposto Sobre Serviços de Qualquer Natureza) was reduced for “essential” services such as health and transportation, but increased for the majority of consumer and industrial services, resulting in a 42 percent increase in ISSQN receipts in 1990. The prefeitura was also able to raise trash collection and storm drainage fees. Finally, to avoid the deleterious effects on revenues of the hyperinflation of the period, an innovative new law indexed monthly tax payments.8 The effect of these changes on the government’s investment capability was dramatic. In 1990, revenues were already 40 percent

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higher than they had been in 1989. By the end of the term, with the impact of changes made in later years, they had practically doubled. The next step, it turned out, was to learn to spend the money: In May of 1990, I made the announcement: there is money available for investment. . . . Start spending! But you know, it took five or six months for them to start. Because they didn’t know how to spend. . . . To spend, you have to make a proposal, write up the official description, have a public bidding . . . all this you have to learn how to do. (João Verle, finance secretary, 1989–1992, Interview)

Administrative Restructuring Administrative restructuring was necessary before the government gained the technical ability to use effectively the resources generated through the tax reform. In April 1990, when the prefeitura had received the negative public opinion survey results, it was shocked into action: it had to find a way to combat the image of inefficiency and incompetence that prevailed among the public. A commission was formed to discuss administrative reform. After an internal seminar in September, the government redefined the responsibilities of some agencies and created a number of coordinating organizations within the mayor’s office. These efforts to centralize decisionmaking and coordinate activities enabled the government to act with a newfound focus. At the same time, a new, centralized Planning Office, GAPLAN (Gabinete de Planejamento), directly under the mayor’s office, was created. The evaluation was that SPM, which had been responsible for the budget process in the first year, was too deeply entrenched in bureaucratic habits and technocratic ideology to carry out the innovative and politically charged projects that the government hoped to implement. SPM also lacked the executive power to ensure that all twenty-two city agencies followed the dictates of a participatory program. To coordinate the priorities of each agency with the participatory program’s regionally defined priorities, all responsibilities for budgeting were transferred to GAPLAN. The office had only a few employees and was installed right next to the mayor’s office. The creation of GAPLAN represented a more general shift in the administration, which came to see the annual budget as an excellent planning tool, one that allowed for flexibility and changes over time and in which participatory decisions could have relatively short-term and palpable impact. Although the technical coordination of the budget was turned over to GAPLAN, the Community Relations Department (CRC,

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Coordinação de Relações Comunitárias) was given the job of mobilizing participants. In 1991, regional participatory budget coordinators working through the CRC were assigned to each budget region. These coordinators had the job of mobilizing neighborhood residents, organizing meetings, and working directly with the neighborhood leadership on all issues related to the city budget. Perhaps most important in terms of agency integration was the creation of a new computerized Project Management System. Until then, central agencies of the prefeitura had no access to information about how the different agencies were using their revenues. In the effort to promote transparency, the new system allowed for the disbursement of funds to agencies only after necessary paperwork and reports had been submitted to GAPLAN for each stage of project implementation. This system not only allowed the city agencies to have easy access to up-to-date information about the status of projects occurring elsewhere in the administration. It also made it possible for budget participants to find out the status of the projects they had demanded and to conduct research more generally on how well the prefeitura responded to priorities made through the budget forums. The administrative restructuring was essential for the government to implement coherent policy goals, but it had a side effect of improving relations between the administration and the PT party leadership outside the government. With a more organized structure of decisionmaking, the party leadership was better able to monitor and influence government decisionmaking before final decisions were made. The reorganization also made it clear that the budget process was top priority. This diminished significantly criticisms that the administration was abandoning its intentions to promote “popular councils.” Administrative restructuring also allowed more-direct influence from different groups within the governing coalition. The Government Coordinating Committee now included members of the City Assembly representing the PT and the PCB. At the same time, one of the two leadership posts in GAPLAN was given to a member of Democracia Socialista, the principal faction within the party leadership, which brought that faction into the critical area of participatory budgeting. As the government began to implement the participatory budget policy, the party leadership and the administration came to realize that their conceptions of governing were not so dramatically opposed, and both groups moderated their confrontational stances. Strategic Planning and Changes in the Participatory Budget Over the course of 1990, the participatory budget took on central importance for the administration. This change can be explained not

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only by the administrative restructuring but also by the government’s new general political strategy. Many advisers of the mayor and the vice-mayor had joined the Administrative Reform Commission. Some of the more influential members of this group of advisers began to promote the ideas of the Chilean Carlos Matus (Matus, 1972). The basic theme of Matus’s work is that when opposition politicians come to office, they can easily be engulfed by the day-to-day difficulties of governing. To avoid this, the government must define a clear political project and learn how to evaluate the broader political conditions that facilitate or inhibit its implementation. By means of “strategic planning,” the government should be able to identify obstacles and change course when necessary, without losing sight of the broader project. Matus had given several seminars in Brazil and had great influence on many petistas seeking guidance on how to take on the difficult task of governing. His work seemed to speak directly to the crisis the Porto Alegre administration faced after the first year in governing: how to maintain governability without abandoning the PT’s radical program. In April 1990, the Administrative Reform Commission produced a document based on a Matusian reading of the administration’s problems, which was extremely influential in the changes that followed. “The Moment of Strategic Definitions” listed five general “lines of strategic action” that would be the government’s priorities. In first place were “urban interventions to improve the quality of life in poor neighborhoods,” specifically, the legalization of land titles, public services, infrastructure, and street pavement. The other priorities were public transportation, “organization of the city,” health, and education. Thus first priority was given to neighborhood infrastructure, which in the previous year had been eclipsed by an emphasis on the public transportation system. The document also emphasized the role of popular participation in the government’s pursuit of its priorities. In addition to the emphases on urban infrastructure and participation, certain ideas present in this document and later elaborated by the GAPLAN leadership and others advising the mayor and vicemayor influenced the evolution of the participatory budget policy. The most important of these was the argument that instead of negotiating on a case-by-case basis, participants and the administration should work together to come up with general rules for prioritizing projects and distributing funds. According to Luciano Fedozzi—the first strategic planning coordinator of GAPLAN—the main democratic accomplishment of the participatory budget was the proliferation of such “impersonal, objective and universal criteria in the allocation of resources” (Fedozzi, 1997:153).

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From 1990 on, there was much more emphasis on developing rules for defining investment priorities rather than on coming up with lists of demands. In large open regional assemblies held twice each year the administration presented basic information to participants. At these assemblies, participants elected “budget delegates” to Regional Budget Forums (a portion of the assembly population) and “councillors” to the Municipal Budget Council (four per region). During preparatory meetings, participants held meetings in neighborhoods and at the regional level. Neighborhood assemblies formulated initial lists of priorities for investment, and the Regional Budget Forums negotiated on transforming those neighborhood demands into regionwide lists of priorities. The Municipal Budget Council determined how much money each agency would allocate to capital improvements in each region, and based on this allocation, the government determined how many projects on the regional priority lists could be funded with the quotas decided in the council. Whereas the Regional Budget Forums were largely left on their own in terms of deciding how priorities should be defined, from 1990 on, the administration worked closely with the Municipal Budget Council to develop rules for resource distribution among regions. In 1990, GAPLAN proposed a system in which each region would be rated according to a set of four criteria: (1) “Level of Popular Mobilization”; (2) “Importance of the Region for the Urban Development of Porto Alegre”; (3) “Population in ‘Needy Areas’ (Áreas de Carência)”; and (4) “Infrastructure ‘Deficiency’ (Carência) of the Region.” After much discussion, the council ultimately accepted these criteria and decided to allocate 65 percent of capital expenditures to the five top-rated regions. In the following years, the criteria method continued to be used, but many changes were made. It is not surprising that a council that had equal representation from all sixteen regions did not accept for long a system that gave preference to only five of the sixteen. In 1991, the council insisted on a system of distribution that would distribute resources more evenly. There were also changes in the criteria. The “Mobilization” and “Importance of the Region” criteria were replaced by less controversial ratings reflecting the deficiency of infrastructure of each region and the priority each region gave to each investment category. From then on, for each investment category, GAPLAN produced a table calculating the rating of each region as a product of the weights and rates of each of the four criteria approved by the council. The rating corresponded to a percentage of the capital budget allocated to that category. One of the most important characteristics of

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this new system was that it gave no preference to those regions that were more mobilized. Although GAPLAN and the Administrative Reform Commission did not specifically intend the participatory budget to take on such proportions, over the course of 1990 and 1991, it became the central policy of the administration. As the process began to take off, with more and more people participating and prioritizing the kinds of investments that the administration saw as “strategic,” the latter began to realize how very well the policy converged with its broader political strategy. The participatory budget evolved into the common denominator that clearly responded to both of the PT’s governing themes: “inversion of priorities” and “popular participation.” Government and the participants now agreed on their first priority for action: basic neighborhood infrastructure. Furthermore, since the budget involved all administrative agencies and every region of the city, the administration saw that if the budget process were organized correctly, it could be an instrument for integrating agency actions into a unified government policy. It thus addressed one of the major weaknesses that the Administrative Reform Commission had identified as inhibiting the government’s capacity to act effectively in the first year. The administrative reforms had channeled the actions of all city agencies through GAPLAN. Now, as the Municipal Budget Council became more effective, GAPLAN’s job increasingly became defined by the need to organize and clarify information on those actions to present to the council. The negotiations between GAPLAN and the council thus became the focal point through which the administration could pursue both the “lines of strategic action” and the broader goal of promoting popular participation. Negotiating with Public Employees Like many municipal governments in Brazil, the Porto Alegre administration employed large numbers: in 1997, there were about 20,000 municipal employees, including over 1,500 schoolteachers and about 1,000 health service workers (Pozzobon, 1997). The municipal workers were organized into a union affiliated with CUT, the union with the closest ties to the PT. As noted earlier, well-organized public employee unions have caused great troubles for many PT administrations, which because of financial limitations found it difficult to carry out their commitment to workers’ causes. The Porto Alegre administration initially avoided strife with public employees by giving priority

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to maintaining comparably high wages and good working conditions. As we have seen, the month before the PT came to office in 1989, the previous administration had passed a law that crippled the government’s spending ability by raising wages and enforcing more frequent corrections for inflation. In the first month of the administration, there was an intense internal struggle between groups arguing the government should not pay the full increase and others countering that a “Workers’ Party” could not start off its tenure in power by repealing worker gains. In the end, the salaries were maintained. One of the consequences was the financial crisis described earlier. The PT administration thus maintained the support of the municipal employee unions that had backed the party during the campaign period. That support was essential for surviving the hard times to come, in which the tensions between the administration and the party hierarchy and local social movements reached their height. In 1991, the now emboldened administration decided to contest further municipal employee demands for pay hikes. The prefeitura determined that it could not afford to concede a wage correction that fully accounted for inflation, since its own revenues would not increase accordingly. Public employees briefly went on strike. The administration used a clever strategy to pressure the union: it invited municipal union leaders to attend the regional assemblies of the participatory budget. Administrators argued that wage increases would severely damage the administration’s ability to respond to the demands of “other popular sectors.” The union backed off. Over the following years, occasional confrontations arose between the municipal workers and their employer, with several strike threats coming out of disagreements on how much the administration could afford to adjust wages for inflation. However, contrary to other PT administrations, where public worker strikes debilitated the government, the Porto Alegre administration was able to negotiate. The substantial increase in the administration’s revenues certainly accounts in part for this positive outcome, since with a “growing pie,” it was possible to provide relatively good wages without jeopardizing capital expenditures. But the administration’s use of the “moral authority” of the participatory process to gain bargaining power in negotiations with its workers was also an important factor. This fairly peaceful relationship did not mean, however, that the city’s civil servants went along easily with the changes in decisionmaking that the participatory budget policy involved. The agency heads I interviewed generally noted that although outright sabotage of the decisions made by budget participants was very rare, at times employees resisted designing or implementing projects that challenged tech-

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nical norms. Despite these problems, a substantial sector of the bureaucracy generally supported the PT administration. Several of the employees I interviewed expressed appreciation of the administration’s invigorated governing capacity. Since civil servants were the ones who had to live with the government’s mistakes long after the elected leadership left office, they seemed to prefer a competent government that invested, without corruption, in properly designed and well-maintained projects. Even with this relatively widespread support within the bureaucracy, the workload of organizing participatory policy was largely borne not by the civil servant bureaucracy, but by appointees. According to the agency heads I interviewed, most public employees did not object to receiving participants and responding to their questions and problems during the ordinary hours of the workday and in their offices. But they largely refused to work nights and weekends attending the assemblies and meetings all over town. This outreach work, which was essential for making the participatory process function, was carried out for the most part by about 300 employees that the mayor and agency heads appointed. It was they who attended community meetings, articulating the complex exchange of information between city agencies and participants. Agency heads and their closest advisers also were extremely active on nights and weekends, attending meetings to answer questions at the budget forums. Much of the success of the participatory budget policy was a result of the administration’s investment in this constant “pounding the pavement,” as administration personnel dedicated enormous amounts of time to communicating directly with participants about the details of government actions.

The Second Administration: Expanding Participatory Policy By the end of the first administration, the restructuring had paid off. The participatory budget policy was an incontrovertible success. Whereas in 1990, participation in the budget assemblies diminished substantially, by 1992, thousands of people were participating each year. In the second round of 1992 assemblies alone, over 6,000 participants attended. In many regions of the city, assemblies drew more than 500 people at a time. The reasons for this massive mobilization—which occurred throughout the city, including in areas with no previous history of popular organizing—will be discussed in detail in Chapter 7. Clearly it was related to the government’s ability to respond to participants’ demands.

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As the administration’s ability to invest in poor neighborhoods increased, so did its ability to maintain existing infrastructure and to supply basic services to the general population. This “competent governing,” along with the widespread image of the administration as honest and uncorrupt, contributed to rising public support for the PT in Porto Alegre. Whereas in April 1990, only 13 percent of the population surveyed rated the administration as “good” or “excellent,” by December 1992, 61 percent of the population gave it this rating. It was clear from the survey that the high ratings were linked to a sense that the administration was competent at governing. Answers to an open question on “the word you would use to describe Mayor Olivio Dutra” emphasized his “administrative competence.” But the survey also showed that the administration had been successful in building an image of “inverting priorities toward the poor” (Nuñez, 1992). As a result of these high ratings, the PT won election to a second term in city hall. The participatory budget was one of the main themes of the electoral campaign. All the major candidates promised to maintain what was generally seen as a popular policy—although it was still relatively unknown among the larger population. The main opposition candidates argued that they “could do participatory budgeting better.” One of the major critiques made by other candidates was that the PT administration had focused only on “small investments”—that it had forgotten the big picture. During the campaign, the Frente Popular contested this critique with the argument that traditional “big investments” benefited only the wealthy and the center of town, and that the multitude of “small investments” had in fact consisted of one big investment in the periphery of the city.9 But once the new mayor, Tarso Genro—who had been the vice-mayor in the first administration—was safely in office, the second administration indicated that the prefeitura was also concerned with big and important projects. The second administration’s basic program was to consolidate and expand upon the successes of the first administration. It recognized that, more than anything, reelection had been won on the first administration’s ability to provide basic services to the public. The new administration wanted to go beyond that, building an image as democratic, egalitarian, and innovative as well. A resolution adopted by the Municipal PT early in the second term declared that the administration should go beyond its reputation as honest and competent, toward a more substantial effort at both inverting priorities and popular participation.

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In its first year, the second administration created a public discussion forum called Cidade Constituinte, or City Constitutional Assembly. Over the course of the year, neighborhood activists, union leaders, liberal professionals, and NGO staff participated in working groups that discussed general guidelines and projects for the city. At the end of the year, there was a large Congress of the City, which evaluated the proposals made in each of the working groups and documented the city’s general long-term planning objectives. One major proposal called for the reevaluation of Porto Alegre’s Master Plan, last revised in 1979 and thus no longer reflecting urban development patterns in the city. Over the course of 1995, the Secretariat of Planning organized a public discussion of the Master Plan, which involved several year-round working groups. At the end of that year there was the second Congress of the City, where proposals for changes were discussed and voted on.10 Another major innovation in the second administration was the creation of Thematic Budget Forums to function alongside the Regional Budget Forums within the participatory budget. Five thematic forums were organized in 1993: (1) Transportation and Circulation; (2) Urban Planning and Organization of the City; (3) Education and Culture; (4) Health and Social Assistance; and (5) Economic Development and Tax Reform. The thematic forums were set up like the Regional Budget Forums, with two rounds of open assemblies that elected delegates to year-round bodies. They divided into “subthemes” during intermediary assemblies, where specific issues were discussed and priorities debated. Like the regional assemblies, the second round of thematic assemblies elected two members and two alternates to the Municipal Budget Council, giving that group forty-two voting members. The parallel structure of the Thematic and Regional Budget Forums can be seen in Figure 4.2, a flowchart of the budget discussion process. The major difference between the regional and the thematic forums was that the latter worked much more closely with relevant city agency representatives to come to agreement about policy goals. This collaboration was necessary because the thematic forums dealt with broader policy goals and long-term projects. The administration discouraged the thematic forums from changing their priorities each year simply because the makeup and interests of participants changed. And it did not allow the forums to radically alter or abandon already existing projects. Clearly, the priorities of the second administration were different from those of the first. The second was more concerned with develop-

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ELECT DELEGATES

ELECT DELEGATES

First-Round Regional Assemblies

First-Round Thematic Assemblies

Intermediary Assemblies (by neighborhood)

Intermediary Assemblies (by subtheme)

16 REGIONAL BUDGET FORUMS

5 THEMATIC BUDGET FORUMS

Second-Round Regional Assemblies ELECT COUNCIL MEMBERS

City Agencies

City Budget

Figure 4.2

Second-Round Thematic Assemblies ELECT COUNCIL MEMBERS

MUNICIPAL BUDGET COUNCIL

Mayor’s Office

City Assembly

City Agencies

Investment Plan

Schematic diagram of the budget process

An earlier version of this figure appeared in Abers (1998b:46), © John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., and is reprinted here with permission.

ing citywide projects; public discussions of large, centralized investments and economic development policies took place in the new participatory institutions. The second administration was also concerned with incorporating the middle class into the participatory process alongside the working-class groups that had dominated the budget process up to this point. The thematic forums attracted a population with significantly higher income and education levels than the regional forums. The second administration also showed greater respect for technical traditions than the first. Whereas in the first years of the budget policy, nearly all investment projects approved by

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the participants were accepted by the administration, now the prefeitura began to promote a more rigorous adherence to technical criteria. Many of those I interviewed attributed these differences to the different personalities of the two mayors. Olivio Dutra was a radical union activist with origins in the working class. Tarso Genro was a lawyer and political philosopher with a middle-class, academic background. These characteristics partly explain why the second government favored long-term planning, economic development, middleclass inclusion, and technical rigor more than the first. But the changes can also be understood as part of the natural evolution of the policy itself. The addition of the thematic forums took the budget beyond the localized, immediate level of the first years and included a greater variety of people than had participated before. The increased concern for technical rigor also had an “evolutionary” explanation: some investment priorities accepted by the administration in the first years had gone awry, turning out to be economically unsound or having negative impacts on the regions where they were implemented. Despite these changes, the commitment to participatory policy strengthened during the second administration: by the end of the term, powerful councils in areas such as housing, transportation, and children’s protection (Conselho Tutelar) had been created.11 At the same time, the original components of the budget policy were largely left intact. The Regional Budget Forums were expanded and consolidated over the years, taking on new responsibilities and developing more sophisticated methods of discussing investment priorities. The Municipal Budget Council expanded its sphere of influence as well. By the end of the second administration, every major policy move the administration embarked on had to be presented to the Municipal Budget Council, which had final say on every aspect of the municipal budget, including personnel policy and maintenance spending. The result was that an extraordinary amount of money passed through the participatory process. The total capital expenditure budget in 1995 was about U.S.$65 million.12 Slightly less than half of this amount were expenditures generated through the bottom-up decisionmaking process beginning at the neighborhood level. The remainder consisted of capital projects that were proposed by the thematic councils, as “institutional demands” of the administration, or were implemented by DMAE, the Department of Water and Sewers, which was required by law to reinvest all its revenues into the water and sewer system. These projects were generally discussed in the regional forums they affected and had to be approved by the Municipal Budget Council. If one excludes earmarked loans, the cap-

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ital expenditure budget accounted for about 18 percent of total estimated revenue of the city; explicitly bottom-up, neighborhood-based expenditures accounted for about 7 percent. Thus, through the process, not only did neighborhood assemblies and regional forums have control over a clearly defined piece of the “pie,” but the more subtly negotiated portion of the budget—big projects, personnel policy, and maintenance costs—also passed through a deliberative participatory process.

Where Participation and Governability Meet Stiefel and Wolfe (1994) suggest that one reason participatory policies fail is that reformist actors usually have only minority power within the state. In Porto Alegre that was not the case: popular participation was fully backed by the top administration leadership. This was in part because of the firm ideological beliefs of the mayor and vicemayor. But it was also because the Porto Alegre administration discovered that the participatory budget increased governability. By channeling government actions through GAPLAN and the Municipal Budget Council, the central government gained control of information and planning, gearing it toward the strategically defined project of investing in urban infrastructure on the periphery. Advertising the participatory process as one of the “hallmarks of the administration” helped the mayor’s office gain more control of decisions throughout the administration because it wielded a “moral authority” when it demanded that the city agencies defer to GAPLAN. These conclusions counter the expectations of many analysts who suggest that governments seeking to prove their administrative competence can rarely “afford” to allow important decisions to be made through slow and inefficient participatory forums. In Porto Alegre, the government used participatory policy to increase its control over the governing process. These findings also challenge notions that envision all forms of centralization as “authoritarian” and “overly bureaucratic” and equate decentralization with “democracy” and “efficiency.” Ironically, the process of decentralizing decisions to the citizenry was compatible with the centralization of decisions within the bureaucratic structure. After all, it was possible for the mayor’s office to transfer power over budget decisions to citizen forums only because that office had control over the city agencies that actually carried out budget expenditures. At the same time, the “moral authority” of the participatory process helped GAPLAN to control a highly fragmented bureaucratic

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structure and, in so doing, to increase transparency, accountability, and administrative competence. Whereas, as Stiefel and Wolfe (1994) note, policymakers and participants often disagree about the goals of the participatory decisionmaking, in Porto Alegre the priorities of both groups matched, largely because the administration had the flexibility to change directions. Whereas in 1989, transportation was the administration’s top priority, in 1990, it focused on building urban infrastructure in poor neighborhoods. According to many I interviewed, this change in government priorities was a conscious adaptation to the participant demands. Popular participation also helped the government deal with the third problem cited by Stiefel and Wolfe (1994): gaining the support of public employees. As the participatory budget process gained fame, the administration was able to use the budget process as a bargaining chip. The public employee union had difficulty asking for wage increases when the administration showed that such concessions would mean diminishing the scope of the budget policy. Finally, investing in the participatory budget helped resolve the fourth problem identified by Stiefel and Wolfe (1994): the “precarious hold on power” of new reformist administrations makes it difficult to attend to the demands of supporters. Initially, party supporters accused the administration of selling out to city elites (such as the bus company) and of giving higher priority to financial recuperation than to the devolution of power to grassroots movements. Once financial resources were generated, the administration was able to reestablish credibility with both the general public, through the provision of basic services, and the “participatory community,” through the investment in priorities defined through the budget process. It was thus possible both to fulfill the party ideals of “inversion of priorities” and “popular participation” and to provide basic urban services to the general public.

Notes 1. I have paraphrased and reordered Stiefel and Wolfe’s list. 2. See the edited volume by Rodríguez and Winchester (1997) for a series of studies on governability and local government in Latin America. With respect to the Porto Alegre experience, Fedozzi (1994) examines the question of governability in a different manner from that presented here. 3. A few months later, the first companies were returned to their owners’ control, although one company remained under intervention for two years.

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4. See Utzig (1996) for an interesting discussion of this debate. 5. Over the years, numerous adjustments have been made in the borders of these regions, as neighborhood associations suggested that they “belonged” more in one region than another, either because of physical proximity or because of organizational affinities. For example, one neighborhood was originally designated part of the Partenon region, but after a few years transferred to the Glória region on the argument that although it was adjacent to Partenon, the major roads linking the neighborhood to the center of town went through Glória. 6. Like other PT governments, the Porto Alegre administration referred to itself as the administração popular, which is best translated as “grassroots administration.” 7. These data come from an unpublished and untitled internal document of the Social Communication Department. 8. The information on tax reform is presented in an article by the finance secretary and his assistant in Cassell and Verle (1994). 9. In the second term, the Frente Popular included five parties: the PT, the PCB, the PPS (Partido Popular Socialista), the PV (Partido Verde), and the PSB (Partido Socialista Brasileiro). As earlier, the PT was clearly the dominant member of the coalition. 10. See Moura (1997) for a discussion of the Cidade Constituinte process. 11. In this context, there has been growing concern that many of the councils have overlapping responsibilities. 12. The figures cited in this paragraph use the one-to-one real/dollar exchange rate that was instituted in July 1994. Although technically correct, since the budget figures are in July 1994 prices, this rate does involve some distortions. In the months after July, the dollar was artificially undervalued as a consequence of an anti-inflationary currency valorization policy that pushed the exchange rate down to 0.82 real/dollar. From this level, the rate gradually returned to one-to-one parity in early 1996. Although the comparison of these figures to U.S. prices should thus be carried out with caution, these variations in exchange rate do not alter the relative magnitudes of the figures presented here.

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Building Political Support

Although reformist state actors must gain support from other groups within the government and from participants themselves in order to implement participation, state actors must also negotiate with actors external to the participatory process if the policy is to be successful. In this chapter I examine how the broader political strategy of the Porto Alegre administration contributed to the success of participatory policy. I then discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of the capacity of state actors to challenge governing traditions. I argue that this challenge was possible in Porto Alegre because state actors pursued a political strategy in which the budget policy turned out to be, not an obstacle to political survival, but a political asset that helped them build support and govern effectively. The alternative political coalition that the PT constructed around the participatory budget made it possible to implement the policy without giving up the radical goal of empowering the “hitherto excluded.”

Negotiating with Economic and Political Elites Participatory administrations are often thwarted by opposition from political and economic elites that object to attempts to invert priorities in resource distribution or to transform traditional modes of decisionmaking. Daniel (1988:29) defines “local economic power” in Brazil as those business sectors that profit from the regulating and service-provision activities of the local government. Construction companies are particularly notorious in Brazil for engaging in highlevel troca de favores with local politicians, usually involving preferen91

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tial contracts in which the companies charge exorbitant prices for public works and, in exchange, provide financial support, or kickbacks, to politicians. Urban property owners also pressure local governments to underestimate assessments and to maintain low, regressive tax rates. Local service providers can paralyze a government’s capacity to provide services to the public. Along with property owners, they can influence public opinion through the media and pressure the local legislature to vote against government projects. Another group that is explicitly affected by the changed policies are those “traditional political elites” that have historically used government office to their advantage through clientelism. In the case of Porto Alegre, even after the PT won city hall, traditional politicians still held majority power in the City Assembly. Since their vote was essential for passing administrative and tax reforms, as well as the budget itself, the prefeitura would have to negotiate with them. We can thus identify three important elite groups that would be likely to react negatively to the participatory budget policy: construction companies that would no longer benefit from overpriced contracts; large landowners and other economic groups who would pay the higher taxes used to fund the policy; and the local politicians that remained in power in the City Assembly, whose ability to negotiate with these and other groups about municipal resource distribution would decline. Construction Companies Although civil construction companies had to change substantially how they functioned, this group was not as threatened by the participatory budget process as one might expect. According to government personnel that worked with subcontractors, the major civil construction companies initially agreed to boycott the administration, collectively refusing to enter bidding competitions. But as municipal revenues expanded, a few major contractors broke the cartel to take advantage of the new contracts that the administration was offering. In comparison to the previous administration, which had a reputation for late payments and crooked dealings, these firms found the PT administration to be good for business. The prefeitura’s ability to invest soon eclipsed that of earlier administrations. It also paid on time and did not require bribes from firms seeking to push projects through. The prefeitura also chose—against the wishes of some activists in the neighborhood movements—to use the conventional contracting system for building most of the infrastructure, rather than alterna-

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tives such as self-construction (mutirão) or community contracting. Early in the first administration, a group of neighborhood activists suggested that the prefeitura work directly with the microconstruction firms and autonomous laborers, to which larger contractors always subcontracted anyway, so that it could build neighborhood infrastructure projects at substantially lower costs. Citing the legal difficulties— a complex set of regulations on who could participate in public biddings—the prefeitura chose not to pursue this path except in a few cases. In this context, construction firms were generally satisfied with the new administration and did not attempt to influence the process, either from without—by promoting attacks from the media or other sectors of government—or from within, by attempting to influence participants to choose particular types of projects. This picture contrasts with that of other participatory experiences in Brazil and elsewhere, where contractors sought to bias decisionmaking, pressuring participants to demand their services. In one study of such “contractor-driven decisionmaking” in Ceará, the researcher found that contractors lobbied village citizen councils to influence their choice in projects. The result was that many councils prioritized projects that were particularly lucrative for the firms over types of expenditures that they might have chosen without such influence (SerranoBerthet, 1996). Nothing of this sort occurred in Porto Alegre for several reasons. First, local contractors were initially so saturated with jobs that they did not need to lobby for more.1 Second, although budget participants had virtually full control over the distribution of the capital budget for each infrastructure category, the government maintained control over issues that contractors would have most likely sought to influence. For example, the budget participants did not have direct control over what percentage of the city’s total capital budget would go to each type of investment. The prefeitura generally allocated the largest amounts to those infrastructure types that participants rated highest: usually sanitation and pavement. But the exact amounts were limited, the prefeitura argued, by its own capacity to implement projects and to monitor subcontractors. Thus, decisions about how much money would be distributed through contracts with particular types of construction companies largely continued in the hands of the administration and not participants (although the decisions were always subject to the final approval of the Municipal Budget Council). Third, more recent federal laws governing public biddings further restricted the ability of municipal decisionmakers to favor specific firms.

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Property Owners A second group whose interests were affected by the PT administration were those landowners whose property taxes increased substantially because of the tax reforms. In 1990, progressive rates passed by the City Assembly weighed heavily on nonresidential property owners and on big urban landowners. This first increase did not receive much press, however. A computer search of Zero Hora, the largest Porto Alegre newspaper,2 showed that in 1989, only eighteen articles were written about urban property taxes and only eleven in 1990. Most of these articles were informative, with little negative or critical content. Clearly, the new rates were not very controversial, in part because tax rates remained very low in absolute terms. Property assessments remained far below market value, swollen by inflation. At the end of 1990, the prefeitura decreed a reassessment of property values, to take effect in January 1991. The reassessment substantially increased taxes for all property owners, in some cases dramatically. This time there was an angry reaction, both in the City Assembly and in the local media. The vereadores (city deputies) complained that the prefeitura had not negotiated the change with them and argued (incorrectly) that it was illegal to increase rates beyond a correction for the previous year’s inflation. The prefeitura argued that such an increase was an attempt to bring assessments up to real market value. An uproar ensued in the City Assembly as opposition vereadores introduced legislation nullifying the assessments and initiated lawsuits against administration. The media covered the events extensively. Zero Hora published articles about the issue nearly every day in January and discussed property tax questions in 113 articles over the course of the year. Under pressure, the prefeitura negotiated, reducing some of the largest increases, allowing a discount for those who paid in a single installment, and exempting low-income retired people. The property tax issue was in the spotlight again in 1992, during the campaign for mayor, when the opposition used it as ammunition against the PT administration. The media were certainly complicit with these efforts, producing much negative reporting throughout that year, which affected public opinion. Although only about 38 percent had thought that property taxes were too high in late 1991, over 50 percent thought so in several 1992 surveys, despite the fact that rates did not change in the interim (Nuñez, 1992:10). Although the actions of the local media and of the City Assembly did result in laws reducing property tax rates, these changes were not very effective until 1992, and by then the PT was solidly in control of the government. The rate and assessment increases that the adminis-

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tration had enacted in the first years accounted for a rise in property tax revenues between 1989 and 1992 of over 150 percent.3 Although the prefeitura stopped pushing for general increases after 1992, large property owners continued to bear a much greater burden of tax payments than they had in the past. A number of other land-use laws that further punished the owners of large vacant tracts of land came into effect during the second PT administration. The most radical of these was a “time progressive” property tax law passed in 1993 that instituted increasingly higher rates on empty lots unless proprietors fulfilled a strict construction timeline.4 The amnesties and exemptions that had been applied on an individual basis to large property holders as part of the old troca de favores system were totally eliminated. Whereas there was much uproar about changes in the property tax rates, major increases in the municipally collected services tax went through without much complaint. In 1989, state capitals throughout Brazil agreed to equalize services taxes so as to limit intercity competition for business location. The change led to a substantial increase in revenues for Porto Alegre, with service tax receipts growing by more than 40 percent between 1989 and 1990. This tax on businesses—for which big companies were the largest contributors— did not raise much political strife both because it did not affect the “ordinary voter” and thus could not be used for electoral purposes as easily as property taxes, and because, with similar rates in all capital cities, businesses could not convincingly threaten to relocate. After the first few years of intense dispute—which were critical for pulling the administration out of bankruptcy—no further major tax hikes were implemented. Improvements in spending capabilities from then on had to do with efficient administration and reducing tax evasion. Nevertheless, the structure of taxation had fundamentally changed. Businesses in the service sector and large landowners became the most important tax base, while rates for single-family homes remained modest. This was possible largely because two powerful economic groups—construction companies and landowners— had diverging interests when it came to property tax reform. The large construction companies in the city were far from opposed to tax changes that would raise revenues for public works and that would pressure owners to build on vacant land. Traditional Politicians in the City Assembly Analysts of local government in Brazil have noted that in its “strong mayor” system, the City Assembly has very little real power. The budget can be written only by the executive branch, and amendments

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proposed by vereadores may not increase total expenditures and must indicate the spending rubric that will be reduced in order to compensate for changes. The assembly’s control in other areas is also quite limited. It does not, for example, have the power to approve appointments of agency heads or to intervene directly in executive actions in any significant way. The mayor, in contrast, has line-item veto power. One study of the municipal legislature of Belo Horizonte found that the vast majority of laws passed involved microissues such as naming streets and awarding “honorable citizen” prizes (Somarriba and Afonso, 1987). In this context, the most important role of the City Assembly is an unofficial one: that of interlocutor between civil society and the executive branch of municipal government. Although vereadores are elected at large, they tend to develop constituencies in particular regions of the city where they can mobilize votes through their cabos eleitorais (vote getters) in the neighborhoods. Traditionally, some of this mobilization is on the basis of promised amendments to city budget for paved streets, community halls, and the like. More often, clientelist vereadores seek to use their proximity to the executive branch to provide small benefits to their cabos eleitorais. They typically ally with whatever political group holds city hall, promising to vote consistently in the executive’s favor in exchange for some ability to dispense municipal employment, social services, or an occasional capital investment (Somarriba and Afonso, 1987; de Mello, 1991; Nickson, 1995). The ability of vereadores to win reelection on such weak foundations attests to the usual inaccessibility and inefficacy of the executive branch and to the desperation of poor people who are willing to exchange their votes for mere promises. As will be discussed in much further detail in Chapter 8, this kind of “neighborhood-based clientelism” was virtually eliminated in Porto Alegre with the PT administration and, in particular, with the participatory budget. The vereadores’ role in defining neighborhood infrastructure projects was taken over by the participatory discussion process through which all neighborhood investments were determined. Furthermore, the regional forums and the Municipal Budget Council largely replaced the vereadores in communicating smallerscale neighborhood problems to the executive branch. These forums were not only spaces for determining investment priorities but were also the place where people would go to complain about problems such as potholes, burnt-out streetlights, or poor trash collection. The result was a dilemma for clientelist vereadores, whose electoral bases were in the neighborhoods. Many a session in the City Assembly was occupied by lengthy and vociferous discourses on how the partici-

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patory budget stripped the vereadores of power, effectively creating a “parallel legislative branch.” Yet despite these critiques, the majority of vereadores consistently approved the budget with few amendments. There are two reasons for this outcome. First, at the time that the PT won city hall in Porto Alegre, it also won a significant number of seats in the City Assembly. From 1989 to 1992, the PT held nine of the thirty-three seats in the City Assembly, and the PCB—the other party in the Frente Popular—held one more. This meant that the prefeitura had allies in almost a third of the City Assembly. Getting the seven extra votes needed to have a majority was a difficult but not impossible job. Second, the electoral support of many non-PT vereadores came from neighborhood organizations that began to mobilize around the participatory budget. The PDT, which, as discussed in Chapter 3, had a powerful clientelist network based in neighborhood associations, held eleven of the thirty-three seats. It was difficult for these politicians to vote against the neighborhood-based investments that were being made through the budget policy. Although a significant minority of vereadores consistently attempted to block the budget process, the majority thought it wise to avoid alienating the groups most able to mobilize electoral support for them. In a sense, they were only following tradition—voting with city hall in the hopes of being able to use their association with executive power to continue mobilizing electoral support for themselves and their parties. These relationships also helped the PT to pass progressive tax laws. Several times during the first administration, participants in the budget process mobilized in favor of tax reforms. Many vereadores saw that people who had mobilized support for their campaigns in the neighborhoods were now filling the halls as demonstrators. Although the PT continued to have hefty opposition in the City Assembly, these mobilizations helped convince a critical number of vereadores to support the tax reforms and anti-land-speculation laws. The PT was able to garner the grudging support of many clientelist politicians, without having to engage in the troca de favores that such support usually implied. The Payoff of Negotiations With respect to the business sector, the Porto Alegre PT had a “conciliatory” stance, which was established over the first year that the PT was in power, when the conflict between the administration and the public transportation sector was resolved.5 The negotiations with the bus companies that occurred after that conflict resulted in impressive

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improvements in public transportation in the city, as fleets were expanded and timetables adhered to for the first time. Although bus fares were among the highest in the country, public opinion surveys widely cited the improvement in bus services as among the principal achievements of the PT administration. The administration thus found that negotiating not only avoided the paralysis in the transportation system that had plagued other PT administrations but also increased the administration’s popularity. Similarly, the PT negotiated with the construction companies, gaining their support in its effort to raise taxes on wealthy landowners, while implementing a wide range of public works in poor neighborhoods without the slowdowns or boycotts that could have undermined the administration’s success in the effort to “invert priorities toward the poor.” All this suggests that the Porto Alegre administration ultimately did not use the municipal government to “challenge capitalism,” as Olivio Dutra’s campaign platform declared it would. Instead, it challenged clientelism, changing the way both elite groups and the City Assembly related to the executive branch of government. The administration found that the best way to promote these changes was to avoid alienating business groups, such as civil construction and public transportation, which could have reduced the government’s ability to provide collective services and infrastructure for the poor. But in order for transformations in decisionmaking to have value, the PT administration did have to contest one major sector of the local economic elite: large landowners. Property tax reform was essential for raising the money that had to be raised if participatory forums were to have something to decide about. The fact that the administration promoted tax increases in the face of attacks from the media attests to its commitment to transform municipal governance in ways that would empower the poor. The fact that it was able to pass them in the City Assembly attests to both the contradictory interests of different economic groups and the fragility of the legislative branch in Brazilian municipal government, which was highly dependent on decisions made by city hall. It also reflects the political ability of the administration in rallying support among civic organizations and public opinion in general, support that could counter the negative press promoted by landowning interests. These last points will be considered in the following sections.

Mobilizing Neighborhood Support The organized “combative” neighborhood organizations represented by regional Conselhos Populares and by the citywide umbrella organi-

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zation, UAMPA, were highly supportive of the budget policy and played a critical role in its evolution, particularly during the first two years of the policy. Early on, the neighborhood leaders were the most vocal participants in the Municipal Budget Council, discussing procedural and organizational issues and criteria to be used. The regions with conselhos attracted the largest numbers of participants in the early years. In the second year, when capital expenditures began to be made, they consequently went to those regions. As this occurred, the leadership, initially convinced that the PT administration would only repeat the unfulfilled promises of the previous government, became even stronger supporters. Nevertheless, it should be clear from the preceding chapters that the support of combative organizations alone does not explain why the administration made such a strong effort to devolve power to neighborhood activists. Combative neighborhood organizations were relatively weak in the city, where closed, nonparticipatory “clientelist” associations were the norm. Although many observers of participatory policy suggest that government will devolve power to citizens only if they are well organized into powerful pressure groups, the PT administration implemented participatory policy in Porto Alegre nevertheless. As suggested in Chapter 3, combative neighborhood organizing was in a period of crisis at the time that the PT came to power, with the major umbrella organization in the city, UAMPA, having difficulty mobilizing activists on its own. Furthermore, the movements were not very influential in the local PT, which was more dominated by union leaders and leftist militants than by neighborhood organizers. The fragility of neighborhood movements within the party was reflected in the makeup of the first administration. Many petista neighborhood leaders were hired by the new government, but with only one exception, they did not take on policy formulating positions, joining the lower echelons, largely as community relations workers. Only one city agency, the Department of Housing, DEMHAB, was headed by a person with significant experience in the neighborhood movement. This agency would play almost no role in the participatory budget until well into the second PT government, by which time she had left the government. The remaining agency heads were all either labor union activists or liberal professionals with experience in PT militancy. Indeed, so weak was the “combative” movement’s influence on department nominations that although a 1990 UAMPA document harshly criticized the head of the Community Relations Department (CRC) as being “extremely unpleasant, authoritarian and antidemocratic,” he stayed on in that crucial position until 1997. As Chapter 4 showed, the government’s decision to make a serious commitment to neighborhood investment did not result from the

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influence of neighborhood activists, but from a “strategic planning” process that was dominated by the work of liberal professionals, technical experts, and academics within the administration. To be sure, these actors sought policies that would “invert priorities toward the poor.” But why was that conception translated as “poor neighborhoods lacking infrastructure”? Given the greater influence of labor unions on the party and the administration, why did the administration not emphasize incorporating the participation of labor union activists or focus on workers’ issues, such as working conditions, wages, and alternative economic development programs? The immediate answer is that municipal governments have little control over economic development and have no regulating power in the areas of workers’ rights. Investing in neighborhood-level capital expenditures, however, was something that the administration could do effectively, and it would bring visible results in the short run. For a government seeking to establish its “administrative competence,” neighborhoodbased infrastructure investment was a goal that could be reached within the time period established by four-year electoral terms. But perhaps an even more important reason that the participatory budget policy maintained its importance over the long run was its effectiveness in mobilizing people. Indeed, from the very beginning, it was evident that the budget forums called by the government were much more capable of mobilizing people than the “combative” neighborhood movement had ever been. In 1989, the first year that the budget assemblies were held, three times more neighborhood associations attended them than had ever attended any UAMPA congress. The participatory budget seemed to have easily replaced UAMPA as the central forum of neighborhood organizing. Baierle (1993) argues that the UAMPA, already in severe crisis when the PT came to power, shriveled up altogether as soon as the PT administration provided a much more responsive and effective space of popular participation. This “mobilization effect” will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 7. By the end of the administration’s first term, over 7,000 people were participating each year, and by the end of the second term, over 14,000 participated. Stiefel and Wolfe’s (1994) study of participatory governments found that they tend to favor party sympathizers, undermining the “open” nature of participatory policy. The Porto Alegre administration had no reason to restrict participation in such a manner. Much to the contrary, privileging petistas would have narrowed the administration’s sphere of influence. Instead, the prefeitura encouraged an open process, in which anyone could participate and, if he or

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she played by the rules, could benefit. The result was that the majority of participants were not active PT militants and many were not even party sympathizers. For example, in a survey of budget delegates in two regions of the city, only twenty-nine out of the sixty-five (45 percent) delegates interviewed said that they sympathized with the PT.6 The activism of non-petistas in the budget process was particularly important in the regions of the city where “combative” movements had never been strong. For example, in the Extremo Sul region, where much of my research was concentrated, three budget participants who were militant in opposition parties were elected to the Municipal Budget Council at one point or another. In interviews, all three suggested that mobilizing through the budget process was a great way to gain support for political campaigns even for non-PT parties. For example, one noted: It is through organizing people for the budget that leaders appear. Suddenly a guy says to himself, maybe after so much participating and organizing, I could represent this community through the City Assembly. . . . That’s how it was that the suggestion arose that I put myself forward as a candidate for vereador in the southern region of the city. (Rodrigo)

Why did the PT allow opposition activists to use the budget process to promote their own projects? Part of the explanation was the PT’s generally democratic ideology that rejected the clientelist favoritism that typified Brazilian politics. But another reason was that the inclusive character of the participatory budget broadened support for the policy. As we have seen, largely by gaining the support of the cabos eleitorais that mobilized neighborhood votes for opposition politicians, the PT was able to gain the support of the City Assembly for the budget policy. More generally, the PT, by not limiting rewards to party sympathizers, managed to generate more support for its party than it would have had it restricted benefits. Many of the budget participants that I interviewed said that they were not affiliated with the PT and had been generally suspicious of the party before participating. Now they were sympathizers because the PT administration had attended to their demands. All this suggests that the participatory budget policy, in addition to the other reasons cited for creating it, served to mobilize support for the administration’s policies among neighborhood activists. Those activists not only would help the administration enact its projects in the City Assembly but also would potentially promote the party at election time.

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Garnering Public Opinion and the Middle Class In any modern democracy, electoral success demands more than just negotiating with specific groups of supporters and detractors; it also requires the blessing of public opinion. The vast majority of big city governments in Brazil seek to gain that blessing by demonstrating government effectiveness through a few extremely visible “big projects”—stadiums, tunnels, bridges—and by cultivating the support of powerful businesses and other elite groups that contribute to flashy media campaigns. The Porto Alegre administration took an entirely different tack, which turned out to have great “marketability” with the local public: it emphasized being a “different kind of government,” characterized by the lack of corruption; by transparent, participatory decisionmaking; by an emphasis on social justice; and by being able to promote these ethically valuable goals while at the same time providing basic public services effectively. In an analysis of a public opinion survey taken just after the PT was reelected to its second term, an internal discussion document entitled “The Construction of Image” made it quite clear that the administration sought to cultivate a “democratic” image. The last opinion survey, carried out in December 1992, reveals that the question of inverting priorities, of investments in poor areas of the city, was indisputably the principal hallmark of our administration. . . . This hallmark was built on a general profile defined by the population of a government that was democratic and grassrootsbased, that was courageous and honest. . . . To this democratic, grassroots, honest and competent profile, were added (during the electoral campaign) qualities that emphasized the Administration’s enterprising capacity, its distance from politicking [politicagem], and the sense of security that results from those qualities. We guaranteed the continuation of a serious administration, that finds positive and effective solutions, that inverts priorities and that contrasts traditional political inefficacy. (Coordinação de Comunicação Social, 1993)

The ability of the government to establish this positive public image had much to do with the issues discussed in Chapter 4: raising revenues, restructuring the administration, focusing on priorities, and developing governing capacity. As suggested there, although the participatory budget was not the only factor increasing the productivity of government action, it played a very important role in the process of creating an enterprising, administratively competent government. The budget policy helped produce an image of a government that was not only competent and honest but also “democratic” and dedicated to “inverting priorities.” In the opinion survey analyzed above,

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32 percent of those interviewed cited either democracy or transparency and 30 percent cited “investment in poor areas” as one of the two “characteristics that best define the current administration” (Nuñez, 1992:14). In a 1994 survey, a full 62 percent of those interviewed agreed that the government “invests in poor areas,” even though many of them had not heard of the budget policy specifically (META, 1994). All this suggests that the budget policy helped build a positive democratic image of the administration among those who did not participate in it as well as among those who did. Although priority was given in investments to poor neighborhoods and although budget assemblies were dominated by poor people, the administration’s positive image was even stronger among the middle class than among the poor. Whereas 55 percent of those who earned the minimum monthly wage (about U.S.$100) or less rated the administration as “Excellent” or “Good” in 1992, 71 percent of people earning between five and ten times the minimum wage and almost 80 percent of those earning ten or more times the minimum wage gave it that rating (Nuñez, 1992:6). The 1994 survey found that better-off people also were more likely to agree that the administration “is committed to the interests of the population” rather than “is committed to the interest of the political and economic elites” (META, 1994). All this suggests that issues such as democracy, accountability, and transparency were extremely important to the middle-class voters of Porto Alegre. These concerns probably reflect the political conditions of the period. The first term that the PT was in office coincided with several major national corruption scandals, one of which led to the impeachment of the nation’s president. In 1993, another national-level scandal occurred specifically around the process of formulating the federal budget. These scandals and the national uproar they received—widely discussed in the electronic media and nightly soap operas—led to huge public demonstrations throughout Brazil. Certainly, this political climate made the middle class much more favorable to transparent and accountable governance. Perhaps just the fact that the government was competent, honest, and able to raise revenues would have been enough to obtain support from a middle class that was tired of government inefficiency and corruption scandals. But the PT administration built on that strong acceptance to create an image that was something more. An example of how the administration targeted middle-class voters to disseminate this “democratically innovative” image is the homepage of the Porto Alegre Municipal Government Administration on the World Wide Web (http://www.prefpoa.com.br). During 1996, the first year the

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homepage was in existence, the screen began with: “Porto Alegre: Capital da Democracia,” or Porto Alegre: The Capital of Democracy. The very first link was to information about the participatory budget.

Implementing Participation: Some Reflections on State Action Most studies of leftist parties that gain state power by electoral means have leaned toward Neo-Marxist interpretations. A common argument in this school is that such governments are capable of promoting working-class interests only if they are backed by a strong, autonomous grassroots base from outside the state apparatus. Ralph Miliband, in his discussion of the Allende government in Chile, notes that attempts to change the status quo are “bound to arouse the fiercest enmity from conservative forces defeated at the polls but obviously very far from having lost all their formidable class power” (1977:183). Many researchers have found that such governments usually end up conceding to those forces. For example, Boggs’s (1986) comparative study of movement-based political parties in office argues that the imperatives of maintaining economic stability and promoting economic growth inevitably override the original goals of devolving power to grassroots groups. For these authors, the key explanation for why such parties fail to fulfill their ideals once in power is the weakness of autonomous movements. Boggs (1986) argues that an alternative strategy of the sort pursued by the German Green Party is necessary if the left is to transform the state in favor of popular movements. The Greens call this strategy “walking on two legs”: maintaining both a “playing leg,” the party as actor within the formal electoral system, seeking to promote candidates and working toward party objectives in parliament; and a “standing leg, the party as a coalition of social movements, maintaining some distance from the “playing leg” and having no obligation to hold to the rules of the state or of party action. The standing leg of the party constantly seeks to pressure the playing leg to maintain the party’s radical objectives by threatening to withdraw movement support and by mobilizing a grassroots movement promoting party goals within civil society. For Boggs, having a powerful “standing leg” in grassroots movements is essential for ensuring that progressive parties succeed in implementing participation and other radical policies, once in office. In Porto Alegre, the tensions between the PT administration and the municipal labor union—affiliated with CUT, the union organiza-

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tion closely associated with the PT—shows how such a relationship works. Although supporting the party in electoral campaigns, CUT never avoided conflicts with the administration when it came to negotiating wages with the PT as patrão, or employer.7 The result of this pressure in Porto Alegre was that the Workers’ Party government paid relatively high wages. Similarly, combative neighborhood movements sought to keep their distance from the PT administration, to the point of organizing public demonstrations against it when necessary. But as I have suggested, these efforts were meager and cannot explain why the administration chose neighborhood investments as its central priority. That is, combative neighborhood activists who were also petistas did not have the organizing power or the influence within the party to be considered an effective “standing leg,” one capable of keeping the party on a neighborhood-based participatory program once in office. That program was adhered to for other reasons. Part of the explanation is that the administration had some autonomy from nonstate actors and was therefore able to promote policies that did not naturally evolve from the changing balance of social forces outside the state. As noted in Chapter 1, theorists in the “bringing the state back in” school have suggested that under certain conditions, state actors can use the resources of the state in ways that contradict the interests of the most powerful and organized social sectors. Skocpol (1985:16–17), one of the leaders of the school, lists conditions that allow for autonomous action on the part of state actors: (1) a cadre of “loyal and skilled officials” within the state bureaucracy; (2) plentiful financial resources; and (3) operational autonomy. State actors must have resources at their command, they must have the technical capacity to utilize those resources, and their decisions cannot be subject to veto from other components of the state: other agencies, other branches of government, higher territorial authorities, and so on. This chapter and Chapter 4 have shown that in Porto Alegre the local administration acquired a substantial amount of decisionmaking autonomy in the area of capital expenditures because each of Skocpol’s conditions was, at least to a certain extent, fulfilled. The several hundred appointed employees that carried out the bulk of participatory organizing were the loyal and skilled officials. The ability of the government to raise revenues created the financial resources. The structure of local government in Brazil, made even more autonomous with the 1988 Federal Constitution, provided operational autonomy. Small and medium-sized capital expenditures were an area of policymaking where such autonomy was particularly great because the power of the City Assembly to veto expenditures was very weak

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and because the existence of locally generated financial resources made the administration less dependent on grants and loans from international agencies and the state and federal governments.8 Since the administration had final authority over capital investment decisions, it had the capacity to devolve power to civic groups in that area of decisionmaking. The administrative reform discussed in Chapter 4 further increased the government’s capability for autonomous action by concentrating control over government actions in the mayor’s office. This helped the government promote a unified political project that would be implemented by all city agencies and that centered on citizen participation in capital expenditure decisions. Thus, in several ways, state autonomy was one of the major conditions for the creation of participatory policy. Yet I have also suggested that successful implementation of the budget policy required the state to negotiate with other groups, both within and outside of state institutions, in order to build consensus around the policy. Although the prefeitura had a substantial amount of autonomy from other sectors of government, certain aspects of the policy did require negotiations with other branches, such as the City Assembly. At the same time, nonstate actors could have thwarted the policy. For example, service providers could have boycotted the government. To counter such dangers, the administration succeeded in gaining the support of the construction companies benefiting from its policies and to build support among the middle class by keying into a growing appreciation for “good governance” and democratic decisionmaking. In this way, it built an alliance with an alternative social base that allowed it to promote policies that challenged traditional practices in the area of capital expenditures. Not only did the PT administration take advantage of existing potential support bases within society, but also it did something else. Its policymaking efforts strengthened groups within society that were not particularly strong at the time the party came to office, thereby contributing to important changes in the composition of social forces outside the state. Skocpol notes: States matter not simply because of the goal-oriented activities of state officials. They matter because their organizational configurations, along with their overall patterns of activity, affect political culture, encourage some kinds of group formation and collective political actions (but not others), and make possible the raising of certain political issues (but not others). (1985:21)

In Porto Alegre, state actors encouraged a boom in civic mobilizing that contributed to the long-term viability of both the budget poli-

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cy and the administration in general. This counters the idea that state-initiated participatory policy will work only if there is a preexisting social movement capable of pressuring for control from below. In Porto Alegre, the government helped encourage the mobilization and organization of participants “from above.” This process is explored in detail later on in this book. What is important to note here is that neighborhood mobilization was more an effect than a cause of participatory policymaking. But as it grew, it bolstered the participatory budget policy. Neighborhood leaders helped the government negotiate both the annual budgets and tax reforms with the City Assembly. They also provided political support at election time, since they hoped for a continuation of policies that favored their neighborhoods. In this sense, the government helped ensure the success of participatory policy by fostering strong civic organizations. An analysis of the Porto Alegre case thus helps us understand how state actors can overcome the implementation problem of participation. First, specific institutional conditions can create the opportunity for state actors within a particular branch of the government to implement policies with some autonomy from other branches and levels of government. In the case of Porto Alegre, the operational autonomy of the government, combined with a strategic use of state technical capacity and personnel, made it possible for the administration to allocate capital expenditures in new ways. Second, since such autonomy is rarely complete, state actors must negotiate with other sectors of government and with nonstate social groups. But there are no dictates forcing them to court specific groups. Under certain conditions, they can construct alternative alliances that provide political support for their policies. In Porto Alegre, state actors took advantage of divisions of interests among different business sectors, gaining the support of the construction companies. They also took advantage of trends in public opinion that supported good government and democratic decisionmaking. Third, state actors can also use the resources under their control to actually change the balance of forces within society by fostering the emergence and strengthening of new social groups. The PT administration promoted a policy that encouraged civic mobilization, which provided not only participants for the participatory policy but also political support for that policy and for the administration more generally. What is striking is that although other policy efforts certainly contributed to the administration’s building of political support, one policy, the participatory budget, was central to each of these processes: helping to organize and prioritize government actions, gaining the

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support of party members, wielding a “moral authority,” providing incentives to the construction sector, mobilizing neighborhood activists, and contributing to a “democratic” and “socially just” public image of the government. Whereas the government’s strategic efforts to build political support for the administration were essential for its implementation of participation, participatory policy itself helped the government gain that support. This picture is quite different from the one presented by most observers, such as Stiefel and Wolfe (1994), who suggest that participatory policies present obstacles to governability and political survival. In Porto Alegre, participatory policymaking became an asset to PT administration, actually helping it to implement broader political goals and to stay in office over the long term. The obvious question is whether in the process of garnering political support from such a wide spectrum of social groups, the administration abandoned its “radical” political goals. It is quite certain that by the time the second administration came to office, the discourse of the PT had changed substantially. The terminology of the campaign and of the first year of governing had included phrases such as “accumulating forces to overthrow capitalism,” “popular councils,” and “dual power.” By the time of the next mayoral race, PT and administration documents invoked “democratization,” “strategic goal-setting,” and “citizenship.” The socialist aspirations of the party were still in place, but the revolutionary tone of “taking power” had been replaced by more-incrementalist visions much influenced by Gramsci’s concept of “hegemony.” Building hegemony and a broadbased block of political support for the government would require negotiations with sectors besides the working class. The concept of the working class was also transformed, with increasing concern for targeting both the unorganized poor and the middle class.9 All this was, in part, a reflection of sea changes occurring in the left throughout the world at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union. But it also was a reflection of the experience of being in office, the realization that officeholding was not the same as having total power over municipal resources, that reelection depended on public opinion, and that therefore the government had to give priority to the “competent” provision of city services. It also came from the affirmation that civil society was not likely to form popular councils capable of taking over the tasks of governing without significant efforts on the part of the state to structure participatory channels of decisionmaking and to mobilize and educate citizens. Do the above changes in discourse represent a “sellout” to the status quo? My analysis is that the Porto Alegre PT administrations were

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able to achieve a delicate balance between, on the one hand, building the basic capacity to govern competently and to survive in office and, on the other hand, promoting policies that radically challenged political traditions in the city. Of prime importance, the participatory budget promoted transparency in government decisionmaking, extremely unusual in the Brazilian context. In 1991, the PT administration began publishing a detailed Investment Plan, which presented the result of each year’s lengthy negotiation process and the administration’s investment commitments. The computerized Project Management System, which helped the government to gain control of the bureaucratic machine, also made it possible for any citizen to obtain access to information on government spending. It was virtually impossible for money to disappear, for contracts to be overpriced, for promises to be ignored, and for unnecessary investments to be made when such a complex system of monitoring the budget process had been put into place, with large numbers of informed community activists having access to detailed data on government spending. The policy also had a significant redistributive effect. Through the administrative reforms described in this chapter, the major capital-investing agencies multiplied their capacity to invest. For example, between 1989 and 1996, the portion of the population with access to sewer lines rose from 46 percent to 95 percent (Utzig, 1996:218). Most capital expenditures went to small infrastructure projects in the poor neighborhoods of the city, which had been historically neglected by government. Some larger investments were initiated, but most of them—such as the huge cleanup project of the Guaíba River, upon which Porto Alegre was dependent for water— relied on big grants from federal programs and multilateral agencies rather than from the government’s own revenues. Since the Municipal Budget Council’s criteria for distribution favored those regions that were most lacking in infrastructure, the prefeitura systematically invested in neighborhoods and regions of the city where little previous public investment had occurred. In this context, whole regions of the city were dramatically transformed. One striking example was the Cruzeiro region. Until the early 1990s, the favelas there were a thicket of shacks and mud. Outsiders would rarely pass through. A few years later, although Cruzeiro remained one of the poorest regions of the city, the principal streets were paved and many of the major drainage problems had been resolved. The result was that the region, once cut off from the rest of the city, became accessible. Buses would go there. Garbage trucks would go there. Taxis and ambulances and police cars would

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go there. Outsiders regularly used the health post located there or drove through the region between parts of the city, a route they never would have taken before, when it was unpaved and considered dangerous. The people who lived there continued to be poor, but their neighborhoods were now included as a formal part of the city. Similar transformations occurred throughout the poor regions of Porto Alegre, which had gained the same rights to public investment as middle-class neighborhoods. This expansion of social rights and of social and political inclusion could only be understood as advances in citizenship—after many years of struggle, the poor in Porto Alegre had gained “the right to the city.” But the transformations fostered by the PT went beyond transparency and redistribution. Obviously, the participatory budget involved a fundamental change in the way decisions were made: large numbers of ordinary people gained direct control over millions of dollars of city revenues. In 1994, opinion surveys found that about 8 percent of the adult population had directly participated in the budget assemblies (META, 1994). Although this percentage may not seem high when compared to voting rates in occasional elections, anyone with experience in city governance and planning would find these figures impressive because they refer to acts that go far beyond isolated ballot-box decisions. Residents in most of the city’s neighborhoods had taken off at least one evening to attend long and often contentious discussions about priorities and to learn the basics of city finance. The majority of these people had low income and education levels. As the rest of this book will show, with the elimination of the traditional troca de favores associated with budget decisionmaking, clientelist associations lost their clout while participatory associations prospered. If these changes were not exactly “revolutionary” in the sense of contesting capitalism, they were significant in terms of challenging entrenched political traditions. The resilience of traditional elites and clientelist politics in Brazil has been noted. For example, Hagopian (1994, 1996) argues that even the repressive post-1964 regime, which sought to eliminate the “obsolete” influence of traditional elites in favor of a technocratic modernization project, was unable to do so. The Porto Alegre administration seems to have been able to do at a local scale what the authoritarian regime could not do nationally: it eliminated clientelist forms of decisionmaking. It achieved that not because the administration had more autonomy from society than an authoritarian regime that uses military might rather than electoral support to sustain policymaking. It was because the administration was able to gain the support of alternative groups,

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many of which would never have backed an authoritarian regime. Instead of relying on traditional elites for support—as even the military regime eventually had to do in Brazil—the PT administration developed an alternative coalition of support within civil society that excluded those elites. By taking advantage of the limited potential for autonomous action that existed at the local level in Brazil, by developing policies that helped promote both competent governing and grassroots control, by gaining the backing of certain sectors of the business class that were willing to conduct business in a new way, by garnering the support of a progressive middle class that had begun to value good and democratic governing, and by creating an enabling environment in which previously weak sectors of civil society could prosper, the PT formed a broad support base that allowed it to pursue policies that were radically different from those typical of traditional politics. In this way, it was able to challenge clientelism, a system of resource allocation and decisionmaking that many have seen to be the most stubborn political problem in Brazil.

Notes 1. Indeed, the problems that the administration faced were often the opposite. In some cases, it could not find contractors with the competence to carry out the projects demanded in the assemblies. In one case, for example, where a demand for running water in a distant neighborhood required the construction of deep wells, the prefeitura sought a contractor for almost two years, and it eventually decided to implement a much more expensive project, piping in water from five kilometers away. See Chapter 10 for more discussion of this case. 2. The owner of Zero Hora also owned the local concession for Rede Globo, Brazil’s largest television network. This agency therefore had an enormous influence on public opinion. 3. In a 1995 interview, the secretary of finance said that the majority of increases in tax revenues in recent years came from a reduction of tax evasion. He suggested that such reduction had two causes: (1) the rising credibility of the administration, leading people to feel more confidence that their taxes would go to good use; and (2) the growing popularity and strength of the PT, leading people to believe that a government that might offer amnesty for those owing back taxes would not be likely to come to office in the near future. 4. The law increases property tax by 20 percent each year on vacant lots unless the owners present a building project within eleven months and conclude the project within three years. The law applies to lots between 3,000 and 5,000 square meters, depending on the area of the city. This is one of the most progressive property tax laws attacking urban land speculation in Brazil. 5. See Silveira (1996) for another examination of the relation between the PT administration and the business sector.

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6. The figure cited, 45 percent, thus refers to “party sympathy” rather than affiliation. Eighteen (28 percent) of those interviewed denied sympathy for any particular party. The remaining answers were divided up among seven different parties, ranging dramatically in ideological character. See Methodological Appendix for more on the delegate survey. 7. Indeed, the Municipal Employees’ Union has frequently distributed pamphlets playing with the word PaTrão (boss). 8. The administration did make such loans, but primarily for very large infrastructure projects that were not the main focus of participation. 9. The influence of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is evident in the writings of Tarso Genro, the first PT vice-mayor and second PT mayor, whose ideas were very influential within the local PT. See Genro (1989, 1992, 1995).

Part Three

INTEGRATING THE EXCLUDED

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6

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Who Participates? Inequality and the Participatory Budget Process

This study has examined the first of three problems of participation laid out in the introductory chapter: the problem of implementation. It is now time to go on to the second problem. As explained in Chapter 1, the problem of inequality refers to the fact that even where governments are able to create new, transparent decisionmaking forums that are technically open to all citizens, not everyone has the same capacity to participate. Yet if empowering the “hitherto excluded” is the goal, then participatory forums must effectively represent the more disadvantaged social groups. In this chapter I will begin with a detailed review of the literature on how inequality affects participation. I will then look at the profile of participants in the Porto Alegre case, showing that for the most part, the expectations of political theorists and other observers of participation were not fulfilled. Later chapters will explain how it was possible for a state-initiated participatory policy to give effective power to people who were neither socioeconomically advantaged nor politically organized before the policy existed.

Participation Versus Representation In his seminal work, The Logic of Collective Action, Mancur Olson (1965) set off over two decades of debate by arguing that rational selfinterested individuals will not participate in collective action so long as the diffuse, uncertain benefits of such action (e.g., collective goods) are eclipsed by the enormous costs that those who participate must directly incur (e.g., time spent in assemblies). Since such collective benefits will also be gained by those who do not participate, 115

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Olson argues that allowing others to do the work of participation—or “free riding”—is the most rational action from an individual perspective. To overcome the “free-rider problem,” he offers three solutions: (1) collective organizations can provide selective incentives only to those who participate; (2) groups can be made up of privileged individuals for whom the marginal cost of participating is smaller than the benefit each individual will receive; or (3) groups can be small enough so that each person believes that his or her own efforts will make a difference to the outcome (Olson, 1965; Jenkins, 1983; Ostrom, 1990). Olson’s critics usually recognize that the free-rider problem is a real one: it is often very difficult to mobilize people to participate in social movements, public forums, and civic associations, even if such participation is in a group’s interest. But at the same time, they have shown that when people do take part in collective action, they often do so without the direct incentives Olson suggests are necessary. For some, moral beliefs and feelings of social solidarity are the motivations for joining civic groups even when benefits from participation will not redound directly to them (Jenkins, 1983; Tarrow, 1994:15; Mellucci, 1989:30–37). For others, collective action is rewarding in itself because it is a way to socialize with others or an interesting way to spend leisure time (Tarrow, 1994:15). And some people join precisely because they understand the free-rider problem. As Oliver (1984: 601) puts it: “If you don’t do it, nobody else will.” All this suggests that although Olson’s insight that the decision to participate has to do with an analysis of costs and benefits is valuable, that calculation is much more complex than the narrow reckoning of individualized, personal gain that he describes.1 A looser conception of the costs and benefits of participation can be helpful for understanding why some individuals are more likely than others to participate in collective pursuits. In her study of a New England town meeting, Mansbridge (1980:97) puts it simply: “Different groups incur different immediate costs when they attend the meeting, and they get different immediate satisfactions. As a consequence, some groups are more likely than others to attend.” Mansbridge cites a broad spectrum of conditions that define these costs and benefits, including socioeconomic status, gender, previous experience in the meetings, bonds of friendship, the distance between home and meeting place, and time lived in the town. The costs that people incur are determined not only by the amount of free time and money they have but also by issues of self-esteem, social status, and experience. The benefits are also more complex than just

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material gains: certain people may find the meeting itself a place of sociality and friendship, whereas others may feel excluded and isolated there. Both costs and benefits have to do with individual characteristics (beliefs, personality, experience) as well as with group membership and social institutions (socioeconomic status, gender, and culture). The concern of many observers of participatory experiments is not so much that “not everyone participates,” but that members of certain groups may be at a structural disadvantage because the costs of participating are too high for them. How can we ensure that specific groups are not systematically excluded from participatory forums? Socioeconomic inequality is most often cited as a basic limitation on participation. Political philosophers proposing participatory democracy often argue that a major redistribution of income, if not an elimination of the capitalist system, is necessary before that ideal would be practically feasible. Without economic equality, they argue, political equality is impossible.2 An impressive number of studies of actual participatory experiments have revealed the relevance of these concerns. In cases with broadly different contexts and characters, middle-class and well-educated participants have typically outnumbered the poor. This imbalance was, for example, a central critique of the “maximum feasible participation” clause in the Community Action Programs of the 1960s in the United States (Marris and Rein, 1982:168). Gutmann notes that U.S. programs to increase community control over schools also saw much broader participation by white middle-class than by poor black residents (1980:194–197). In her study of neighborhood associations in Detroit, Oliver (1984) finds that well-educated residents far outnumber the less-educated as active members.3 Similar results are often found in case studies of neighborhood movements and participatory experiments in Brazil and Latin America. In her study of a land-use planning project that sought the participation of neighborhood associations in Brazil, for example, Gondim (1988) found that middle- and upper-class residents participated more. Even in generally poor neighborhoods, it is often the better-off residents that participate most actively in associations. As Evers et al. note: The wealthier residents have the economic means to go from the neighborhood to the institutions in the city center. Business-owners, in particular, have more time to attend meetings. Often their educational level is higher, for which reason they are elected to posts in the organizations. . . . They have better external and also internal relations within the neighborhood. (1988:155)

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In general, then, it can be said that the (marginal) costs of participating in any kind of collective action are particularly high for poor people, who “face a daily struggle to provide the bare minimum for sheer physical survival. Because of this fact of life, they are unable to afford the luxury of engaging in political activities that only promise to yield results in the future, even if those results might be more rewarding than results gained from short-run activities” (O’Brien, 1974:232). The poor lack not only the financial resources to pay for trips into the city or for other expenses associated with participation; they also lack free time. Many feminist authors have noted that the free-time problem is accentuated for women, even when they do not suffer severe financial constraints to collective action. Because most women (especially poor women in Brazilian cities) not only work outside the home but also are primarily responsible for most household chores and for child care, their time is limited. Child care is a twenty-fourhour job that makes women’s schedules particularly inflexible. Phillips, although sympathetic to the ideals of participatory democracy, is therefore quite skeptical about its implications for women: “The more participatory a democracy sets out to be, the more it discriminates between women and men. The more emphasis it places on activity and involvement, the more it tends to exaggerate the influence of those who have greater resources of education, charm or time” (1991:162). However, studies of women’s participation in neighborhood movements in Latin America show more-complex processes in place than simply the exclusion of women overburdened with responsibilities and short on time. In fact, in the impoverished slums and shantytowns of Latin American cities, women are often the main actors in neighborhood organizations. Participation by women in neighborhood associations is, therefore, far from unusual, and it is even seen as a “natural” extension of their domestic activities (Moser, 1987). The distinction between men and women in neighborhood activism is less often a question of time spent and more often related to the nature of participation. Women make up the rank and file of neighborhood organizations, primarily responsible for organizing and mobilizing residents. Leadership positions, however, are generally left to men (Moser, 1987). All this suggests that participation has to do not only with economic and educational inequalities and with free time, but also with social roles. The costs of participation are greater for those who have to break social codes or overcome social expectations in order to engage in leadership roles. Inextricably related to all of these categories of differential partic-

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ipation is the question of self-confidence. The poor, the less-educated, and women in particular often do not participate actively in public meetings, even if they do have the time and financial resources to do so, because they lack the self-confidence to speak and make claims in public. James argues that people need what she calls “emotional independence” in order to be effective citizens: “One must conceive of oneself as having the ability to assess situations and speak one’s mind about them” (1992:60). Individuals who rely strongly on others for approval and who are trained to believe that their opinions are of little worth are unlikely to have a strong voice in participatory programs—they may carry out the everyday work of participation, but they are unlikely to voice their own opinions or seek leadership roles. The costs faced by people from disadvantaged social groups are therefore not only material ones: they must also overcome socialized feelings of inefficacy, gain the self-confidence necessary to develop independent opinions, and learn the skills of public speech and argument required to defend those opinions. This process may be long in coming, even where historically excluded groups are given genuine opportunities to influence public decisions. A category that cuts across socioeconomic lines and distinguishes those more or less likely to take advantage of participatory opportunities is membership in groups that have previous experience in associational and civic activities. This case is made most strongly in Putnam’s (1993) work on regional government and civic associations in Italy: the author argues that regions with historically strong “networks of civic engagement” are more likely to demonstrate strong institutional performance. Organizational history is more important than economic differences in determining the rise of strong, inclusive participatory institutions in northern Italy and weak, closed, clientelistic institutions in the south. Similarly, Fox (1995, 1996), in his study of the federal “Food Councils” program in Mexico, argues that indigenous villages with strong histories of communal organization developed the best organized village councils, despite the fact that they were among the poorest villages in the country. The implication here is that participation works in a virtuous circle: those with more experience in civic affairs are more likely to participate and thus will gain even more experience, which will enable them to participate even more. Because certain groups are more likely than others to take advantage of participatory opportunities, some authors have suggested that participatory democracy fails to respond to the elitism that most of its proponents see to be the main problem with representative systems (Gutmann, 1980; Young, 1990). Instead, participatory systems simply

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hand over power to those groups that are most capable of making their voices heard in public assemblies. Since people are generally capable of engaging in an occasional vote, representative democracy may actually be more accessible to the majority of the population than direct democracy. Giovanni Sartori is particularly scathing: For the time being, let me simply point out that the more the participationist presses his point, the more he is in danger, albeit unwittingly, of being more “elitist” than the one he is attacking. . . . Is this not one of the meanings of “elitism,” namely that the few do better, and count for more, than the passive, inert, apathetic, nonparticipant many? (1987:114)

This critique of participatory policies has been made in the Brazilian context by those observing the PT’s participatory efforts in cities other than Porto Alegre. Many observers have agreed that Brazil’s neighborhood movements represent only a tiny minority of people and tend to be fragmented into corporatist groups concerned only with their particular, localized demands. According to Kowarick and Singer (1993), these concerns led the São Paulo PT administration correctly to abandon a “participationist” mode of decisionmaking that would have relied on the organization of urban neighborhood movements. Giving power to such organizations, they argue, would have led to the domination of the process by a parochial “militant minority,” which would not be concerned with the needs of the city as a whole. Since Porto Alegre, like São Paulo, was characterized by extreme inequalities, one would expect that a participatory policy seeking to empower the “hitherto excluded” would have also faced the same problems. Although, as noted in Chapter 3, Porto Alegre was better off than most Brazilian cities, socioeconomic differences still remained stark compared to those in advanced industrial countries. As anywhere in Brazil, poor women bear the “double” burdens of work and child care. Finally, the level of neighborhood organization varied dramatically throughout the city, with strong combative movements existing only in some parts of the city. Yet despite these conditions of socioeconomic, gender, and organizational inequality, the PT administration in Porto Alegre chose to do precisely what the São Paulo administration eventually turned away from: it gave neighborhood organizations the power to make critical decisions about resource allocation. One would have expected that in the competition for scarce public funds, neighborhoods populated by people for whom the costs of participation were lower would have been the prime beneficiaries. Middle-class neighborhoods would

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likely have had the upper hand over poor neighborhoods, and neighborhoods with previous histories of organizing would have dominated over those with no such history. Presumably, those with the best conditions for participating initially would have continued to dominate the process over time, as experience with the system reinforced those capabilities and accentuated the inequalities between the organized beneficiaries and the unorganized excluded. At the same time, even within the poor neighborhoods that participated, we would have expected better-off residents and men to have overshadowed less-privileged residents in local assemblies, dominating elected positions in the regional forums and the Municipal Budget Council. Yet as the following sections will show, with the important exception of gender differences, these expectations were not fulfilled.

Socioeconomic Profile of Participants To determine the basic socioeconomic profile of participants in the budget assemblies, I will use data from the 1995 sample survey of participants that I conducted, in collaboration with two local nongovernmental organizations and the municipal government (see Methodological Appendix). This survey showed that, contrary to expectations, middle-class and wealthy residents did not dominate the budget assemblies, particularly at the regional level, where the vast majority of people participated. Both income and education statistics show that the majority of participants were poor and less-educated, although better-off and better-educated participants were also present. With respect to income, 40 percent of those inter viewed belonged to households earning a total income of three minimum salaries or less. Since, at the time of the interviews, the federally mandated minimum salary was approximately U.S.$100 per month, this figure corresponds to about $300 or less. If we use the average household size of 3.3 individuals reported for Porto Alegre in the 1991 census as an indicator, this would mean that 40 percent of those participating earned less than $100 per month per household member.4 Eighteen percent had household incomes of between $300 and $500. Another third of the population could be identified as “better-off,” with household incomes of more than $500 a month.5 Education statistics show a similar, but somewhat more balanced, picture. Of the people interviewed, 42 percent had not completed primary school, or the first eight years of basic education in Brazil (primeiro grau). Another 12 percent had completed eight years but

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had gone no further. At the same time, a substantial portion of the participants had received more than just basic education: 18 percent had completed secondary school and another 14 percent had spent at least some time studying at the university level. This suggests that the policy did attract a group of “better educated” people, although they far from represented the majority. When this profile is compared to that of the general population of the municipality of Porto Alegre, it becomes even more clear that socioeconomic inequalities did not reproduce themselves within the budget assemblies. Much to the contrary, the household incomes of budget participants are significantly lower than those of the population as a whole. Table 6.1 presents data on household incomes from the 1991 census for the municipality of Porto Alegre along with the household incomes of participants in the regional and thematic assemblies. Whereas more than 50 percent of Porto Alegre’s households had incomes of more than five times the minimum salary, only 34 percent of those participating in regional assemblies had family incomes at this level. Whereas less than 30 percent of the city’s households earned three times the minimum salary or less, about 45 percent of the regional participants belonged to such households, which we might consider very impoverished.6 Given the 4 percent margin of error of the survey, these figures clearly show that participants in the regional assemblies were poorer than the population as a whole. At the same time, the socioeconomic status of participants in the thematic assemblies was substantially different from that of participants in the regional assemblies. Whereas 34 percent of the total of those interviewed at the regional assemblies had household incomes over $500, 54 percent of those interviewed at the thematic assemblies were in this upper category. In fact, 29 percent of income-earning individuals in the thematic assemblies earned more than $700 per month, compared to only 12 percent of those interviewed at the regional assemblies.7 This suggests that whereas middle-class people might not have been as concerned with the basic, small-scale infrastructure demands at the regional level, they were more likely to be interested in general policy issues and larger-scale infrastructure projects. An alternate (although not mutually exclusive) explanation is that the more general, policy-based themes debated in the thematic councils required higher levels of education and time to understand, and therefore were more accessible to better-off citizens.8 Another way to examine how socioeconomic differences affected participation is to compare the number of participants in poorer and better-off regions of the city. Once again, the lack of official socioeconomic data limits us here: no comparative data were available on

Who Participates?

Table 6.1

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Household Income of 1991 Porto Alegre Population and of Budget Participants, in Minimum Salaries (percent)

Household Income One MSc or less

Porto Alegrea

Regional Thematic Total Assembliesb Assembliesb Assembliesb

7

11

3

10

More than one MS to three MS

22

34

28

33

More than three MS to five MS

18

20

14

20

More than five MS

53

34

54

37

100

100

100

100

Total

123

Notes: To allow for comparison, percentages do not include nonrespondents. a. Data for municipality of Porto Alegre from Demographic Census (IBGE) of 1991. b. From survey of participants, 1995. c. MS = minimum monthly salary. Categories are by multiples of the MS at the time of the research (1995 = $100).

socioeconomic conditions at the level of the budget regions. But as in most Brazilian cities, the differences between regions of the city were so striking that one does not need to rely on statistics to determine which regions are predominately middle-class and which are predominately poor. In Table 6.2, the sixteen budget regions are divided into three groups loosely representing (1) predominately middle-class regions, (2) predominately poor regions with some middle-class neighborhoods, and (3) predominately poor regions with virtually no middle-class neighborhoods. For each region and grouping, the table shows the percent of total participants attending the first and second rounds of regional assemblies in 1995. It also indicates the median income of the (employed) participants interviewed in each region, for the most part showing a correlation between my loose socioeconomic groupings and the profile of participants that attended assemblies in each region. The median income of Group I is greater than that of Group II, which is, in turn, greater than that of Group III.9 One might expect that since the budget regions varied tremendously in size, ranging from 19,000 inhabitants to 257,000, assembly size would be a function of the population of the region each assembly represents. But as the first two columns in Table 6.2 show, this was

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Table 6.2

Integrating the Excluded

City Population, Participation in 1995 Regional Assemblies, and Median Income of Participants Surveyed, by Socioeconomic Groupings of Regions (percent) Region as Percent of City Populationa

Group I Average (mostly middle class) Centro Sul Noroeste Cristal Group II Average (mixed) Ilhas/Humaitá Leste Norte Partenon Glória Centro-Sul Extremo Sul Eixo da Baltazar Group III Average (mostly poor) Lomba Nordeste Restinga Cruzeiro Total

Region as Percent of Regional Assembliesb

Participant Median Incomeb

37 23 4 9 2

19 4 9 3 2

380 380 345 380 400

51 4 8 7 10 3 8 1 7

48 3 4 5 7 3 12 7 8

254 288 235 230 300 250 300 300 300

12 3 2 3 5 100

33 14 7 7 5 100

197 200 150 200 200 280

a. From Porto Alegre Municipal Administration. b. From survey of participants, 1995.

not the case. The most striking example is the Centro region, which contained over 20 percent of the city population but only 4 percent of the total participants. Although one of the largest percentages of participants was from a fairly large region—Centro Sul, with over 100,000 inhabitants—other large regions, such as Partenon and Leste (each in the 100,000 range), did not have so many assembly members. At the same time, smaller regions such as Sul and Lomba do Pinheiro (with 53,000 and 36,000 inhabitants respectively) held some of the biggest assemblies in 1995. As a whole, therefore, population size did not seem to have much to do with the size of the assemblies. In the relationship between participation and socioeconomic grouping, there is a strong correlation, although not in the direction

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expected by those who predict that the better-off will participate more. Although regions in the poorest category represented only 12 percent of the city’s inhabitants, they accounted for almost a third of the 1995 assembly participants. The opposite is true of the Group I regions: they made up 37 percent of the city’s population, but only 19 percent of the assembly participants. Once again, these data confirm the idea that the wealthy did not tend to participate more than the poor in the assemblies. The assemblies, these data suggest, were primarily a space for the poor to make demands; better-off individuals either had fewer demands to make, or they made them through other forums. The implication of all this is that it was the middle class and not the poor that had minority status in the budget assemblies, particularly at the regional level, where most of the activity took place. Where the distribution of resources among regions was concerned, the fact that the middle-class regions largely present lower numbers of participants was irrelevant, since the criteria system used by the Municipal Budget Council did not consider assembly size in the calculation of resource distribution. But within regions, especially mixed ones, where both middle-class and poor neighborhoods coexisted (Group II), the minority middle-class participants often had a hard time getting their demands met. The most extreme example occurred in the Eixo da Baltazar region, which until 1995 was roughly divided between the middleclass neighborhoods in the western half and the poor neighborhoods in the eastern half. Over the years, a group of middle-class residents began to mobilize, seeking not only to obtain less “basic” neighborhood benefits (such as parks and cultural services) but also to solve a serious flooding problem affecting the western section of the region. Consistently, however, the eastern neighborhoods were able to elect a majority of delegates in the Regional Budget Forum. Arguing that the better-off neighborhoods had historically benefited at their expense, the leadership of the eastern neighborhoods refused to put the demands of the western half on the priority lists. After years of attempting to mediate the dispute, and in the context of escalating conflict (the western group eventually brought the problem to the City Assembly), the Municipal Budget Council decided to divide the region into two, creating the Noroeste region in 1995. Thus the regional assemblies remained primarily a space of mobilization by the poor, but there were a number of more subtle ways in which economic privilege did come into play in the regional decisionmaking process. In the first place, although those with household incomes under $500 represented a substantial majority in the regional

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assemblies (60 percent of participants interviewed), the “very poor”— or those with household incomes up to $100 a month—were a small minority (11 percent). In many neighborhoods, the “not-so-poor” poor residents were the ones who “did the work” of obtaining collective goods, and the poorest (for whom that work involved a greater marginal cost) were more likely to “free ride.” Where this occurred, this inequality in participation did not lead to material disadvantages for the very poor, who still reaped the collective benefits of a paved street or a new storm drain system. Unfortunately, however, the very poor often lived in different neighborhoods than the “not-so-poor” poor. Since the very poor represented only a minority of participants at the regional level, it was often difficult for their neighborhoods to be listened to by the regional forums, because most of the forums determined investment distribution largely by the proportional voting power that each neighborhood or settlement could muster. A second way that socioeconomic inequality affected participation in favor of better-off participants appeared in differences between ordinary participants and those who were elected to sit as delegates in the regional and thematic forums and as councillors in the Municipal Budget Councils. Thirty-five percent of respondents said that they had at some point been elected to one of the budget forums or to a municipal council. These participants did have significantly higher socioeconomic status than the others. Both the income and the education levels of this group were significantly higher (at the 1 percent level) than those who had never been elected. Table 6.3 shows the data for monthly household income of those elected as regional budget delegate or municipal budget councillor and those who were never elected. With respect to education, 20 percent of those elected had received some university-level education, compared to 12 percent of those never elected. Only 3 percent of those elected had received no formal schooling, compared to 8 percent of those never elected. This suggests that better-off individuals were more likely to make the more-time-consuming commitment to attending regular year-round meetings than were those with lower incomes and lower education levels. This was probably a factor of the amount of flexible time of such individuals as well as of their self-confidence, since both year-round forums dealt with much complex information and made hard decisions about resource distribution. As a whole, then, this section has painted a complex picture of how socioeconomic status and participation interacted in the participatory budget process. In general, and contrary to expectations, better-off and better-educated people were in the minority. The policy clearly attracted poor people from poor neighborhoods that lacked

Who Participates?

Table 6.3

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Household Income of Elected and Not-Elected Regional Budget Participants (percent)

Electeda $0 to $100 $101 to $300 $301 to $500 More than $500 Total

6 26 22 47 100

Not-Elected 11 37 18 34 100

Total Budget Participants 9 33 19 38 100

Notes: Percent includes only informants who responded to both questions. a. Those elected Regional Budget Delegate or Municipal Budget Councilor.

basic infrastructure. Although the very poor participated at a lower rate than the “not-so-poor” poor, the former still joined in numbers compatible with their proportion of the population. The middle class, in contrast, had only a weak voice in the regional assemblies. They more often participated in the thematic assemblies, discussing broad policy issues rather than specific neighborhood investments. Those who were elected to the Municipal Budget Council and to the Regional Budget Forums tended to have higher socioeconomic status than the rank-and-file participants, but were still on average poorer than the population as a whole.

Gender Profile Whereas the socioeconomic profile of participants challenged expectations that participation would be dominated by middle-class groups, the gender profile conformed much more closely to the literature. As noted, in Latin American cities, women typically take part in everyday, neighborhood-level activities, but are less likely to take on participatory roles that require them to regularly leave the neighborhood, to speak in public, or to make decisions that require more self-confidence and status. This portrait was confirmed by the survey results. Nearly one-half of those attending the second-round assemblies were women—47 percent of those surveyed—suggesting that at this basic level, women participated nearly in parity with men. This percentage holds in both the regional assemblies and the thematic assemblies. There was also no significant difference between men’s and women’s participation in the three socioeconomic-region groups

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defined in the last section or with respect to education or income levels. As could be predicted, however, stronger differences between men’s and women’s participation appeared in the subset of those elected to the various year-round forums of the participatory budget. Whereas 58 percent of men interviewed said they had been elected at least once to the regional and thematic forums or to the Municipal Budget Council, only 41 percent of women had been elected. In 1994, the official list of all budget delegates was 36 percent women. Even fewer women had been elected to the Municipal Budget Council. In 1994, only twenty-three (or 27 percent) of the eighty-four council members (both voting and alternates) were women. One of the reasons for this limited participation at the upper levels in the process may have been that those women who did get more involved in public activism did not prioritize the participatory budget as a space for organizing. One of the issues of most specific interest to women, day care, was discussed in another, highly prestigious elected forum, the Conselho Tutelar (Guardianship Council), which was predominately made up of women. In general, the women participants I interviewed did not seem to think there were any needs specific to women that could be addressed through the budget forums. They did not identify street paving, sewage, health, education, transportation, and the like as gendered issues. Attempts to get women more involved in the participatory budget were few, with virtually no effort on the part of the municipal administration. Indeed, whereas other PT administrations (such as the 1989–1993 São Paulo and Santo André administrations) developed special programs and departments geared toward women’s issues, in Porto Alegre, women’s concerns were the domain of one tiny office with one staff member, who could do little more than organize a few yearly seminars and design an occasional pamphlet. No official attempt was made to work with women in the budget forums. All in all, the role women played in the participatory budget was therefore prototypical. They were broadly present at the general assemblies, but less likely than men to be elected to positions that required regular trips to assemblies outside their neighborhood and that had the decisionmaking status. This was not only a result of discrimination against women by others and of women’s own concerns about free time or leaving their neighborhoods. All too often, at the regional forum meetings I observed, women bashfully declared that they were not capable of taking on roles, such as coordinator, special representative to some assembly, or municipal council member. Women elected to the executive committees of the Regional Budget

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Forums or other organizations more often acted as secretaries—taking notes during the assemblies, maintaining the files, and conducting much of the routine, administrative work of the organizations— and less often participated vocally in the discussions taking place. With some significant exceptions, it was clear that the problem of selfconfidence was endemic among women participating in the budget assemblies, especially poor women, who would have likely benefited from targeted programs by either nongovernmental organizations or the administration in improving their participatory skills. Unfortunately, during the period that I was conducting my research, no such programs existed.

Organizational History In addition to socioeconomic and gender differences, the literature on how inequality affects participation also suggests that those who belong to organized civic groups will be the first to participate and are likely to continue dominating participatory forums over time. In Porto Alegre, as has already been discussed, well-organized “combative” neighborhood associations represented only a minority of neighborhoods (Baierle, 1993:293–300). Table 6.4 presents data allowing us to compare assembly attendance among regions over a number of years, using the existence of regionwide neighborhood coalitions before 1989 as a rough proxy for “combativeness.” The first group, labeled “Combative,” includes those regions that had organized regional multineighborhood coalitions prior to the PT administration. The second category, “Not Combative,” includes those regions that had not organized such networks by the time the PT came to power, although there might have been a few isolated organizations dispersed through them. The regions within each category vary with respect to the amount of experience neighborhoods had with combative organizing. But most observers of social movements in the city would agree that the first group of regions were the major actors in the mobilization and protest movements of the late 1970s and 1980s. Assembly attendance data are presented in percentage form, summing the participants in the two rounds of meetings for each year. The year 1991 has been eliminated because during that year a number of regions held joint assemblies, making the data more difficult to analyze. What we can see from this table is that over time, the historically combative regions lost some of their dominance in the total assembly size and the historically less organized regions gained space. Indeed,

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Percentage of Total Participants Attending Regional Assemblies, by Pre-1989 Organization Categories

Combativea Cruzeiro Norte Glória Lomba Leste Partenon Not Combativea Ilhas Humaitá Nordeste Restinga Cristal Centro Sul Extremo Sul Centro Sul Eixo da Baltazar

1990

1992

1993

1994

1995

60 19 9 3 7 16 8 40 10 2 3 4 2 10 4 1 1 3

44 4 8 4 7 7 14 56 2 2 4 5 6 8 9 6 6 7

32 6 4 3 6 7 7 67 3 4 12 3 3 15 8 7 6 7

38 5 4 5 7 6 11 62 1 4 7 10 4 13 7 3 6 7

38 5 5 3 14 4 7 62 3b —b 7 7 2 12 7 4 9 8c

Notes: Bold figures show assemblies with 8 percent or over of the year’s total assembly population. a. This row represents averages of the region in each category. b. In 1995, Ilhas and Humanitá joined together. c. In 1995, Eixo da Baltazar split into two regions, with the creation of Noroeste.

after 1990, the number of people mobilized by the three oldest regional movements, Cruzeiro, Norte, and Glória, diminished significantly. The Partenon Popular Council, one of the more recently organized regional groups, was best able to maintain high numbers over a sustained period of time. Lomba do Pinheiro, a region with an older combative movement that had been largely deactivated by the time the PT came to office, was reinvigorated over the period. Despite these exceptions, as a whole, the relative participation of the combative regions declined dramatically over the years, and the regions with no combative history replaced them as the dominant force in the participatory budget. By 1995, a number of very impoverished regions of the city that had no experience with mass mobilization in the 1980s—such as the Nordeste, Extremo Sul, and Eixo da Baltazar regions—had developed the capacity to mobilize residents in large numbers, bringing hundreds together for each assembly. What is interesting, furthermore, is that many of the sixteen regions had large percentages in one or two years, but only two of the

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regions—Partenon and Centro Sul—had consistently large assemblies every year. This suggests that assembly size was not correlated with the organizational history of each region prior to the budget policy, or in fact with any stable factor such as socioeconomic level or scarcity of infrastructure. Large assemblies were usually the result of intense political disputes among participants within the region in a certain year, rather than of broader characteristics of the region’s population. Problems of inequalities among regions were attenuated in part by the system for distributing budget revenues, discussed in Chapter 4. This system allocated resources solely on the basis of population size and deficiency of infrastructure, so that the capacity to mobilize large assemblies had no effect on the total amount of funding each region received. Within regions, however, neighborhoods had to elect as many delegates as possible—this being a function of the number of people mobilized at the large assemblies—to ensure that their demands would receive a large number of votes and therefore be placed high on the priority lists sent to the Municipal Budget Council. Where neighborhoods began to compete intensely for investments, two or three neighborhoods would often dominate the large regionwide assemblies. The problems of organizational inequalities—where those more capable of mobilizing people dominated the participatory process—thus occurred with more intensity within regions than among them. This intraregional process is complex, especially since comparative assembly data such as presented in Table 6.4 are not available at the neighborhood level. A more qualitative examination is necessary. The following chapters carry out such an examination by looking indepth at the evolution of the participatory budget within two focus regions, Glória and Extremo Sul. I will show that, in both regions, a few neighborhoods dominated the budget process in the early years, but as the years passed, other neighborhoods began to mobilize. By 1994 and 1995, when I conducted my research, the neighborhoods that were filling the assemblies and winning investments were not the same ones as in 1989 and 1990. All these findings contradict the expectations of theorists and policymakers who assume that participatory spaces will inevitably be dominated by a minority of strongly organized groups and by people who have the most experience with civic action. Both among regions and within them, regions and neighborhoods that had been historically weak with respect to popular mobilizing developed the capacity to organize residents and thereby to reap the benefits of the budget policy. The result was that innumerable individuals who had never

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participated in social movements or civic groups began to gain experience with collective action in the context of the budget policy. By 1995, at least 15,000 people were participating each year, many more than had ever been active in the city’s protest movements of the past.

Conclusions Why did the budget policy, so contrary to expectations, engage people for whom the “costs” of participation should have been prohibitively high? The budget assemblies were dominated by Porto Alegre’s poor residents, not by the middle class. They were also the terrain of many neighborhood organizations that emerged only after the policy began. Certain groups did participate less than others: women were underrepresented in elected forums. And the “very poor” living in squatter settlements and shantytowns were less well represented than the “not-so-poor” poor living in impoverished, but somewhat betteroff, working-class neighborhoods. But as a whole, the policy did not create the sort of “participatory elite” that the authors cited earlier expect. Instead, it actually stimulated the emergence of broad-based citizen participation that was much more egalitarian and widespread than most experiences of participatory governing. Many theorists of direct democracy have suggested that political and economic equality are necessary prerequisites to participation. That is, unless people have equal conditions to participate, the more powerful will dominate participatory forums, just as they do in other political forms. Yet, as Brazilian authors Jacobi and Nunes (1981:187) note, this creates an impossible hurdle for practical experiments in participatory democracy that occur under conditions where such equality does not exist. The Porto Alegre experience, although certainly not transferable to every policy or decisionmaking arena, can be useful for better understanding “how to get there from here.” In the following chapters, I will explore how more-equal conditions were reached through the process of participation itself rather than prior to that participation.

Notes 1. It should be noted that Olson does incorporate the idea of “social incentives” such as social status and social acceptance (rather than purely economic ones) into his analysis. These are effective incentives, however, only in groups where face-to-face contact is possible (Olson, 1965:61–65). 2. For a philosophical discussion of the need for “economic democracy,”

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see Dahl (1985). Other discussions within democratic theory pointing to problems posed to participation by economic differences are Barber (1984:257); Cohen and Rogers (1983); Held (1987:262); and Young (1990: 94). 3. Other examinations of the inequality problem in the United States and other advanced industrial countries are Grundy and Heberalein (1984); Hutcheson (1984); Jackson and Shade (1973); Sandercock (1978); Shearer (1984). 4. This estimate is conservative, however, since household size is typically larger for lower-income families. 5. Transferring these dollar figures into a “standard of living” measure understandable to a North American reader is a difficult task. One should note, briefly, that the dollar was strongly undervalued at the time of the study: the cost of living in Brazil was in many respects comparable to the United States, except perhaps for basic food products. 6. If the average household size is 3.3 persons, these households earn on average less than one minimum salary (U.S.$100 at the time of the survey) per resident. 7. A Chi Square test comparing the regional and thematic assemblies was significant at the 1 percent level for both household income and education. 8. An analysis of socioeconomic status among budget participants, based on a 1998 survey, was carried out by Baiocci (2000), who reached similar conclusions. Baiocci’s extensive statistical analysis also confirms my conclusions that participation promoted the organization of civic groups. 9. Note that the median income here is calculated for individuals who had an income over zero. It thereby excludes a full 17 percent of the participants. This percentage does not vary significantly by region.

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Mobilizing Neighborhoods

Before the participatory movement, São Caetano was a dead place . . . being a dead place, how was the prefeitura going to find out about us? . . . São Caetano, Santa Monica, all these places were at mercy of the administration. —Elza, Extremo Sul resident

Most city officials promoting participatory policies are faced with halfempty meeting halls and a difficult struggle to engage politically alienated people in government decisionmaking. But in Porto Alegre, within a couple of years after the budget policy began, thousands of people were participating in the regional budget assemblies. In 1991, about 3,000 people participated in the big second-round regional assemblies. The following year this number doubled. By 1995, with the formalization of intermediary assemblies at the neighborhood level, about 14,000 people signed their names on the rolls. Furthermore, as Chapter 6 showed, this participation brought neighborhoods and regions that historically had not been mobilized into the realm of collective action. The majority were poor rather than middle class. This chapter focuses on why this tremendous growth in participation by poor residents took place. The following section examines the participatory budget policy in light of some theories of collective action, arguing that it integrated such large numbers of people, mostly from poor neighborhoods, because it effectively reduced the costs and increased the perceived benefits of participation in several ways. The chapter then goes on to examine this process empirically through case studies of two different regions of the city, where, over the years that the budget policy was in place, new neighborhood groups began to replace those that had been initially organized as the principal winners of capital improvements.

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Motives to Mobilize What causes people to engage in collective action at some times and in some places, and not at other times and in other places? Many of the dominant theories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries— particularly those influenced by Marxism—focus on the structural conditions, especially material conditions, that drive people to rebel. The problem with these theories is that, according to empirical evidence, some groups engage in collective action at the same time that others living under the same or even worse material conditions do not. People do not necessarily mobilize when their material conditions are worsening. The ability of organizations to attract members usually has to do with political conditions and organizational capabilities (Jenkins, 1983; McCarthy and Zald, 1977; Tilly, 1978:60–62). What I will refer to here as “mobilization” is the process of joining up, where people who are not previously engaged in public life or political activity decide to become members of civic groups, join protests, or attend public assemblies. Mobilization is a multilevel process: within a particular territorial or social group, some people make stronger commitments, becoming “active” participants who spend hours each week or each day working for the cause. Others become “token” participants, willing to attend a meeting once in a while and to vote along with their leaders, but unwilling to participate on a regular basis (Oliver, 1984). In Chapter 6, I suggested that the decision to join up at any level of commitment is related to how individuals calculate the “costs” and the “benefits” of engaging in collective action. This calculation is far from a narrow reckoning of material costs and benefits. In determining whether to act, people take into account not only material factors but also their sense of social solidarity, their moral beliefs, the pressures they feel to conform socially, their trust in their neighbors, their sense of self-confidence. Those factors vary among individuals within groups because of differences in social status as well as in beliefs, values, and personality traits. But they also tend to vary for groups as wholes, since certain groups face higher costs in all these realms. When the costs of collective action diminish or the probability that action will bring meaningful benefits increases for certain groups, more members are likely to mobilize. What causes this cost-benefit relation to shift, leading those who are typically less active in public life to begin to form civic organizations or to join social movements? Some scholars have focused on how successful organizations acquire financial resources and develop political skills, often from sources outside the groups they represent

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(Jenkins, 1983; McCarthy and Zald, 1977; Tilly, 1978:52–97). When it is the poor who are mobilizing, outsiders play a particularly important role, because without the input of “external agents,” the costs of collective action are often too high. Those who have more resources (such as disaffected elites that sympathize with a cause or organized groups seeking to build up potential allies) can provide the financial help and the technical skills that make it possible for the poor to mobilize. Other scholars focus on changes in specific political conditions that provide “windows of opportunity” for civic organizations to succeed at certain moments in time (Tilly, 1978:98–142; Tarrow, 1994). “Social movements form when ordinary citizens, sometimes encouraged by leaders, respond to changes in opportunities that lower the costs of collective action, reveal potential allies and show where elites and authorities are vulnerable” (Tarrow, 1994:18). As Tilly (1978) argues, actual cases of collective action are usually a result of both factors, that is, the “structure of political opportunity” certain groups face and the capacity of specific members of those groups to organize effectively—usually with outside help—to take advantage of political opportunities. The upsurge of urban neighborhood movements in Brazil in the late 1970s and early 1980s is an example of both factors occurring simultaneously. As Jacobi (1989) argues for the São Paulo case, the blooming of popular organizing and protest could not be explained as simply the result of particularly harsh material conditions. It came out of an awareness that the military regime was weakening and that political “liberalization” provided new possibilities for activism. But particular neighborhoods were better able to take advantage of this window of opportunity than others because they gained support from outside “agents,” such as the progressive Catholic church, student groups, and radical political activists. Like the North American theorists cited above, Jacobi thus sees the capacity of the São Paulo movements to organize as the result of two factors: (1) an “enabling environment” of political conditions that encouraged people to organize, and (2) the presence of “external agents” who gave practical assistance to people for whom the costs of organizing were particularly high. Looking a bit deeper into the mobilization process, Mellucci (1989:34) reminds us that collective action does not occur unless people recognize that they belong to a collectivity that can act productively. That is, people must have a sense of “political efficacy” (Pateman, 1970) or of “civic competence” (Almond and Verba, 1965). Political efficacy is a part of what I more generally called “self-

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confidence” in Chapter 6 and refers to the belief individuals have that government is likely to be responsive to them. Disadvantaged groups typically lack a sense of political efficacy (Agger, 1979:24; Almond and Verba, 1965:163–164). But studies have shown that where government is more responsive to poor citizens, more people have a high sense of political efficacy (Almond and Verba, 1965:166–167; Heskin, 1983:228) That is, although the sense of selfconfidence is influenced by group membership, in an “enabling environment,” self-confidence will increase even for historically disadvantaged groups. Yet the question remains: How do those who have historically been excluded from political decisionmaking—who have a history of real political inefficacy—begin to perceive that they can indeed change things through collective action? Explaining collective action requires explaining not only how the costs and benefits of participation change but also how people come to recognize those changes as affecting their capacity to act collectively. This chapter will show that this recognition process occurred as a result of the effective functioning of the budget policy itself. Tarrow argues that “early risers” are the ones who initiate cycles of mobilization: “The process of diffusion . . . results when groups make gains that invite others to seek similar outcomes” (1994:24). In Porto Alegre, the gains made by those historically mobilized neighborhoods and regions that participated in the first years had a “demonstration effect” that helped poor people recognize that the benefits of participation were forthcoming. At the same time, aspects of the policy diminished the costs of collective action. Some theorists of direct democracy have argued that governments must make concerted efforts to reduce the costs of participation—through day-care programs, education projects, and income redistribution itself—so that the poor, women, and the historically unorganized have a greater ability to join in (Cohen and Rogers, 1983:156). The Porto Alegre administration did not make such efforts at material cost reduction.1 But it did encourage neighborhood and regionwide organization through its corps of community organizers. The state thus acted as an “external agent,” doing the work that church activists, lawyers, students, and other radicals have always done to help neighborhood movements mobilize in Brazil. A third factor favoring mobilization had to do with the nature of the issue involved. Not only did the participatory budget provide rewards to those who participated, but also it provided rewards in areas that were particularly meaningful for the residents of poor neighborhoods. The benefits that the policy provided corresponded to the perceived needs that most poor people had

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already articulated as their own. The following sections will examine how each of these factors promoted the mobilization of poor, previously unorganized neighborhood groups in two regions of the city.

Emerging Neighborhood Participation in Two Regions The Extremo Sul Region: Mobilizing Neighborhoods In the past, Porto Alegre’s Extremo Sul, a beautiful region of green hills bordering the Guaíba River, was known best for the riverside settlement of Belém Novo, the city’s most accessible waterside resort until the mid–twentieth century. In the old days, Belém Novo was packed with the fancy vacation homes of Porto Alegre’s high society. But when paved highways made travel easy to nearby ocean beaches, the area lost its importance as a vacation spot. Eventually bathing became altogether impossible there, as Porto Alegre’s rapid growth during the 1960s and 1970s polluted the Guaíba as far as the next municipality. The region was largely ignored by city officials for many years, with development efforts being directed toward the northern “industrial zone.” But by the early 1980s, the area’s population began to grow. In the Extremo Sul, lower-middle-class people who could not afford land elsewhere could buy a nice-sized lot in a loteamento clandestino (clandestine subdivision). Belém Novo, Lami (another waterside settlement), and Ponta Grossa became lower-middle-class suburbs for people who worked in the city—an hour and a half away by bus. Along the region’s dirt roads, dozens of impoverished settlements also appeared where people collected who were too poor to make it even in the in-town squatter settlements. By the 1990s, about 24,000 people were living in the region. Figure 7.1 is a map of the region, identifying some of the larger settlements.2 Wide-scale community organizing in the Extremo Sul was virtually nonexistent prior to the PT administration. Most of the official neighborhood associations were dominated by a few better-off residents with clientelist ties to political parties, especially the PDT. Most of the settlements in the region either had no associations at all, or the existing associations were closed to the participation of residents in general. A few individuals dispersed through the region attempted to press public officials for investment, but to little avail. Except for older parts of Belém Novo, none of the region’s settlements had basic sanitation, storm drainage, or pavement infrastructure. Occasionally,

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Figure 7.1

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Map of the Extremo Sul region

This map previously appeared in Abers (1993a:519), © Sage Publications, and is reprinted here with permission.

candidates would travel through the region, promising to bring the much needed infrastructure if elected, but the promises were rarely fulfilled. In an effort to provide better services to the south of the city, in its first year in office the PT administration created a Centro Administrativo Regional (District Administrative Center—CAR) in Restinga, a more densely populated district adjacent to the Extremo Sul. The CAR staff was faced with the difficult task of making contact with neighborhood leaders in the Extremo Sul and of promoting the participatory budget policy. The task was daunting in such a large, sparsely populated district, and the administration’s initial financial difficulties made things more complicated. Without even an automobile in the first year to travel through the district, the only way to call people to the budget assemblies initially was a mailing list of formally established neighborhood associations. Association leaders were invited to the first regional budget assembly in Belém Novo in 1990. At the very poorly attended meeting, elections were held for the Extremo Sul representatives in the Municipal Budget Council. Two wealthy men, one of whom owned most of the land around Lami and dominated the neighborhood association there, and the other, an aspiring politician who a few years later would be elected to the City Assembly by the PDT, were elected. Making little effort to meet with Extremo Sul residents, these

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councillors formulated a very long and unordered list of demands. Since the PT administration had few funds for capital improvements that year, most of the demands would be unmet. The following year, the annual districtwide assembly drew eighty people, still largely from the Belém Novo area. The new budget councillors elected were a PT militant active in the progressive Catholic church and a small-time politician who worked for a conservative state congressman. To collect information on the district’s needs, they traveled through the district talking to residents. Nevertheless, only one general assembly to discuss district priorities took place. The first major investment of the new administration in the Extremo Sul district—the paving of Chapeu do Sol Road—resulted from this process. “If there had been any real participation,” one neighborhood leader I interviewed remarked, “that road would never have been voted on, because very few people live there” (Pedrosa). Yet the Chapeu do Sol project had an important demonstration effect. As the CAR director noted, “Even though it wasn’t an important project from a technical perspective, it was still very important because it showed that through the participatory budget, things actually happen.” Many Extremo Sul residents found out about the participatory budget policy after contacting the CAR (or some other municipal agency) to find out why the city was paving Chapeu do Sol Road and to request similar investment in their neighborhoods. The response would invariably be an explanation of the participatory budget process: “If you want such investment in your neighborhood, you need to organize and take part in next year’s budget assemblies.” In addition to advising those with questions about district investments to get involved, the CAR staff went out into the district—especially after 1991, when CAR obtained an automobile—and sought out potential neighborhood organizers. One major “discovery” in 1992 was Senhor Azevedo, an extremely energetic retired railroad worker living in Ponta Grossa, who had been a militant of the underground Communist Party during the dictatorship. Identifying him as a “potential leader,” the CAR director encouraged him to found a neighborhood association. Another neighborhood, Lageado—which was suffering from lack of potable water—also began to mobilize after CAR officials encouraged residents to join the budget assemblies. In response to these efforts, in 1992 mobilizing for the big district budget assemblies in the Extremo Sul intensified: 569 people attended the second-round assembly, mostly from Lageado and Ponta Grossa neighborhoods. Azevedo and a Lageado resident were elected to the Municipal Budget Council, and regular assemblies of delegates were scheduled for the first time. Not surprisingly, the district’s official priorities for that year were the paving of Ponta Grossa Road and the

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provision of potable water for Lageado. Large numbers had begun to participate for the first time, but still mostly from these two neighborhoods. In the following years, however, as the first investments started to be implemented, other neighborhoods began to mobilize. In my interviews with participants from Belém Novo, Lami, São Caetano, Jardim Veronese, and Chapeu do Sol, I heard story after story of how they saw the administration investing elsewhere and how that brought them into contact with administration officials who then encouraged them to take part in the budget assemblies. Mobilization and revitalized neighborhood organizations meant that by 1993, the competition for investments in the Extremo Sul was no longer limited to Ponta Grossa and Lageado. Over the years, different groups were able to mobilize a majority and to obtain major investments in their parts of the district: a health post in Lami; pavement in Ponta Grossa, Chapeu do Sol, São Caetano, Belém Novo, and Lageado; a resettlement project for squatters on the river’s edge in Belém Novo; storm drainage and sewer projects dispersed throughout the district; new and more frequent bus lines all the way to Lami and São Caetano. For the first time ever in this distant periphery of the city, major investments were being made, and each one corresponded to a neighborhood organizing effort. It is clear that such mobilization occurred only because the administration was able to convince skeptical residents that participation would actually bring them returns. “I know people who today are budget delegates who used to say, ‘[Participating] is not worth the trouble. Where have you ever seen the people decide anything?’ And today they are participating and believing” (Solange). The regular appearance of administration staff at meetings and their attention to smaller demands outside of the participatory budget (such as road maintenance) gave further credibility to the participatory process. The fact that upper-echelon administration personnel would go all the way to the Extremo Sul district and meet with residents carried a lot of weight. In my interviews, statements like the following were common: “Before, we never had so much proximity. If you wanted to talk to a Secretary, there was a huge bureaucratic procedure. Today it is easy. The administration even comes to the community!” (Solange) The Glória Region: Restructuring a Combative Neighborhood Movement Compared to the Extremo Sul region, the Glória region of Porto Alegre was more typical of the poor hillside settlements that appear

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in the literature on Brazilian neighborhood movements. Much of this region of about 42,000 inhabitants was settled over the course of 1970s and 1980s. The northernmost tip of the region, closest to the city center, was a middle-class neighborhood, which had received most of its basic capital investments decades before the PT came to office. But the majority of the region’s area consisted of poor loteamentos clandestinos and hillside squatter settlements lining the slopes bordering Oscar Pereira Road, a major artery connecting the southern part of the city to the downtown. Several of these settlements are shown in Figure 7.2, a map of the Glória region. Chapter 2 described the process through which a coalition of combative neighborhood organizations emerged in the Glória region, creating one of the city’s strongest social movements in the 1980s. When the PT came to office, the Conselho Popular da Grande Glória (Greater Glória Popular Council) was the center of neighborhood-based action in the region. Since it was an open organization that allowed the participation of any neighborhood group and since its leaders were seen as sympathetic to the governing party, the new administration initially recognized the conselho as the legitimate space within which regional investment priorities would be determined. In the beginning, the dominance of the conselho in the budget process

Figure 7.2

Map of the Glória region

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favored the demands of those neighborhoods that had long been active in it, at the expense of those neighborhoods that were unorganized or that were “represented” only by nonparticipatory, clientelist associations. However, new people, when they saw that budget policy rewarded those who participated in the conselho, mobilized their neighborhoods and joined up, changing the balance of power within this “historic” movement organization. This process was not an immediate one, however; first the conselho had to be seen as an effective forum of real decisionmaking. Over time, the credibility of the administration solidified, as it systematically built the projects prioritized by the conselho popular, beginning in 1990 with the pavement of Barcellos Road, in one of the poorest areas of the region. This in turn bolstered the credibility of the conselho itself. “When people saw that the first project was beginning, they realized that the Conselho really had force, and everyone came to be a part of it” (Marcos). As in the Extremo Sul, a “demonstration effect” led a number of new groups to join the conselho and seek benefits for their neighborhoods. Many of them were disaffected residents who had long been excluded from “closed” and clientelistic associations in their neighborhoods. Seeing the participatory budget as a rewarding forum of action, they began to attend the weekly conselho meetings. In other cases, leaders that had historically sought gains through clientelism rather than protest joined the conselho as well, and to the extent that they were able to mobilize residents, they were also able to obtain investments for their neighborhoods.3 Although the mobilization of new groups occurred in a number of neighborhoods in Glória, one neighborhood’s experience was particularly important because it ultimately led to a redefinition of the balance of power within the conselho popular. A settlement occupied mostly by state policemen, Linha do Tiro, expanded in the late 1980s on state-owned land adjacent to a penitentiary, in an area considered to be an “open fire” zone. 4 The area, which lay on the border between the Glória and the Partenon regions, had three formal associations, dominated by three small groups of residents. In 1992, two members of one of these associations began to participate in the conselho popular for the first time, in an effort to obtain benefits through the participatory budget. They were able to convince the Glória budget delegates that paving part of Linha do Tiro Road should be listed high among the region’s priorities that year. But the association failed to mobilize people for more than a few conselho meetings, and eventually the conselho cut the project from its list of priorities “for lack of participation.” In 1994, a group of residents who had not taken part

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in these initial efforts and who were not members of any of the formal neighborhood associations decided that only through massive mobilization in the conselho would they be able to gain investments for their region. In a large group, they attended the regional budget assemblies in an effort to elect enough delegates to pass their demands through the budget forum. The initial reaction to this mobilization in the conselho was quite negative. Some members who had been participating for years to obtain benefits for their neighborhoods accused the Linha do Tiro activists of inchaço—“swelling” the assembly in order to win delegates without intending to participate in the conselho regularly. The Linha do Tiro residents swore that they would continue participating en masse all year-round, promising publicly that they would not seek benefits just for their own neighborhood but for the region as a whole. As a first sign of their goodwill, they agreed to name fewer delegates than they were proportionately entitled to. By the following year, the Linha do Tiro residents had so effectively fulfilled their promise that several of them had been elected to the conselho’s executive committee. Many of the old guard in the conselho were very happy to have a new group of people willing to dedicate time and energy to the conselho’s activities. As one longtime activist remarked, “Their participation breathed new life into the Conselho” (Ivan). Indeed, for much of the period that I was conducting participant observation in Glória, Linha do Tiro had actually become the central force in the conselho, with the weekly meetings of the Executive Committee being held in the house of one Linha do Tiro resident. For them, this intense and systematic participation began as no more than a strategy for ensuring that the neighborhood received capital improvements. But it eventually became something more—a number of them “discovered” neighborhood activism and a commitment to the region as a whole. At the same time that new neighborhood organizations were thus gaining force in the region, some of the neighborhoods that had initiated the region’s popular struggle began to retreat from participation. A list of demands prepared by the conselho in 1987, two years before the PT came to office, gave priority to paving principal roads in the neighborhoods where the conselho’s founders lived. These neighborhoods were indeed the first to obtain pavement investments in the early years of the PT administration. By 1994 (when I began my research), however, most of these “historic” conselho popular activists no longer participated in the budget process and their neighborhoods brought few to the assemblies. Whereas less than a decade earlier, Jardim Renascença had been the locus of organizing in the

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region, in 1994, it sent only six people to the big annual budget assembly. In the same year, Linha do Tiro sent two hundred. One of the explanations for this demobilization was the simple fact that within a few years after the budget policy was in place, the most historically organized neighborhoods received the basic investments that they had been seeking for years: running water, paving of the principal access roads, bus lines, and storm drainage. Many whom I interviewed noted that people were much more difficult to mobilize once basic needs were met, even though there were many other benefits that participation in the budget process could bring, such as more extensive sewer lines, schools and health posts, parks and cultural centers, and the like. Or as one leader noted, “The movement wins a battle and loses the army” (Julião). After getting the infrastructure, it is difficult to organize the community. The Estrada dos Alpes was a very united place, all the residents knew each other. After the infrastructure came, the pavement, that neighborly relationship declined a lot. Many more people came to live on the street. Strangers came from elsewhere and those that participated before don’t participate anymore. (Marcos)

This demobilization did not happen everywhere. Primeiro de Maio neighborhood continued participating in the budget process up to the time of my research, even though it was one of the first to have its initial demands fulfilled. In later years, it continued to seek the pavement of secondary roads, storm drainage and water, parks, and the resolution of land-tenure issues. One of the historic conselho leaders who continued to participate there noted: “There is going to come a time when we will move on to other things. Today our priority is land tenure, because we already have sanitation, pavement, public lighting, and transportation, but we still do not own the property. To the extent that we conquer these things, the priorities change” (Pedro). Other old-time leaders stopped participating for a few years, but then later returned to the budget process. For example, Julião, a Jardim Renascença resident who had been president of the conselho during the first years of the PT administration, left the conselho in mid-1994. In a 1995 interview, he told me that he had tired of the constant burden of dealing with a thousand small issues, of being responsible for all the tiny problems people in the region might have. By 1997, however, after a two-year hiatus, he had returned to the conselho and was elected again as head of the organization and later as municipal budget councillor. Other leaders moved on to broader issues, taking part in other sectoral-based participatory councils (such

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as the health council, the housing council, or the thematic councils of the participatory budget), or even running for political office. The outcome of all this was that in Glória, contrary to expectations that a participatory system would entrench the previously organized in power, the balance of power shifted substantially over the years, as new groups were mobilized and old groups tired out and “took time off.” Ironically, the fact that the participatory budget gave true decisionmaking power to the region’s neighborhoods stimulated new groups to organize, whereas many of the activists that for years had demanded greater decisionmaking control over government resources stopped participating soon after achieving that control. The result seems to have been quite positive, from the perspective of the “inequality problem.” A broad range of neighborhood groups had the chance to participate, making important decisions about their lives, demystifying the workings of government, gaining experience in collective action, and obtaining material benefits for their neighborhoods.

Targeting Basic Needs Clearly, an important factor explaining mobilization around the budget policy was that it involved a type of benefit that was particularly important for poor people: the resolution of basic, immediate, and localized needs. An open question in the 1995 sur vey (see Methodological Appendix) asked participants in the big regional assemblies: “Why did you come to this meeting today?” A full 37 percent of those who responded referred to specific individual, neighborhood, or regional-level demands. Many activists I interviewed complained about this emphasis on short-term, material benefits. Their efforts to gain support for cultural centers, educational programs, or health clinics were often overwhelmed by majority support for more immediate concerns. One neighborhood leader found it much more difficult to rally support for an invisible storm drainage project, a prerequisite for paving his neighborhood, than for the paving itself. His explanation was that people preferred investments that they could see and touch. Others believed that until the more immediate concerns were resolved, issues such as education and culture would be left by the wayside. “You can’t miss what you’ve never had,” explained one community leader from the Extremo Sul. As one budget delegate complained in a questionnaire I distributed: “By the end of the twentieth century, we’ll have a totally paved and stupid city.” Although some criticized these preferences, most participants I

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interviewed stressed that localized capital improvements had a great deal of meaning for neighborhood residents, which went beyond the pleasure of having a newly paved street in front of one’s house. Most obvious were the benefits of running water and sewer systems, which immediately improved health conditions and eliminated dangerous and stinking open sewers from yards and passageways. Storm drainage could also have life-saving impact, eliminating the annual flooding of certain houses in a neighborhood and the potential risk to homes and lives. But paving a street and solving its basic drainage problems also did more than just “get people out of the mud.” It brought public transportation, trash collection, police cars, and ambulances. It made it easy for children to get to school and adults to work, after years of walking long distances to the nearest bus stop. The effect in many cases was to transform dangerous, dark, and difficult-to-reach areas into integrated parts of the city. It is not surprising, therefore, that issues such as pavement and sanitation mobilized people. What is certain is that this mobilization was not a result of political opportunity alone: many opportunities to participate in city decisionmaking were created in Porto Alegre after the PT came to office, but no arena mobilized poor people as much as the regional budget process. Clearly, the nature of the benefit had much to do with who mobilized. This suggests that targeting basic needs can be an excellent way to attract the poor to public forums. Later chapters will explore the extent to which the poor, once they gain experience in those forums, are more likely to take interest in broader policy issues.

State Action and Neighborhood Mobilization The stories of mobilization and demobilization in the Extremo Sul and Glória regions are the first installment in a longer tale about how state action in Porto Alegre influenced the way that civil society was organized and in so doing helped counteract the inequality problem. In 1989, when the participatory budget was initiated, the capacity for neighborhood mobilization was distributed very unevenly through the city. But the more organized neighborhoods and regions did not dominate the process over time. To the contrary, certain characteristics of the budget policy and of the way it was implemented led to a mobilization in neighborhoods where residents had little or no previous experience with collective action. In both the Extremo Sul and the Glória regions, the balance of power among participants changed

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repeatedly, as different neighborhood groups were able to dominate assemblies and vote in their priorities in different years. As we have seen, theorists of collective action point out that people mobilize when there are “windows of opportunities” that lead them to believe that action will be likely to bring results. The creation of a responsive, participatory policy represents a particularly radical change in the “opportunity structure” for collective action. Some people are born activists, struggling for improvements even when the government is not responsive to them. Others may be interested in their communities and in improving their conditions, but are unwilling to go through the long, tortuous, and usually frustrating process of organization and protest. Many of those who began participating in the budget policy fit into this second category. For them, the participatory budget policy was the first time that an “enabling environment” made it easy and rewarding to participate in public life. As one Linha do Tiro resident noted: I was always a sociable person. I knew everyone in the neighborhood. But I never even thought of participating in anything like this, of trying to improve my community. There just was never the opportunity. When the participatory budget came along, I discovered that my familiarity with the neighborhood and with the neighbors could become something more. (Joana)

Yet government responsiveness is not enough to stimulate collective action. As suggested at the beginning of this chapter, a more complex process must occur through which people come to recognize that participation is likely to bring benefits. In Porto Alegre, potential participants did not immediately assume that the policy was effective. Before a broad spectrum of people began to participate in earnest, the administration had to prove its credibility by providing in a fairly short period of time palpable responses to the demands that participants prioritized. In those cases where citizens were not sure that participating would actually bring them the benefits they were hoping for, such mobilization did not occur. For example, in the PT’s second term, the administration changed its policy on investing in loteamentos clandestinos, arguing that the private groups that subdivided the land should be held responsible for building infrastructure. In the Extremo Sul, several such groups were informed that their investment priorities were “technically nonviable” until their land-tenure situations were resolved.5 They were encouraged to give priority to land-tenure legalization in the budget assemblies. But in general, land-tenure projects

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were extremely slow to implement—the issues largely involved the judicial system and were thus outside the control of the administration. As a result, many groups stopped participating once they realized that their infrastructure needs would not be met for a long time. The lesson here is that where the effects of participation are uncertain or far in the future, the mobilization of new civic groups is less likely. The recognition that the opportunity for benefit existed also occurred because the issues being decided in the participatory budget forums were easily comprehensible to those invited to participate. When people do not fully understand the purpose of a policy issue, it is much less likely that they will mobilize. An example demonstrating this problem was the attempt in Porto Alegre to carry out a participatory debate on reformulating the city’s Master Plan at the regional level. The intention was to use the already existing structure of the participatory budget to bring the discussion to neighborhood associations. But initial interest on the part of regional organizations soon petered out, and the lengthy participatory process was dominated by more educated representatives of sectoral organizations, NGOs, and business groups. Although Master Plan regulations—determining the minimum width and maximum incline of roads, the size of lots, and so on— have a dramatic effect on the neighborhood infrastructure issues that budget participants prioritized, participants were not aware of that relevance. The Planning Secretariat responsible for the process was never able to clearly communicate to the residents how the Master Plan was relevant to their neighborhood infrastructure and affected their lives. Planning jargon dominated the discourse, and efforts to translate that jargon into “popular” terms were never carried out on a large scale. In consequence, poor, less-educated people did not grasp the importance of the Master Plan to them. This is not to suggest that the poor can never comprehend complex issues. Much to the contrary, the work of an extension group from the local university’s Urban Planning Program6 showed that it was possible to translate the Master Plan issues into terms more comprehensible to ordinary participants. The group held a seminar with members of the Conselho Popular in the Glória region in which, with some guidance about how physical planning and legal issues affected their region, a vigorous debate took place as participants mapped the region, locating areas that represented particular problems or that were sites of potential improvements. This implies that for the mobilization process to be extended to more-complex policy issues, state

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actors would have to make substantial investments in popular education. Although both its “demonstration effect” and the fact that the budget policy targeted issues that were meaningful to poor neighborhood residents helped people recognize that participation could bring benefits, other factors worked on the cost side of the equation. Primarily, the fact that the budget forums were open to new participants and to providing benefits to them reduced the costs for new participants to join. Had, for example, the Glória Conselho Popular refused to allow new groups to enter, the balance of power within the regional forums would not have changed as easily. That was the case in the Eixo da Baltazar region, discussed in Chapter 6, where better mobilized poor neighborhoods of the region dominated every vote and systematically rejected the demands of a group of less-organized middle-class neighborhoods. Ultimately, intervention by the government and the Municipal Budget Council resolved the problem by creating a separate region for the group of neighborhoods that had been excluded from the first. The government also took other actions (always voted on in the Municipal Budget Council) to ensure the openness of the budget assemblies. Assemblies had to accept all regional residents, whether or not they belonged to an official organization,7 and all elections were proportional, to avoid the exclusion of minority groups. Another effort at reducing the costs of participation was to send government officials to regions and neighborhoods rather than to require participants to travel to the city center. Such efforts were redoubled in the second PT administration, when the new mayor ordered agency heads to increase the amount of time that they spent in the field. The result was that, as we have seen in some of the cited comments, participants were often surprised by the regular appearance of high-level city officials, including the mayor himself, at neighborhood meetings. This proximity made the participation of poor residents less costly, since they no longer had to travel long distances to engage in negotiations with city officials about capital improvements. But perhaps the most important effort by the administration to reduce the costs of participation was the work of community organizers who visited unmobilized neighborhoods, sought out new leaders, helped people organize, and disseminated information about what could be gained through collective action. Whereas in the Glória region, there was a strong movement that could do some of this work on its own, in the Extremo Sul, direct contact with government organizers was absolutely essential for drawing new neighborhoods

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into the process. CAR officials drove around the vast region, discovered potential leaders, convinced people with enough interest to make complaints to the government that they should organize, and helped emerging leaders to call meetings and to coordinate discussions. In Glória, the regional budget coordinator hired by the administration was also highly active, constantly traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood, meeting with local residents, and, in particular, helping new neighborhood groups organize. It should be noted, however, that such work occurred because of the intense personal commitments of the community organizers more than because of a well-articulated administration policy. The government-employed community agents had few resources to help them along and little formal training. They often went to meetings with posters and pamphlets that they had put together themselves. Many of them had been activists in the city’s combative movements in the 1980s, and they did this hard work, mostly taking place at night and on weekends, with the energy of dedicated political activists. This suggests that the mobilization that occurred in Porto Alegre could have been even more intense and widespread or could have more easily expanded to other policy areas (such as the Master Plan) if the government had invested in a better-structured extension program. As is commonly recognized, the state can provide an enabling environment in which collective action is likely to bring benefits. But what is less often noted is that if the inequality problem is to be addressed in the process, particular efforts must be made to ensure that disadvantaged groups are able to recognize and have trust in new opportunities to participate. Only after the administration gained credibility, especially in a poor neighborhood that had been historically abandoned by government, did a “demonstration effect” mobilize people. At the same time, state action can also effect changes on the cost side of the collective action calculation. Many theories suggest that civic organizing should occur outside the realm of the state in order to preserve the autonomy of civic groups. But in Porto Alegre, most participants simply would not have had the resources to participate without the intervention of state actors. State-initiated open forums ensured that corporatist civic groups could not keep new participants from joining. The physical proximity of public officials to poor neighborhoods lowered the costs of time and travel that participants would have to incur. And state-employed organizers actually helped lessorganized civic groups mobilize, conducting the grassroots work that typically “external agents” within civil society do to help poor people engage in collective action. This last effort comes in particular contradiction to the idea that civic groups are best off if they mobilize with-

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out the influence of state actors. After all, the same government that sought to help poor neighborhood groups make demands was also responsible for attending to those demands. One would expect the government to use its influence over newly organized groups to seek to keep them from organizing beyond the confines of state control and to inhibit the making of demands that state actors did not find it in their interests to fulfill. These contradictions will be explored more fully in the coming chapters.

Notes 1. Indeed, huge debates occurred over the years on whether the municipal budget councillors ought to receive financial compensation for their work. The prevailing argument was that such compensation would make the councillors into government employees, increasing the probability of co-optation. 2. Figures 7.1 and 7.2 include only neighborhoods and settlements mentioned in the text. 3. See Chapter 8 for more on the effects of the budget policy on clientelist organizations. 4. The state police, or Military Police (Polícia Militar or Brigada Militar in Rio Grande do Sul), is the very low-paid police force that does “hands on” law enforcement on the street. The better-paid Civil Police deal with investigation and prosecution. According to those who participated in the initial invasion of squatters, the police used it as a firing range even after the first squatters had moved there. 5. For more on conflicts between participants and government over technical feasibility, see Chapter 10. 6. PROPUR (Programa de Planejamento Urbano) is part of the Architecture Faculty of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. 7. This stipulation came in contradiction to UAMPA’s demand that only members of official neighborhood organizations be allowed to participate.

Part Four

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From Clientelism to Cooperation: Strengthening Civic Organizations Before this process began, if your community needed something, you would go after a vereador [City Assembly person]. But you had to be his friend. And you had to make a trade, you know. He’d get the improvement for you, but you had to get votes for him. As they say, you had to be a puxa saco [bootlicker] of the vereador. Now, society simply chooses what it wants. It’s a more democratic process. —Tomas, Extremo Sul resident

Chapter 7 showed that it is possible for a participatory policy to stimulate the mobilization of those who are not previously organized when the costs and benefits of participation are shifted in favor of the poor, the disadvantaged, and the unorganized. In this and the next two chapters I consider how a state-initiated policy can promote longerterm capacities for collective action. The Porto Alegre budget policy did more than just mobilize large numbers of people to take brief expeditions into public life to gain immediate benefits. It also provided a new institutional context in which traditional, clientelist neighborhood associations lost ground to a growing number of more inclusive civic organizations. In Chapter 2, I identified two “ideal types” of neighborhood organizations that uncomfortably coexist (and often overlap) in Brazilian cities. The majority of neighborhood associations easily fit into the “clientelist” category, which has three basic characteristics. First, clientelist associations promote vertical relationships between leaders and followers, rather than horizontal relationships among members or organizations. Second, these associations are based on relationships between people of unequal status, where neighborhood residents are subordinated to neighborhood leaders, who are subor157

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dinated to local bosses, who are in turn subordinated to higher-level politicians. Third, they tend to be co-opted by the state, mobilizing support for those in power in exchange for petty resources dispensed by state agencies. Each of these characteristics serves to disempower civic groups, which have difficulty gaining force in clientelist systems, which discourages them from building ties of cooperation and solidarity and which controls them from above. Although in some regions of Porto Alegre combative organizations developed in the 1980s, at the time the PT came to office, the vast majority of the city’s neighborhood associations fit into the clientelist category. “Combative” neighborhood organizations, in their ideal form, are empowering in all three respects that clientelist ones are disempowering. (1) Rather than promoting vertical relations between leaders and political bosses, combative organizations rely on broad-based horizontal networks of civic action. They involve many neighborhood residents, and coalitions of associations form to increase the power of mobilization. (2) Rather than continuing traditions of inequality, combative associations promote egalitarianism and solidarity. (3) Rather than being co-opted, they generally emerge to protest state actions and insist that all benefits received from the state must come without conditions. This and the next two chapters will explore each of these dichotomies in turn, showing how the participatory budget discouraged clientelist forms of neighborhood associationalism in Porto Alegre, fostering instead a type of organizing that, like “combative” organizations, served to empower civic groups. The budget policy promoted the formation of inclusive neighborhood organizations and networks of such organizations, in which egalitarianism and solidarity could develop and which were relatively resistant to state control. Yet, in contrast to combative organizations, these changes occurred not in the context of protest against the state but of negotiations with it. This chapter will examine in more detail how the budget policy mobilized and promoted horizontal relations of cooperation among people. Chapters 9 and 10 will explore the issues of solidarity and co-optation respectively.

Building Horizontal Ties Authors such as Graziano (1976) and Scott (1972) have noted that within clientelist systems, clients have no reason to build social ties with one another. Relationships “are based on individual ties to a leader rather than on shared characteristics or horizontal ties among follow-

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ers” (Scott, 1972:97, in Graziano, 1976:154). Clientelist neighborhood associations are vertically organized in two respects. On the one hand, they generally involve little participation of neighborhood residents, since their power to bring investment to the neighborhood has less to do with mobilization than with the personal interactions between one or two neighborhood “leaders” and larger-based political groups. On the other hand, they generally do not develop alliances with other neighborhood associations, since the important relationship is a personal one between association and politician, not among associations. Many scholars have suggested that collective action is more difficult to stimulate where clientelism dominates because of this verticality. For Graziano, that is because clientelist systems give incentives to those willing to engage in personal relationships and willing to accept the rules of exchange rather than to those who mobilize collectively to pressure the state. People come to see state benefits as individual gifts rather than rights. Personal influence originates from direct exchanges between leader and subordinates and is reinforced by the feelings of individual obligations generated in the subordinates by such exchanges. . . . With reference to the services on which personal influence rests, the important point is not that these services are performed for a single person, but rather that, however performed, such services never generate group expectations of common rights which the group members would defend, if necessary, by common action. . . . The individual incentives typical of direct exchange make collective-mobilization for long-term objectives infinitely more difficult. (Graziano, 1976:167–168, emphasis in original)

The difficulty of fostering collective action in clientelist systems has been associated with the concept of trust. People trust one another only if they have information that tells them that others are likely to reciprocate cooperation. According to Schofield, “the fundamental theoretical problem underlying the question of cooperation is the manner by which individuals attain knowledge of each other’s preferences and likely behavior” (1985:12–13, in North, 1990:14). Some authors suggest that the only way that trust is constructed is through collective action itself. People who have previous experience with cooperative action are more likely to cooperate in the future because they have the necessary information about one another’s likely behavior. But in clientelist systems, where vertical exchanges are the norm, there is no opportunity to gain such previous experience. For example, Putnam, in his examination of collective action in Italy, argues that in the clientelist south of the country, collective

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action is rare because there are no incentives for people to build up horizontal ties of reciprocity and trust: “Two clients of the same patron, lacking direct ties, hold nothing hostage to one another. They have nothing to stake against mutual defection and nothing to fear from mutual alienation. They have no occasion to develop a norm of generalized reciprocity and no history of mutual collaboration to draw on” (Putnam, 1993:175). Putnam and a number of other authors have referred to the ties of reciprocity and trust that are built through experience as “social capital.” For many authors in the “social capital school,” societies are simply “endowed” with them. From this perspective, the capacity for cooperation accumulates or dissipates in vicious and virtuous circles. The more that people experience successful outcomes from cooperative interactions, the more likely they are to cooperate in the future. Therefore, where people have a history of acting cooperatively, they have developed ties of trust and reciprocity with others (Putnam, 1993). With such ties, it becomes rational to act collectively, because people know that their contributions to the collective will be reciprocated. A number of recent studies have argued, however, that government policymaking can initiate circles of social capital accumulation even in contexts where ties of trust and reciprocity have historically been weak. Ostrom (1996) and Watson (1995) describe a participatory sewer construction project in Recife, Brazil, where an effective policy required the contribution of both participants and government and where participation was facilitated by government officials. Lam (1996) argues that the success of a decentralized irrigation policy in Taiwan grew out of the close and flexible relations between government workers and farmer participants. Tendler (1996) writes of how government practice in the Brazilian state of Ceará rapidly moved “from bad to good” with the implementation of policies that included efforts on the part of the government to assist directly in the organization of civil associations in the municipalities. Analyzing food councils in Mexico, Fox (1991, 1996) argues that even in the context of authoritarianism, reformers within the Mexican government were able to promote policies that strengthened peasant organizations.1 Those conclusions show that changes in political conditions can create a new environment in which individuals with no previous experience with collective action now rationally engage in it because they perceive that doing so will benefit their interests. In Chapter 7, I showed that state efforts stimulated the mobilization of people who had not previously engaged in collective action. Here I will suggest

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that it also did something more: state policy created an environment in which groups of people could initiate virtuous circles of cooperation. As this occurred, horizontal ties among people began to replace the vertical clientelist relationships that had dominated Porto Alegre’s neighborhoods.

From “Vertical” to “Horizontal” Neighborhood Associations In both of the regions of Porto Alegre where I focused my research, clientelist neighborhood associations lost their clout within a few years after the budget policy began. In some cases neighborhood residents challenged longtime “presidents,” who had never allowed them to participate, either pressuring for elections or creating new associations altogether. In other cases, leaders of previously clientelist associations changed their ways, learning to operate within the participatory system. The result was that, in both Extremo Sul and Glória, dozens of traditional, nonparticipatory associations either “opened up” or closed down completely. This disruption of a decades-old tradition occurred because the participatory budget policy, instead of rewarding the personal negotiating ability of lone neighborhood cabos eleitorais, favored those neighborhood groups that could mobilize enough people to win their demands in regionwide assemblies. The following section describes several ways that this process occurred in the two regions and looks at some survey statistics on association membership to explore how the budget policy affected the verticalness and horizontalness of neighborhood organizations. The Extremo Sul Region In the Extremo Sul region, older neighborhood associations were typically dominated by “eminent” residents, who did not invite open participation. In Lami the association president was a major landowner. In Belém Novo, it was a well-known doctor who presided. Many of the more recent neighborhoods were actually built as a direct result of clientelism. Indeed, one of the poorest favelas in the region, legally part of an ecological preserve, was subdivided into residential lots in the late 1980s, according to informants, through a giveaway scheme in which the owner exchanged plots of land for votes for his party. In the decade before the PT came to office, the region was considered a stronghold of the PDT. It was common for local politicians to hold Sunday barbecues in the neighborhoods, giving away free food and

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promising that if elected, they would bring investments to the residents. These events were generally coordinated by a neighborhood cabo eleitoral, usually the association president, who was a “militant” in the politician’s party. In the end, informants noted, the promises were never fulfilled: the dispersed, impoverished settlements of the Extremo Sul region were largely abandoned by the city government, and the co-opted neighborhood associations did little in the form of mobilization or protest to change that. Often the process of mobilization described in Chapter 7 occurred only after residents had begun to organize without the help of such ineffective leadership. The first neighborhood to do that was Lageado, which for years had the same president who, according to residents, did nothing but knock on doors at election time. By 1992, with the scarcity of clean running water in the neighborhood having become intolerable, a group of residents were able to force an election in the association and to begin holding regular meetings in which many participated. It was this new organization that was able to mobilize the neighborhood in sufficient numbers to put “water for Lageado” at the top of the region’s priority list for that year. A similar process occurred in other neighborhoods as the years went by. One particularly impressive tale of a rejuvenated neighborhood association was set in Lami, where a very wealthy landowner, Sr. Lira, had been president for thirteen years, during which time he never held open meetings. Lami residents began to meet to discuss the budget only after administration officials, concerned that few were participating there, called an open assembly in the neighborhood to explain the budget process. As one of the first to participate noted: We now knew that the only way to get anything for Lami at that time was through the participatory budget. Because the way it was, Sr. Lira and Getúlio, when they would make demands, would only ask for things that served them. They did not even want to discuss it with us. They had cars and thought the public transportation system was great. What they really wanted was to keep the neighborhood the way it was. (Solange)

The result of this parallel mobilization was the appearance of new leaders in the neighborhood who began to push Lira to hold elections for the association executive committee. We pressured and pressured. He didn’t want to hold the election. But finally he accepted. He went out with a loud-speaker car saying, “Vote for Lira, 12 years your president and all going well.” I thought

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at the time: that’s the wrong thing for him to say. People are going to realize that it’s wrong that he has been there 12 years. . . . It’s time to change presidents. And you know, there were people there whom he brought to vote and who voted against him. We won by two hundred votes! (Oswaldo)

The revitalized neighborhood association went on to become one of the most effective associations in the Extremo Sul region, holding large and regular meetings, bringing in many participants from the impoverished settlements near Lami village, and promoting a number of activities that went beyond the budget discussion. At the same time, in Ponta Grossa, a very different process occurred: one neighborhood leader managed to combine the mobilization required by the budget policy with clientelist techniques. Nelson, a small-time politician affiliated with the PDT, mobilized residents in one of the poorest clandestine subdivisions of Ponta Grossa to attend the big regional assemblies with promises that if they voted him into the Municipal Budget Council, he would get basic improvements for the settlement. According to residents, he even promised investments that they later discovered were not within the purview of the participatory budget, such as electricity, which is provided only by the state government. Providing buses for transportation and, according to some rumors, other fringe benefits (ranging from sandwiches to children’s shoes, depending on the source of the rumors), he brought dozens of residents to the big regional assemblies and was elected by them to the Municipal Budget Council. Having mobilized so many, he also claimed the right to appoint his friends and neighbors to a large proportion of seats in the Regional Budget Forum. Rather than using the power he gained in the regional forum to propose improvements for the settlement he had originally mobilized, he pushed a project through to pave the road passing in front of his house, in a different part of Ponta Grossa. This process, which strikingly resembled the vote-getting techniques of clientelist neighborhood leaders, is what Portoalegrenses call inchaço, or the onetime “swelling” of assemblies by people who do not participate regularly, who do not have reliable information about the process, and who simply vote according to the dictates of their leader. How the rest of the Extremo Sul participants dealt with it is discussed further on. The Glória Region In the Glória region, the participatory, combative alliance of neighborhood groups that made up the Conselho Popular coexisted with a large number of nonparticipatory, clientelistic neighborhood associa-

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tions throughout the region, which, as in the Extremo Sul, largely served as campaign support sites for local political bosses. As noted in Chapter 7, with the creation of the participatory budget, the conselho became the central forum where decisions about capital improvements in the region were made. After years of scorning the organization, a number of clientelist leaders in the region now began to participate in it. In the final months of 1990 a group of them, most of whom were associated with the PDT, attempted to “take over” the conselho. They managed to bring a large group of people to a regular conselho meeting and, threatening violence, forced a surprise election for the executive committee. It was an illegal act—the decision to hold an election had to be voted on and announced beforehand—and within a few weeks the conselho members had won a court injunction formally returning the original activists to the executive committee. But even before the legal ruling, it became clear that the clientelist group did not have the means to dominate budget decisions. The president of the conselho at the time described the inability of the rebel group to mobilize people for anything more than such onetime assaults: Ten days later, there was an assembly to elect representatives to the Municipal Budget Council. We went to the meeting and filled it up. We had two hundred people and they had only ten. . . . The organizers of the meeting said that those who were voting for my slate should move to the left and for their slate to the right. Do you know that the church almost flipped over?! We won by 98 percent! (Julipo)

After this failure, the group of clientelists never again attempted to usurp the conselho or to campaign for elections as Glória’s representatives in the Municipal Budget Council. The leader of the pack, who was the president of the Glória Community Center, eventually disappeared from public view altogether. The same was the case of several association presidents who by the mid-1990s, were no longer active in their neighborhoods.2 Yet, as in the Extremo Sul, some leaders with a history of clientelist behavior learned how to function in the new system. One such person was Miguel, a resident of Jardim Cascata, who as president of his association had used clientelist connections to bring benefits to his neighborhood in the years before the budget policy: “I have been president since 1988, and I think that I’ll be president for at least ten more years. I got us a health post in 1988 and in 1989 we built a school, a crêche, and a police post. We in the community built the post, but most of the money came from the state government.”

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Miguel was among the clientelist leaders who attempted to take over the Conselho Popular. But unlike others who disappeared from view afterward, he soon returned to the conselho meetings and, apologizing for his actions, continued participating while he began to mobilize his neighborhood accordingly. “At first we didn’t believe in the participatory budget. But once the first construction projects began to be built, we began to believe,” he noted. As it became clear that the PT administration was investing in those neighborhoods that participated, he felt no fidelity to his old allies. When I asked if he had any party preference, he said, “We help anyone who knocks on our door.” By 1993, Miguel’s neighborhood association had become highly active, mobilizing a group that participated regularly in the Conselho Popular and that, between 1993 and 1994, was able, through the budget process, to obtain over a thousand linear meters of pavement, covering nearly all the streets in the neighborhood. Since the conselho enforced systematic participation, Miguel had to mobilize a group of people all year-round. At the time of my fieldwork, Jardim Cascata was among the most active neighborhoods, with a number of regular participants in the conselho but also with a strong association that discussed other neighborhood issues. Although this association was still largely dominated by Miguel, it was quite different from before, not only because a broader number of individuals participated in it (thus making it more representative), but also because it began to seek benefits through mobilization and debate with other neighborhoods, rather than through under-the-table dealings and promises of electoral support. Emerging “Horizontal” Organizations The examples from Glória and the Extremo Sul show that the participatory budget created an environment in which traditional clientelist behavior no longer worked. Neighborhood associations that had been closed and nonparticipatory (but that might have been relatively effective in obtaining resources for the neighborhood through clientelist exchange) now had to develop more-inclusive organizing structures. In other neighborhoods, entirely new associations emerged: Between 1988 and 1998, the number of neighborhood associations in Porto Alegre increased from 300 to 540 (Baiocci, 2000:28). Data from the survey of regional assembly participants (see Methodological Index) confirm the fact that those who participated were for the most part not just onetime mobilizers, but instead were highly integrated into participatory neighborhood associations. Seventy-six percent of those we interviewed were members of some

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kind of association.3 Of those, 83 percent participated in associations located in their neighborhoods, including not only official neighborhood associations but also “community centers,” “mothers’ clubs,” and informal “street commissions.” A large proportion, furthermore, were active in the civic associations to which they belonged. Sixty percent of those who were members of civic groups (or 44 percent of the informants) said that they had attended association meetings at least once a month during the previous year. Almost half of those said that they attended meetings on a weekly basis. Over 30 percent of those who were members of associations were members of more than one group. Clearly, such active membership suggests that the vast majority of those who participated in the budget process were highly integrated into the civic life of their communities. Those who were more active in the budget process were also more active in civic associations. Of those who had been elected to the Regional Budget Forums, 94 percent were members of civic associations. Seventy-four percent of them attended meetings at least once a month, and 40 percent attended weekly meetings. The survey results also confirm that active membership in civic organizations increased as a result of the budget policy. When asked how their participation in civic groups had changed since the policy began, 33 percent responded that prior to its existence they did not participate in civic groups at all. Another 25 percent said that they had previously participated in civic groups, but since the budget policy, that participation had increased. That means that nearly 60 percent of those who were active in associations had become more active as a result of the budget policy.4 Baiocci’s (2000) analysis of a 1998 survey of participants in the Porto Alegre budget policy shows similar results: about half of the delegates he interviewed began to participate in associations through the budget process (35). Thus it seems that the policy did more than stimulate mobilization for budget assemblies: it also promoted the formation and strengthening of inclusive, or horizontal, civic groups more generally. Two parallel processes were behind this. The policy discouraged clientelist neighborhood associations by eliminating, at least within the local government, the vertical system of personalistic favor exchange upon which those associations had depended. The policy also gave new leverage to broader-based associations that could mobilize residents. At times, clientelist leaders adapted to the new system, using troca de favores and unfounded promises to draw people to meetings to vote in their favor. But for the most part, they were not capable of bolstering the kind of broad-based, year-round mobilization that effective work within the budget process demanded. In most

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cases, mobilization was driven by newly strengthened inclusive organizations rather than individual leaders.

“Scaling-up”: The Regional Budget Forums as a New Space for Organizing The budget process promoted horizontal organizations not only within neighborhoods but also among them, by way of the Regional Budget Forums. According to our 1995 survey, 54 percent of those we interviewed had participated in the budget process previously. Twenty-eight percent had participated for two or more years before the year of the interview. Of those who had been elected to Regional Budget Forums, 76 percent had participated for more than one year. About 30 percent of them were in their second year of the program, and 47 percent were in at least their third year. A census I conducted of forum delegates in Glória and the Extremo Sul found that 50 percent of the Glória delegates and 35 percent of the Extremo Sul delegates had participated in the budget process for four years or more. This suggests that although each year many new participants entered the process, others continued from earlier years. As this occurred, the budget forums became important spaces of civic life, a central reference for local activists, who often considered participation in them just as important as participation in their own neighborhood associations. This civic engagement at the regional level reflects an important expansion of associational horizontality: the development of civic ties linking neighborhood associations to one another, what Fox (1996), in reference to Mexican food councils, refers to as “scaling-up.” The dynamics of decisionmaking in the forums demanded not only that neighborhood associations mobilize residents but also that they make alliances with other neighborhoods. The forums incorporated representatives from several neighborhoods, too many to allow a single one to fully dominate decisionmaking sessions. In 1994, for example, the Extremo Sul elected representatives from about ten settlements and Glória from about sixteen settlements. Even well-mobilized neighborhood groups sought alliances with others to ensure that their demands were included in the region’s top priorities for a particular year. In both Glória and the Extremo Sul, each assembly represented a new opportunity for people to develop reciprocal ties. Much of the deal making was along the lines of: “We’ll vote together and against so-and-so.” But neighborhoods also agreed to help each other on a long-term basis: “You vote with me this year and I’ll be with you next

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year.” That is, through the budget process, neighborhood groups learned to trust one another, engaging in long-term relations of reciprocity. As one participant from Linha do Tiro, the most mobilized neighborhood in the Glória region at the time, noted: “Nós somos solidários, más não é a solidariedade de freiras. [We have solidarity, but it is not the solidarity of nuns.] We make concessions because we think that selfishness can go against us someday. Perhaps now I don’t need you, but at a future date I may want to have some friends” (Rosa). Interestingly enough, the attempts by single neighborhoods to monopolize regional priority-setting assemblies often stimulated cooperation on the part of the remaining neighborhoods, which would join together to defeat “bully” neighborhoods. The inchaço attempt by Nelson, of the Extremo Sul region, described above, ultimately led to this kind of cooperative reaction. Since Ponta Grossa, Nelson’s neighborhood, had the majority at the big regional assembly in 1994, it was allowed to name over half of the region’s delegates for the 1995 budget year. Although most of these delegates did not regularly participate in the regional forum, on the day that the forum discussed how the region’s pavement quota would be divided up, Nelson successfully mobilized the full body of delegates from his area. The result was that Ponta Grossa pushed through an agreement by which it would receive twice as many meters of pavement as any other part of the region. This lopsided distribution infuriated residents from the remaining six subregions of Extremo Sul. At the next forum meeting, they argued that the inchaço of the month before had been unfair and demanded a new vote. Ponta Grossa still had a majority of delegates at this meeting, but the other neighborhoods had also ensured that all non–Ponta Grossa delegates were present at the assembly. In addition, they lured a number of Ponta Grossa delegates to their side, taking advantage of a dispute occurring between Nelson and others in his neighborhood who feared that pavement would not be fairly distributed. With this new majority, they voted for a much more equally distributed allocation of pavement. They also voted to hold a recall assembly to revoke Nelson’s seat in the Municipal Budget Council. A few weeks later, he was recalled. In a sense, the attempt at inchaço by one neighborhood leader did little more than bring about his own demise because it led participants from other neighborhoods to unite against him. The efforts at cooperation that the budget process encouraged within the regional forums had an impact that went beyond those forums and the immediate negotiations around capital improvements on which they focused. The experience of building alliances from

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year to year contributed to the creation of strong formal and informal regionwide networks of neighborhoods throughout the city. In some regions, new Conselhos Populares were created outside the statesponsored organization of the budget process. Some very strong conselhos that were created only months before the PT came to power essentially founded their initial organization on the discussion of budget priorities. Other regions founded conselhos only after the policy had been in place for some time. For example, the Nordeste region, an extremely poor region on the northern periphery of the city, founded a fledgling Conselho Popular a few years after the budget policy began. Most of the attendees of its biweekly meetings were also budget delegates. In other regions, the budget forums themselves become an organizing space in which activists from many neighborhoods began to deal with regionwide issues that often went far beyond the budget itself. In Extremo Sul, the effort to counteract Ponta Grossa’s attempt at taking more than its fair share was the impetus that brought about a strong union among the other six subregions. That union lasted for years, as the neighborhoods made a concerted effort to come to agreement among themselves and to spread investment evenly around the region. At the end of 1995, a group representing four of them was elected to the Municipal Budget Council after a campaign that emphasized the importance of regionwide unity. Over time, this group promoted several broad-based regional investment and policy projects within the budget council, including a major housing project for the occupants of impoverished settlements and a complex regional plan that was presented during the Master Plan discussion process. In 1997, this group was still dominant in the regional forum. These long-term alliances suggest that relatively durable relations of trust and reciprocity can indeed develop when a state-initiated policy creates an environment where cooperation is rational. Since in most cases, those participating had no “history” or “tradition” of collective decisionmaking with residents from other neighborhoods, these practices contradict the expectations of some “social capital” theorists: cooperation emerged as a result of the process itself rather than out of an historic “endowment” of cooperative capacities.

Interneighborhood Disputes The rise of cooperative alliances described above should not be confused with a regionwide unity or consensus. In both Glória and Extremo Sul, the regionwide networks that operated were generally

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inclusionary spaces in which most of the region’s neighborhoods had representatives who negotiated not only the distribution of investments but also their more general proposals for improving the region. But divisions among neighborhoods still existed. Alliances would typically form into two opposing blocs in a particular year, leaving a minority group largely excluded from capital improvements. These alliances tended to fluctuate over time. Although often one or two neighborhoods were able to win a disproportionate amount of investment in a particular year, the following year usually favored a different group. And even if one or two neighborhoods got more while some were excluded altogether, investments usually were distributed among a large number of neighborhoods.5 But in some regions, lasting divisions among groups of neighborhoods did develop out of the budget process. Blocs of subregional alliances sometimes formed rigidly in opposition to one another. The most dramatic case was the Eixo da Baltazar region, mentioned in Chapter 6. In that region, which included a substantial number of both middle-class and poor neighborhoods, the division developed along class lines. The poor neighborhoods were consistently able to mobilize a majority of participants, and they systematically excluded from the region’s priority lists the demands of the middle-class participants. But in other regions where similar class patterns existed, the same divisions did not occur. For example, in another region, a larger bloc of poor neighborhoods voted each year to include a small number of middle-class neighborhood demands in their priority lists. Conversely, several uniformly impoverished regions, such as Lomba do Pinheiro and Grande Cruzeiro, were characterized by strong divisions. In Cruzeiro these divisions even led to the formation of a new Conselho Popular, which began to compete with the fifteen-year-old União de Vilas as the region’s popular representative. These results suggest that class differences were not the cause of divisions within regions. Instead, political disputes among the leadership, often mediated by differing party alliances, were usually behind the divisions. In Eixo da Baltazar, the regional forum was dominated by activists affiliated with the Partido Comunista do Brasil (Communist Party of Brazil, or PCdoB),6 which cultivated a hard-line antagonism with middle-class neighborhoods. In Lomba do Pinheiro, groups supporting different PT candidates for the City Assembly were in dispute. In Cruzeiro, the new conselho was led by people with strong relations with the PDT, then holding the state government, whereas petistas largely remained in the older organization. Even where intraregional divisions occurred, there was still a great deal of horizontal cooperation among neighborhoods. Indeed,

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the disputes themselves required the blocs to strengthen the alliances among the neighborhoods that constituted them. But in the majority of regions, the regional forums became spaces of negotiation that on the whole increased regional identity and cohesion rather than promoted division. The reasons for that were only partly related to the “enabling environment” of cooperation. As Chapter 9 will discuss, over time the experience of participation not only fostered cooperative alliances among participants but also, for many of them, led to the development of solidarity with other neighborhoods and of an identification with the region as a whole.

Cycles of Civic Engagement and “Social Energy” Can the horizontal ties described in the preceding pages be expected to last? Putnam’s society “well endowed” in “social capital” is one in which networks of civic engagement seem to be constants in the everyday life of citizens in northern Italy, growing out of a thousandyear history (Putnam, 1993:121–162). Yet what I have described here involves a rather “instrumentalist,” short-term response to a policy that delivers material resources to those who mobilize. In order to mobilize effectively, groups developed organizations and built ties with one another. In so doing, they gained experience with civic life, experience upon which they could build the trust necessary for future cooperation to occur. But, as noted in Chapter 7, in many cases, neighborhood organizations deactivated once basic needs were met. What is the significance of this demobilization? Does it mean that longterm ties of trust and cooperation did not emerge out of the organizing process? It should be noted that evidence from the participant survey suggests that where demobilization did occur, it took some time. According to 57 percent of all those interviewed and 74 percent of the “active” participants (that is, those that had been elected to the budget forums), their neighborhoods had already received benefits through the participatory budget program. This suggests that simply receiving benefits did not cause people to demobilize: to the contrary, it probably provided them with the incentive to seek more benefits, as their expectations increased that benefits would be forthcoming. If activism in the budget declined after basic needs were met, then most neighborhoods had more unmet basic needs than could be met in a year or two of participation. The “experience” of participation was likely to be one that lasted several years. Whether a massive demobilization will occur as the city continues

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to invest in the neighborhoods is difficult to predict. As described in Chapter 7, some of the neighborhoods in the Glória region that had been historically most active before the budget policy existed deactivated once their principal demands were met. Not only did they no longer send participants to the budget assemblies, but also their participation diminished in the Conselho Popular and in their own neighborhood associations. Other neighborhoods, however, did not stop participating. Although some cited personal disputes and “tiring out” after years of conflict and struggle, others described neighborhood activism as increasingly rewarding over time, as they developed friendships, status, and social ties of reciprocity and solidarity through the civic associations in which they worked. What caused some neighborhoods to continue being active while others did not may have had much to do with the personal experience of the leadership and with the quality of the organizations that they formed. The idea that social movements pass through “life cycles” of boom and bust is widely accepted in the literature on collective action (Frank and Fuentes, 1989; Jacobi, 1989; Tarrow, 1994). It is for that reason that Tarrow argues that the principal “dilemma of collective action” is not the “free rider” or the “prisoner’s” dilemma, but rather is the problem of “coordinating, sustaining and giving meaning to collective action” over the long term (1994:16). A challenge for the budget system in Porto Alegre, then, is to find ways to maximize the value to people of long-term participation. Some informants suggested that the social ties that they developed were attractive enough to keep them participating. But others said that one of the reasons they stopped participating was that after obtaining the basic needs, they felt that the policy offered them little else. Indeed, although many of the leaders that emerged out of the budget policy stopped participating in the regional forums once their demands were met, they did not necessarily drop out of civic life altogether. A brother-sister pair of Linha do Tiro residents who had dominated the budget effort in that neighborhood in 1994 and 1995 is a case in point. When I returned to Porto Alegre for a follow-up visit in 1997, participants in the budget forum complained that both of them had abandoned the forum once their part of the neighborhood had been paved. On further investigation, however, I found that they had moved on to other forms of activism. One was participating on a state government commission to discuss the land-tenure situation of the neighborhood. The other had become a community teacher in a municipal adult literacy program. This suggests that, at least in some cases, what may seem like demobilization actually reflects a transfor-

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mation and broadening of leadership goals rather than a deactivation of those leaders. One neighborhood leader from the Cruzeiro region, who left the budget process to spend most of his time participating in the city’s Housing Council, suggested that giving power to forums that discuss broader-based issues is the key to keeping people in the process: I think that many that come can’t find a way to stick. They don’t have something that connects them, something eternal. Like the question of children and adolescents, or the question of housing, a theme that they fall in love with. For people to really stay, they have to want to. They have to like a theme and be a bit of a specialist in it. . . . If we can’t get people to fall in love with an area . . . they are left floating. The Budget does this often. The people come, saying, “here is our demand for investment,” but they don’t stick. We have to hold discussions among regions on broader topics. If we can do this, we will not only be able to hold onto the people who come, but some of those older people who left would return. (Paulo)

In just such an effort to broaden discussion, the Porto Alegre administration did create in 1993 the thematic forums. At the time of my research, these forums were still in their initial phases and it was too difficult to determine what their impact would be on the policy. Although they were intended to attract a different type of participant, the 1995 survey showed that over a quarter of thematic forum participants were neighborhood activists. One challenge of the thematic forums, and of a number of other broader-based municipal councils that have been created in Porto Alegre in recent years, is to provide a space for expanded activism for more neighborhood-level participants. Doing so will require overcoming some of the problems mentioned in Chapter 7. The discussion of policy issues must be translated from planning jargon so that ordinary citizens can understand that those policies have the potential to improve their lives. People must be convinced that participation in the forums is likely to bring benefits that they think are meaningful. Yet even if such efforts to maintain mobilization fail and participation declines over time in Porto Alegre, that would not mean that the civic ties gained were irrevocably lost. After all, as suggested earlier, the basis of cooperation is previous experience with cooperation because that experience gives people the information they need to trust others enough to cooperate in the future. According to Hirschmann’s (1984) study of grassroots organizing in Latin America, most of those who participate in successful cooperative actions have had previous experiences in organizing. Often, those earlier experi-

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ences failed, the groups disbanding before achieving the material or political gains they sought. Yet even frustrated past experiences gave people the basic conditions to engage in collective action again at a later date, usually in entirely different types activities than before. Hirschmann calls this “social energy,” which, he argues, can be “conserved” over a long period of time during which actors may not engage in collective action at all (42–57). This “social energy” might be understood as something similar to what Mellucci (1989) calls “collective identity.” In order for collective action to be possible, Mellucci argues, people must perceive themselves as capable of acting collectively. The experience of cooperation and reciprocity is one part of this identity, because it lets people know that they can in practice work together, that they can trust and cooperate with their neighbors. How participation can promote another aspect of collective identity—people’s perceptions of their interests as related to the interests of a collectivity—will be the topic in Chapter 9.

Notes 1. Several of these works appear together in the June 1996 issue of World Development. Evans’s (1996) introductory essay provides an excellent critical review of the social capital literature. 2. Some others managed to continue manipulating neighborhood organizations to their own benefit, but rarely through the participatory budget. For example, the leader of one association also ran a day-care program subsidized by the municipal administration. At the time of my research, the city was investigating accusations that she had stolen money from the center. But this same leader was never able to mobilize people to participate in the budget programs, and the investments that were made in her neighborhood came out of the activism of another neighborhood leader who worked through the Conselho Popular, not the neighborhood association. 3. The data presented here on civic associations and participation do not include participants interviewed at the thematic assemblies, since those assemblies were formed only the year before the survey and since the profile of participants is significantly different from those at the regional level, as discussed elsewhere. However, in general, rates of associationalism are even higher in the thematic forums: 90 percent of those interviewed were members of associations. 4. Ten percent reported that they had participated more in their associations prior to the budget policy and 32 percent said that their participation had not changed. 5. This distribution can be explained in part because of the complexity of voting in the defining priorities process. Participants vote on priorities within seven investment categories and also vote on the order of priority of those categories. Since each neighborhood usually had interest in only a few of the categories, the stakes and the stakeholders change with each vote. It

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was difficult, therefore, for one bloc of neighborhoods to sustain a monopoly for all seven categories. 6. Not to be confused with the Partido Comunista Brasileiro (Brazilian Communist Party, or PCB), the PCdoB is a Stalinist party that did not undergo the transformation that the PCB underwent after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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Building “Enlarged Thinking” Still more salutary is the moral part of the instruction afforded by the participation of the private citizen, even if rarely, in public function. He is called upon, while so engaged, to weigh interests not his own; to be guided, in case of conflicting claims, by another rule than his private partialities; to apply at every turn, principles and maxims which have for their reason of existence the common good. . . . He is made to feel himself one of the public and whatever is for their benefit to be for his benefit. —John Stuart Mill, “Considerations on Representative Government”

In Chapter 8, I argued that experience with participation gives people the chance to learn about one another and to form ties of trust and reciprocity. In this chapter I will discuss a different, although much related, learning process: the development of political consciousness among participants. Theorists of “developmental democracy” have long argued that individuals who participate in collective decisionmaking acquire a broadened conception of their collective interests and develop solidarity for others.1 This process is of interest to us for two reasons. First, it will shed further light on how the problem of inequality played out in the budget policy. If participation promoted the development of solidarity, then we would expect decisions made in participatory forums increasingly to benefit those who were most needy, even if they participated in lesser numbers, because those who did participate would develop a concern for others’ needs. Second, we will learn more about how the policy provided an enabling environment, a topic discussed in Chapter 8. The budget process led to the development of a form of civic organizing that approximated the “combative” ideal type, promoting a more egalitarian political consciousness. The next section explores some theoretical discussions of how participation can change the way that people perceive their interests. The chapter then analyzes the dynamics of decisionmaking within the budget forums of the Extremo Sul and Glória regions as examples of different phases in the development of political consciousness through the experience of participation. 177

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Participation, Self-Development, and Distributional Justice Contemporary discussions on the role of participation in public life in the development of individual capacities were initiated by Pateman (1970), whose theoretical examination of participation began with a rereading of Rousseau and J. S. Mill. Both of these early modern democratic theorists thought that through participation people would develop a sense of their common interests and of their capacities as political actors. Pateman particularly concurs with Mill’s argument that the educative role of participation should begin at the small scale, where people inexperienced in politics can develop the capacity to know their own interests, to recognize the importance of collective issues for their lives, and to identify people who would serve as good representatives for those interests at larger levels of decisionmaking. Such ideas have been explored by democratic theorists in the past few decades. Two general types of arguments are made. Some, such as Pateman, focus on the knowledge and skills that participation “teaches.” People gain experience in negotiating with others, coming to decisions, and learning about the political issues that they must decide. An important result is an increased sense of “political efficacy”: as people learn that participation can effectively play a role in collective decisions, they are more likely to continue participating, learning even more about the process (Pateman, 1970:45–46; see also Macpherson, 1977; Gould, 1988; Held, 1987). Other scholars give more emphasis to the role participation can play in promoting an awareness of common interests and a sense of commonality (Barber, 1984; Bachrach, 1975; Benhabib, 1992; Graham, 1986; Warren, 1990). Barber, one of the major exponents of this idea, argues that participation promotes a sense of civic community because “it mandates a permanent confrontation between the me as citizen and the ‘Other’ as citizen, forcing us to think in common and act in common” (1984:153). When participants must come to decisions through discussion, they are likely to discover common interests and to develop respect for the needs of others. Empirical work has shown that a correlation between participation and collective identity does indeed exist. For example, in a U.S. context, Dawes, van de Kragt, and Orbell (1990) carried out hundreds of game-playing experiments that brought together people who had never met before. Consistently, a “group identity” emerged after only brief interactions among them. This identity promoted cooperative behavior. Qualitative studies on social movements that are closer

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to the conditions of the Porto Alegre case have also suggested that experience with collective organizing promotes not only cooperative practices but also new attitudes about interests and political capacities. Jacobi (1989:151) argues that urban social movements, despite their short life cycles, are important spaces for the construction of citizenship, because social consciousness increases through the simple act of transforming a need into a demand. Telles notes that despite their limited character, “the notions of participation and collective action constructed within these movements qualify as elements of a new language, through which society can be constructed as something that can be questioned and changed and in which neighborhood residents appear as subjects in a common understanding” (1987:77). Although these works focus on “combative” neighborhood movements that emerged largely to protest state policies, it seems reasonable that state-initiated participatory forums might also provide an environment in which collective sensibilities can form. The idea of gaining a sense of commonality does not necessarily imply that differences are suppressed or conflicts ignored. Barber suggests that although “unitary democracy” is based in “common beliefs, values, ends, identity,” participatory democracy should be based in “common talk, decision, work” (1984:219). Benhabib takes this idea further: “The goal of such conversation is not consensus or unanimity . . . but the ‘anticipated communication with others with whom I know I must finally come to some agreement’” (1992:9).2 These authors assert that the “commonality” that can emerge from participation is a practical sensibility: it is the knowledge that one must come to collective decisions and that to do so, one must respect other people’s positions. Drawing on Habermas’s concept of “reflexive role distance,” Benhabib argues that it is possible for people to be critical of their own perspectives and to consider other people’s point of view without losing their identity or abandoning their particular interests (Benhabib, 1992:74). She calls this practical sense of common purpose “enlarged thinking.” This idea will be important for analyzing how budget participants behaved over time. Distrusting the capacity of participants to include the weakest groups in participatory decisions, some scholars have suggested that those decisions should be limited by basic rules that ensure fair distribution and the representation of “oppressed groups.” Young (1990) states that since formally equal procedures give more power to stronger participants, representation mechanisms should be developed that give greater weight to those who are weakest in the participatory process. Gutmann (1980) argues that in a participatory system, “substantive, distributional rules” must have priority over

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“procedural, participatory rules.” Put simply, that means that a majority should not be able to decide to suppress the basic rights of a minority. The practical question that emerges from these proposals is, Who will design the distributive rules that should guide participatory decisionmaking? One likely candidate is the government institution designing participatory policies. But what prevents the designers from creating biased designs that favor the particular interest groups influential within those institutions? Indeed, how does one ensure that distributional rules do not jeopardize the participatory process altogether? If the rules constrain decisionmaking in the areas that citizens feel are most important, then the loss of political efficacy that results may lead them to stop participating. After all, as I suggested in Chapter 7, participatory policies mobilize participants when people feel that joining up will bring rewards. But if distributional rules limit that capacity by predefining the winners and losers, the benefits of participation might seem less forthcoming, which might discourage those for whom the costs of participation are great. If participants do develop “enlarged thinking”—a sense of common interests and a respect for others’ voices—then perhaps they can take on the responsibility for designing rules that ensure distributional justice. That is the option with which the Porto Alegre administration experimented. Participants had final say over the rules that determined investment distribution, although the administration encouraged the incorporation of rules that would ensure the inclusion of the most disadvantaged. One aspect of our examination of how “enlarged thinking” developed will be to see how participants devised such rules. A learning process that occurred over the course of many years is difficult to study, especially when field research is limited to a yearand-a-half period. However, since the two regional forums that I examined had different levels of experience and organization, I attempt here to approximate an analysis of the “stages” of this politicization process by considering the Extremo Sul case an example of the initial phases and the Glória case an example of the more advanced phases. The next section explores how informants from both regions perceived the problems of excluding needy but nonparticipatory neighborhoods. The following sections discuss the process through which political consciousness developed. Examples from the Extremo Sul region demonstrate how participants learned to design basic regulations for discussion and debate and how they began to incorporate a concern for the most impoverished neighborhoods and a sense of their collective interest into the way they made decisions

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about capital improvements. Examples from the Glória region explore the process of designing more-systematic rules for distribution.

Mixed Motives: Combining Solidarity with Self-Interest The majority of the participants I interviewed seemed to waver uncomfortably between the belief that those who participated most should receive the most benefits and the belief that needier areas should be considered, even if they did not participate. Of the fortytwo budget participants that I interviewed at length, only one expressed a strong rejection of the idea that the amount of participation that a neighborhood should muster should be a criterion for receiving investments. Some argued in terms of citizenship and democracy: those who participate would have greater commitment to and control over the activities of the government, whereas those who receive without participating might benefit materially, but would be less likely to develop as citizens. The result would be a reproduction of paternalistic traditions in public decisionmaking: I don’t think that the administration should provide benefits in regions where people do not participate in the budget, because then the whole point of the process is lost. [If that occurred, it would mean that] you decide something in the budget assembly and then the administration ignores the . . . hierarchy made by the delegates. (Oswaldo) I think participation is necessary, because otherwise the community won’t value the projects. (Mateus)

Others expressed a sort of work ethic. Carrying on a participatory process implies giving a great deal of time and commitment. Participants must discuss the projects constantly with the administration to ensure that the latter implements exactly what they want. Those who did this work showed much resentment for the proverbial “free rider.” As one activist put it, participation should be a requirement for receiving benefits: Otherwise, the guy doesn’t even need to go [to the assemblies]. He presents his demand and only appears to receive what he’s won at the end of the thing. He doesn’t even come, because the demand has already been implemented, so he just stays at home, everything is wonderful, and the others go on breaking their backs to make it all happen. (Ivan)

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Others argued that participation had to be a requirement for obtaining goods if the process was to mobilize people. A member of the Glória conselho defended a policy that required neighborhoods to participate year-round to receive investments: We thought of it as a way to mobilize and maintain people in the process. People involve themselves with the movement and begin to empower themselves. We wanted to ensure that the budget was institutionalized if another party came to power. If the people are mobilized, they will maintain their organization later. (Marta)

Many participants, when asked why they thought that some very needy neighborhoods did not participate at all, responded that those who did not participate were not really committed to changing their situations or expected unsolicited handouts from the government. The exceptions to this attitude were usually people who lived in neighborhoods that were more difficult to mobilize: those informants spoke of the lack of time, the difficulty the very poor have in communicating, the distrust they have in government, and problems related to closed neighborhood associations and conflicts among leadership at the neighborhood level. But many of the participants that I interviewed spoke with scorn about those who did not participate in the same breath that they noted that more efforts should be made to bring them into the process: The prefeitura has to begin to publicize the process more in these little regions and areas where people don’t understand [that they have to participate to receive benefits]. (Oswaldo) They should participate. But it is our responsibility, us Councilors and Delegates, to look after those people. . . . It is cultural education that they are needing. We need to teach those people that they must participate. (Elza)

In some cases, the regional forums and other popular organizations sent out “expeditions” to neighborhoods or settlements that did not participate. In Glória, for example, the Conselho Popular would occasionally hold one of its regular meetings in a neighborhood that had not been participating effectively, as a way to encourage residents to take interest in the council. In the Extremo Sul, especially in later years, forum leaders began to seek out residents of the region’s squatter settlements and convinced them to mobilize, bringing representatives from a number of settlements into the budget process for the first time. Furthermore, apparently contradicting the view that a neighbor-

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hood must mobilize to obtain benefits, in both the regions I examined, the forums often placed the demands of little mobilized and very poor settlements high on their priority lists. This occurred, however, only in cases where such settlements could elect at least one delegate to the forums, a task that required the onetime mobilization of ten people at an intermediary assembly. If that “single representative” was consistent and “worked hard,” the remaining participants would often take the neighborhood’s demands into consideration. As one Linha do Tiro participant noted: It is not enough to have necessity and not participate. If we think that you are right, that your vila really needs something, then we will cede to you. But you have to have at least one person. Colina Verde is an example. Only Sr. Humberto participates, but he never misses a meeting. That insistence of his worked. We cede to Colina Verde out of consideration for him. (Alçir)

One such “single representative” from a Glória neighborhood that never was able to mobilize large numbers explained that he eventually convinced conselho members to prioritize his neighborhood’s pavement project by organizing a visit to the neighborhood. We managed to get [support from other delegates in the region] by explaining our situation and with visits here. . . . And then they saw our situation, and that it was awful. Really bad. They saw the people carrying building material from way down below, carrying it on their backs, on their shoulders, because you couldn’t get up by car. And this convinced them. (Leonardo)

Others also spoke of the impression that visits through the region made in broadening their perspectives and causing them to support investments in neighborhoods other than their own. “These visits by the delegates changed things. . . . You think of yourself as needy, but then when you arrive in that other community and you see people even more miserable, you realize that your situation isn’t that difficult. That you are even privileged” (Marta). All this suggests that ethical questions about relative needs did have weight in the negotiating process. Although neighborhood leaders often joined up to pursue their own neighborhood’s needs, awareness of bad conditions in other neighborhoods made a difference when it came to ordering priorities. But arguments about the greater necessity of certain settlements could be ignored if no one was at the meetings to speak for them. When someone was present to remind people of a situation of great need, participants often found it very

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difficult to ignore. Indeed, to have done so would have contradicted the very discourse that the better organized neighborhoods used to justify their own demands: “We are poor and needy, and therefore deserve attention.”

Extremo Sul: Learning Basic Democratic Habits Since the Extremo Sul budget forum had just begun to consolidate during the period that I was conducting field research, the year and a half that I followed the budget process in that region turned out to be a privileged period for studying how people who have had little experience in collective organizing begin to develop “enlarged thinking.” The first steps in this politicization process were quite elementary. Few of the participants in the Extremo Sul forum were lifelong activists—for the most part they were just ordinary people hoping to improve their neighborhoods. But in order to do so, they had to learn some basic democratic practices—simple ones, such as how to hold a meeting. In the period that I attended the meetings, a slow but clear transition occurred. Initially, the meetings were chaotic, everyone interrupted everyone, people yelled and cursed, and offended participants regularly walked out before decisions were made. By the end of this period, the region’s Municipal Budget Council members, who coordinated the meetings, had learned to control interruptions, to keep discussion on agenda, to hold careful and well-counted votes, and so on. This basic learning process should not be underestimated—for through it ordinary people gained organizational skills that they could potentially use in other spaces and other contexts. Over time, participants seemed to learn that promoting personal disputes during the assemblies was to everyone’s disadvantage, including their own. At first, numerous “scenes” occurred, in which residents angry with decisions or with perceived betrayals of loyalty disrupted meetings. In one case, a participant publicly set fire to a present received by an erstwhile neighborhood ally. In another case, two neighborhood leaders competing for dominance in their “subregion” engaged in a brutal name-calling session during an intermediary assembly. Numerous informants told me that these public quarrels drove many participants away from the budget process. Gradually the leaders in the forum, many of whom initially engaged in such personal disputes, began to see that those tactics were not working. Stung by criticism from their peers for inappropriate behavior and a notable decline in assembly attendance after such

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scenes, the more fiery leaders began to temper their ways, and calmer neighborhood residents gained favor. Perhaps the greatest difference between the group of four municipal budget councillors elected by the region in 1994 and those elected in 1995 was that whereas the former group was characterized by several dispute-prone individuals, the latter group—led by Dona Elza, an elderly woman whose discourse was authoritative and moralizing—constantly urged participants to think of the needs of others and to look beyond their own neighborhood’s concerns to the region as a whole. The process of organizing meetings, of course, was much more complex than simply getting people to hold their tongues. People also had to create rules guiding speech that would ensure that all voices were heard. The inexperienced leadership in the Extremo Sul steadily gained skills in quieting interruptions and keeping interventions on the topic. Eventually, it became common practice to hold lengthy “rule setting” discussions about who should be allowed to speak, how much time would be given to a certain issue, and so on, prior to substantive debates. People also learned about the necessity of developing voting rules carefully. The budget prioritizing process involved very complex voting procedures, as the group placed seven budget categories in order of priority and then placed numerous specific demands in order within each category. The simple yes or no vote did not work for these intricate orderings. It required some experience before meeting coordinators learned how to explain the purpose of the vote and how to make the rules clear. Avoiding personal quarrels and learning to work with rules guiding speech and voting were, I would argue, the first step in developing “enlarged thinking.” Many who spoke to me of the problems that were occurring saw them as resulting out of selfishness. Today, the budget process is in a tumult. Stuck on petty issues. We want it to grow much more. You should never be snobby. You should never say “me,” you should always say “us.” (Claudia) All these aggressions in the assemblies have happened because people still haven’t put it into their heads that this here is a whole, a collective. . . . They are always trying to get their cut. If everyone saw that what we do is for the whole, this would all work much better. . . . This is [a question of] culture. The culture of the leadership. (Elza)

In the Extremo Sul assemblies, discomfort with the raucous meetings in which some people seemed to pursue their own demands at any cost eventually led to a widespread acceptance of rules.

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Extremo Sul: Negotiating Regionwide Support for Impoverished Neighborhoods As the Extremo Sul budget forum began to consolidate, a different aspect of “enlarged thinking” emerged: participants began to show solidarity for the needs of the poorest neighborhoods, and they began to see their interests as related to the region as a whole and not just to their own neighborhoods. Although most participants still sought to get their own neighborhood demands met, regionwide unity, solidarity, and fairness increasingly became catchwords at neighborhood assemblies and in the budget forum. These changes were a direct result of the experiences of cooperation described in Chapter 8. In particular, leaders from five of the six microregions began to work together, principally in the effort to defeat a “bully” neighborhood that was seeking to monopolize investments through inchaço. The organizers of this cooperative effort came to dominate the budget assemblies in the Extremo Sul. Attending assemblies throughout the region, these new leaders repeatedly spoke of the need to “defend the region” rather than “defend the neighborhood.” This discourse of unity and solidarity typically brought much nodding and applause. In the following year, a candidate slate supported by this “cooperative” leadership group won the elections to the Municipal Budget Council.3 Several factors seemed to be behind the growing acceptance of a discourse of regionwide unity. On the one hand was growing frustration with the disorganized and rowdy meetings: many commented in passing that it was necessary to be more “civilized.” Selfish, personalistic, nonconciliatory behavior was considered “childish.” On the other hand, people seemed to be developing a genuine respect for the needs of others. Moving descriptions of the conditions in impoverished settlements often brought words of sympathy and support as participants from better-off neighborhoods took the stand and called for prioritizing investments in those settlements. One of the major efforts in this direction was a resettlement project for a shantytown on the river’s edge in Belém Novo. The settlement was one of the most impoverished in the region, and only one resident was active in the budget forum. Dona Carolina’s voice as a “single representative” proved strong enough to garner several supporters for the resettlement of the shantytown. The strip of houses, many of which stood on stilts over the water, had no basic sanitation or running water. But because of their precarious location, on a thin strip of land between the road and riverbank, resolving those prob-

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lems in loco would be virtually impossible. Over the course of 1994, the emerging “cooperative” leaders in the forum rallied support for the relocation of the settlement to an area where infrastructure and legal ownership could be obtained. As a result, the purchase and development of the land entered into the 1995 investment plan. The following year, regional leaders, realizing that the relocated residents could not afford to build decent housing in the new subdivision, began to call for the construction of brick houses as a second phase of the resettlement project. Since housing construction was extremely expensive, the delegates worried that the project would be rejected by the administration unless there was a strong show of support within the region. The regional leadership vigorously campaigned for the project at neighborhood assemblies and in the budget forum. The result was that in 1995 the theme of Land Tenure Legalization was given top priority in the majority of neighborhoods, and the housing project received top priority in that category. This was a clear message to the administration that the region as a whole overwhelmingly supported the project. All this occurred despite the fact that few of those who would be directly benefited by the project had attended the assemblies. Although this story shows that poor, less-mobilized neighborhoods, when their needs were great, could indeed find substantial support from other neighborhoods, a more judicious appraisal suggests that the project, like many others, was supported by participants out of a combination of solidarity with others and a newly broadened sense of their own interests. The united leadership made two different sets of arguments in their efforts to convince delegates to support the project. They spoke of the importance of unity and of the need to defend the interests of the poorest squatter settlements that dotted the region. This resettlement project was seen as a major effort to attend to those needs, since the land purchased could house almost double the number of people living in Dona Carolina’s neighborhood. However, they also argued that support for the project would indirectly benefit all neighborhoods in the region. The approval of resettlement occurred in part because delegates believed that removing the settlements from the river’s edge would help clean up the river near Belém Novo, making it possible to bathe again in the beaches there. That would contribute to the economic development of the region by reviving tourism. The following year, when housing construction was approved on the resettlement site, which ran along the main road from the center of town into Belém Novo, the leadership referred again to this economic potential. “Imagine the picture

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post card of Belém Novo showing a ramshackle shantytown on the way in!” was a statement I heard repeated innumerable times in interviews and assembly meetings. Given such mixed purposes, it was often hard to determine whether a particular demand passed through the assemblies because of self-interest or solidarity. But in either case, “enlarged thinking” seems to be at work. Even when participants voted for the project because they saw it as in their own interest, that conception of interest represented an enlarged understanding, one in which voters identified with the region as a whole and with its longer-term future, rather than just considering their own neighborhood’s needs and concerns. Indeed, in voting for the resettlement project, many delegates effectively favored that collective purpose over their own, more localized, and often dramatic needs, which would be left unmet for at least one more year. But there were also clear signs that solidarity for others came into play: after all, many other projects of regionwide interest could have been pursued—a transportation corridor or a health program. This one seemed to have particular mobilizing power because participants saw it as an effort to help the very poorest, who lived in their midst in visible squalor.

Glória: Incorporating Distributional Rules At the citywide level, prior to the first regional assemblies, the Municipal Budget Council voted each year on the criteria for the distribution of funds among regions—population, infrastructure deficiency, regionally defined priorities, and so on—and determined the relative weight that would be given to each one. In 1995, the council passed a resolution that called for the regional forums to use a similar system of criteria for determining the order of investment priorities within the regions as well. The intention was to reduce intraregional conflicts, since the proposed system would ensure that the numbers each neighborhood mobilized would not affect investment distribution within regions. The resolution required the budget forums to order priorities in the following manner: Within each expenditure category (such as pavement, water, education), the neighborhood that gave highest priority to that category would be given top priority. When more than one neighborhood prioritized the same category, a series of need-based criteria would be used to determine which would be attended to first. For example, priority in the pavement category would go to the project that would pave a main street or go by a school. The system would thus reflect the priorities of each neighbor-

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hood and their relative infrastructure deficiencies, but not the numbers of votes they could mobilize. In the year that it was decreed, the resolution was largely ignored. Most of the budget forums either modified the council’s system dramatically or threw it out altogether. Many of the participants from the various regions that I interviewed thought that the council should not intervene in the details of forum decisionmaking. Most of them were particularly dismayed by the fact that the new system would eliminate the “mobilization factor” from the distribution of investments within regions. The idea of having rules for distribution seemed reasonable, they said, but the prospect of eliminating neighborhood efforts to mobilize participants from the calculation of how to distribute resources was simply absurd. By submitting neighborhood demands to a series of calculations that would predetermine the outcome, the proposed system would constrain regionwide debates. Although they soundly rejected the proposed system—which was later declared “optional” except in cases where negotiations broke down among neighborhoods—most Regional Budget Forums took need-based criteria into account, in some cases through ad hoc discussions and in other cases through formal rating systems of their own design. But in almost all the regions, the budget forums allowed “the mobilization factor” to influence investment decisions as well. In the Extremo Sul, for example, the council’s system was used to decide which neighborhoods would be given first priority in each sector. But actual allocations of investment, such as how much pavement each neighborhood would receive, were still decided through debate and negotiation, and the number of delegates each neighborhood could elect to the forums strongly affected the outcome. Glória was among several regions that had developed their own systematic rules for distribution long before the Municipal Budget Council churned out its resolution. But as the mobilizations and demobilizations described in Chapter 7 occurred, new groups that did not have experience using what was an extremely complex system of decisionmaking began to take over the leadership of the conselho. For one year, no formal criteria were used at all in the priority-setting process. Then, during the period of my study, the new leadership attempted to create its own criteria system. This effort grew, in part, out of much encouragement from the administration-employed community organizer assigned to the region. Rather than insisting that the forum use the Municipal Budget Council’s official system, he suggested that the delegates design their own. The budget forum, led by an “executive committee,” decided to define the distributional method from the bottom up, beginning with rank-and-file partici-

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pants attending the intermediary assemblies in each of the six groupings of neighborhoods, the “subregions.” Getting many first-time participants—the vast majority of whom who were poor and had little formal education—to attend subregional meetings in order to discuss the rules the process should be guided by was a difficult and often frustrating task. The subregional discussions were complicated enough already, as we have seen. Now, in addition to prioritizing investment categories and projects, the executive committee wanted them to discuss how those decisions should be made compatible with the decisions made by other neighborhoods. At first, the executive committee simply presented a list of possible criteria that could be used for regionwide distribution: each subregion’s participation, carência (need), population, and infrastructure priority. The committee would ask the assembly if there were other suggestions, which there never were, since most participants did not really understand the purpose of the criteria. After all, most of them had come to the assemblies with specific projects in mind and were only beginning to realize that hard choices would have to be made between those projects and the demands of other neighborhoods. At later meetings, the coordinators presented better explanations for having the criteria, asking the participants to consider which issues were most important to them. They would vote on which criterion should be given the most weight in regionwide distribution. At two of the four meetings that held such a vote participation was deemed most important, and at two, carência. In the end, most of the people attending never seemed to fully understand what they were voting for. This was not a surprise, since the executive committee and the delegates themselves had not yet defined how the criteria system would actually function. It was therefore difficult to explain clearly to the residents the purpose of the criteria. But these faltering discussions at the bottom level of the pyramid of decisionmaking helped rank-and-file participants become aware of the fact that their demands would be considered in conjunction with the demands of other neighborhoods and that there were systematic ways that decisions could be made about regionwide distribution. In the next stage of negotiating priorities, the newly elected budget delegates (about half of whom had been delegates in the year before) met several times to come up with the actual method of distributing investments. First, a lengthy discussion took place about whether carência or participation should be given more weight. Not surprisingly—since those neighborhoods that participated more had

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the majority—the delegates voted to give preference to participation. Carência would go in second place. Then the delegates discussed how to measure each criterion. On the measurement of participation, one suggestion was to use the method Glória had used in previous years, assessing each neighborhood’s attendance throughout the year in the Conselho Popular and in the budget forum. In the end, however, the delegates decided that the number of delegates each subregion elected was the simplest index of participation. They developed a scale from one to four categorizing the number of delegates of each subregion. Since no data were available on infrastructure needs at the subregional level, the measurement of carência was determined by discussion and voting: a representative of each area defended a particular localization on a scale of carência ranging from one to three, others contested that localization, and the assembly voted. This led to some surprises. For example, the carência for Subregion Four, historically one of the poorest parts of Glória, was reduced over the course of discussion because the delegates became convinced that it had already received a great deal of infrastructure in earlier years. After this complex discussion, the two subregions that rated highest in participation were given top priority in most investment categories. Those that scored high on carência but could not mobilize large numbers were unlikely to receive any capital expenditures at all, since they could not compete with equally needy areas that could mobilize. Perhaps this result would have been different if the administration-employed community organizer had intervened more directly, insisting, for example, that all subregions get some of their demands attended to or that carência and participation be given equal weight. But the organizer preferred to allow the delegates themselves to make all such decisions, encouraging them to design distributional rules but not pressuring them to make that design conform to any specific conception. Although the result was a system biased against certain needy neighborhoods, this process meant that newly mobilized people with very little experience in collective decisionmaking began to look well beyond their localized interests to think about general rules. I would argue that this lesson was highly valuable because it took the development of “enlarged thinking” to a new level: not only did people gain a sense of collective identity and of solidarity with others, but they also began to think about how those newly acquired sensibilities could be systematically correlated with their own “self-regarding” pursuits. Rather than simply adopting rules invented by more experienced

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activists, the budget assemblies became spaces in which first-time participants had the chance to think about the general principles that should guide decisionmaking.

Reflections on “Enlarged Thinking” In both regions I studied, participants managed to coordinate “otherregarding” and “self-regarding” motives in their decisions on how to distribute capital improvements. This coordination was not always perfect: at times the neediest groups were indeed excluded altogether, and in general the more-organized continued to benefit more from the process. But since neighborhood mobilization varied over the years, the balance of winners and losers fluctuated as well. Furthermore, there was a marked tendency for particularly disadvantaged neighborhoods to get their demands fulfilled as long as they could mobilize enough people to elect a “single representative.” Not all regions incorporated “mixed motives” into their decisionmaking. In the Leste region, for example, delegates developed a distribution system that included only need-based criteria. In the Eixo da Baltazar region, in contrast, the “tyranny of the majority” was so predominant that the Municipal Budget Council eventually had to intervene to protect a group that was systematically excluded from the lists of regional priorities. But these two regions were on opposite ends of a spectrum in which most of the Regional Budget Forums, like Glória’s and Extremo Sul’s, simultaneously addressed the demands of both the best mobilized and the most needy. Some general lessons can be taken from the stories I have told here of how participants, through the experience of collective decisionmaking, develop “enlarged thinking.” As individuals left their neighborhoods to encounter other groups in collective decisionmaking forums, they did broaden their perspective of their particular (neighborhood) interests to consider collective (regionwide) interests, and they did begin to feel solidarity with neighborhoods that were particularly disadvantaged. Yet unanimity and consensus did not result from this process. The basis of the sense of commonality was less a recognition of common interests than a realization of the necessity to negotiate together. The participants I interviewed also suggested that there was no unreconcilable contradiction between “self-regarding” and “otherregarding” attitudes. As in everyday life, people struggled to find compromises between altruistic and self-interested objectives, because they found rewards in altruism as well as in fulfilling their

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self-regarding needs. They saw participating in a decisionmaking forum that was “generous” as part of what made the experience worthwhile. Indeed, when “selfishness” and brute competition dominated assemblies, many stopped participating. What is more, many participants recognized that the participatory ideal would lose much of its legitimacy if it systematically ignored very needy neighborhoods. Building “enlarged thinking” was not a linear process. Even in a region such as Glória, where a strong, cohesive regional movement had existed for some time, learning began anew when new participants mobilized and rose to leadership positions. This instability grew out of a very positive aspect of the budget process: as shown in Chapter 7, the budget continually mobilized new participants. Since the motives behind decisionmaking were mixed, and since the learning processes that brought more-inclusionary motives into decisionmaking mechanisms were fragile, the neediest and poorest groups sometimes were excluded from the benefits of budget policy. Another lesson has to do with the role the government can play in mitigating these exclusions. In Chapter 7, I argued that state actors can play a dual role in promoting the mobilization of poor neighborhoods: creating an enabling environment for collective action and acting as “external agents.” This chapter has seen both of these factors working in a different way to help counteract the inequality problem. Community organizers hired by the government worked closely with the delegates all year-round, not only disseminating information about the workings of the budget and the kinds of investments possible, but also promoting ideas about distributional justice. Often, the use of formal criteria to ensure fairness came directly from the encouragement of these external agents. The members of the Municipal Budget Council also played an important role in promoting “enlarged thinking” at the regional level: “socialized” into a culture of fair distribution in the council, they were the ones who proposed the use of distributional criteria in their regional forums. Despite these advances, some observers within the government believed that the forums should have been more tightly controlled so as to ensure that the most needy neighborhoods would always be fairly heard. The objections of many participants to such controls should be taken seriously: some thought that the entire participatory process was at stake. After all, the mobilization process described in Chapter 7 occurred only because people believed that participation would bring direct material rewards to their neighborhoods. The use of rules that did not give preference to better mobilized neighborhoods could have constrained one of the most powerful forces countering the “inequality” problem.

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At the same time, predetermining distribution rules “from above” could have also jeopardized one of the ways that the budget process contributed in general to the formation of a more politically capable and organized citizenry. Participants, even if they did not perfectly resolve the inequality problem through the experience of developing “home grown” rules for distribution, gained a more sophisticated conception of the political process. People who joined the assemblies to seek immediate attention to their most basic and localized needs found themselves discussing their larger political ideals. We could rightly call this process one in which they began to think about their own, pragmatically based, “democratic theories.” Had the government simply intervened with preset rules within which the localized priorities of participants were technically allocated, this remarkable opportunity for grassroots theorizing would have been lost.

Notes 1. The term developmental theories of democracy has been used by Macpherson (1977) and Held (1987) to describe the democratic traditions of Rousseau and J. S. Mill. 2. The phrase, according to Benhabib, comes from Hannah Arendt. 3. In that year, the defeated Ponta Grossa council member of the year before returned, once again with busloads of the poorest Ponta Grossa residents. By this time, however, many had become aware of his manipulations. The prior year one poor settlement had come out to vote for him and then he proposed investments only in other parts of the subregion. This time, many of his supposed constituency, frustrated with his failure to support their projects in the previous year, voted against him. Nevertheless, his slate won about 25 percent of the vote, giving him a (nonvoting) alternate seat on the Municipal Budget Council.

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Resisting Co-optation, Contesting Government Control

One of the premises of the participatory ideal is that civic groups will have significant influence on how a government’s goals and policies are defined, that is, that with participation civil society can transform the state from the “bottom up.” But many scholars have challenged this point, arguing that state-sponsored participatory policies involve much more top-down control of participants than bottom-up control of the state. This was defined in Chapter 1 as the co-optation problem. If, as I argued in Chapter 5, the impetus of participatory policy came largely “from above,” does that mean that the government alone defined the boundaries of participatory decisionmaking? Or did the creation slip from the reins of the creator, gaining influence in policy arenas in ways never intended by those who initiated participatory forums? After discussing the problem of co-optation in this chapter more generally, I will map out the “deliberative” reach of participant decisionmaking, looking at the extent to which participants within the Municipal Budget Council, the thematic forums, and the regional forums were able to resist government control of the decisionmaking process.

The Co-optation Hypothesis In Chapters 8 and 9, I argued that once people began participating, the experience of collective decisionmaking increased their political efficacy, promoting both the strengthening of cooperative ties of civic organizing and the development of a new political consciousness among participants. What has not been examined thus far is whether 195

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participants also gained the skills and knowledge that would help them to negotiate not only among themselves but also with the government. Political philosophers in the “developmental school” of participation argue that through experience people learn how government works and develop the self-confidence to engage in broader arenas of decisionmaking (Pateman, 1970:45–66, Macpherson, 1988:44–76, Gould, 1988:160–170; Held, 1987:254–264). Yet, although few deny that experience in civic organizing and collective decisionmaking gives people skills and knowledge that help them in future struggles, some authors have suggested that participating in state-initiated decisionmaking forums (as opposed to organizing autonomously) can actually reduce the political efficacy of community organizers. Such participation, they argue, co-opts rather than empowers participants, transforming radical activists apt to resist government actions into conciliatory supporters. The classic work on co-optation is Selznick’s (1949) study of participatory policy in the Tennessee Valley Authority. Selznick compares the influence that members of official participatory programs had over government decisions to the power that other groups wielded informally. His conclusion is that often governments need to give decisionmaking power to outside groups that have the capacity to destabilize a regime, such as business groups threatening to campaign against the governing party if certain policies are implemented. But such real transfers of power are likely to occur only informally, so as to maintain a public impression of government strength. When power is formally devolved to outside groups, through the creation of citizen advisory boards, local committees, and the like, Selznick argues, state actors always have ulterior motives. The goal may be to create a public impression of representativeness or to transfer the burden of politically uncomfortable decisions to civic forums. Policymakers may also use participatory organizations as channels for controlling policy implementation on the ground. But what keeps participants from resisting that control? Some argue that in government-designed forums resistance is rare because the organizational structure of those forums inhibits it. In the first place, participatory forums narrow the frame of discussion, limiting issues to those identified by policymakers as “safe.” In a comparison of sixteen different citizen participation programs in the United States, for example, Gittell (1983) found that once people entered into government-initiated forums, they tended to limit their roles to monitoring rather than campaigning. Similarly, Coit (1978:298) argues that participating in government-defined programs diverts

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“people into pseudo-conflicts rather than engaging them in effective struggle.” For Goodman (1971:172), participation assigns the poor the task of “administering their own state of dependency” rather than giving them a chance to change the structures that oppress them. Moreover, the same authors argue that by drawing community leaders into participatory committees and councils, governments demobilize community movements. Participatory planning and decisionmaking efforts keep “troublemakers” off the streets, distracting them with “less threatening” occupations (Coit, 1978:300). Or as Piven (1970:35) remarks, “Those people who might otherwise have become a force by the trouble they made are now too busy.” Gittell (1983:92) notes that the government-mandated decisionmaking forums, because they do not encourage leaders to engage in “horizontal” mobilizing efforts, are typically much less effective than community organizations or social movements. Instead of mobilizing their communities, participants focus on establishing “vertical networks with people in official positions.” In response to the “co-optation hypothesis,” a number of scholars have suggested that once governments allow citizen groups to “come to the table,” the results of negotiation cannot be fully controlled by policymakers. As Painter (1992:33) puts it, participation is a “two-way process with opportunities and risks on both sides. Once an authority has committed itself to consultation . . . it has set in train a process that it may not be able to manage.” Marris (1987:140) asserts that as long as participants maintain an awareness of the risks involved in joining up and as long as they continue organizing outside participatory forums, they can make marginal gains that would be out of their reach if they did not step up to the bargaining table. Selznick (1949:261) himself, the originator of the co-optation hypothesis, comments that governments often must make sure “that the co-opted elements do not get out of hand, do not take advantage of their formal position to encroach upon the actual arena of decision.” This suggests that the very fact that participatory forums are important for legitimizing government actions can mean that participants have some bargaining power. It should already be clear that some of the fears of the co-optation theorists were not fulfilled in Porto Alegre. As I argued in Part 2, there was no need for the Porto Alegre government to use participatory forums to “divert agendas,” because participants’ concerns coincided with the government’s interest in promoting a democratic, socially just image and in providing visible benefits to the poor. In addition, the participatory budget did not have a demobilizing effect,

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as expected. To the contrary, the budget policy led to the strengthening rather than the weakening of civic groups at a time when neighborhood organizations were on the decline elsewhere. Although participants and government agreed on the general focus of the budget policy, they did not always agree on the specifics: what kinds of improvements were most appropriate or technically feasible, what kinds of investments the government was capable of carrying out, and just how far participatory decisionmaking should go in controlling the details of government activity. Government agencies always have much greater technical resources than participants, which allows them to develop convincing explanations for their policy positions. In the Porto Alegre case this imbalance was particularly great, since participants were largely poor people with little formal education. This chapter will examine whether participants were habitually swayed by the government’s greater power of argumentation. It will also look at what happened when participants did object to the government’s positions or when they demanded control over new arenas of decisionmaking. In this chapter I will compare the negotiating process within the regional forums—the focus of the past few chapters—to the other two spaces of budget decisionmaking: the thematic forums and the Municipal Budget Council. I will show that the tendency to resist government positions was much greater within the regional forums precisely because of the mobilization and organization processes. Furthermore, I will show that in all the forums, when participants did challenge the government, they usually obtained concessions. The explanation behind these findings will shed some light on the limits of the co-optation hypothesis and on the possibilities for participants in state-initiated forums to influence government goals.

Four Degrees of Citizen Control Although it is certainly true that the budget forums had a significant amount of real deliberative power, the government’s claim that participants had final say over all aspects of city spending was somewhat misleading. In fact, neither were the participants capable of processing and monitoring all aspects of city spending nor was the government particularly insistent that they control decisions in all areas. In practice, at different stages of the budget process, starting with the discussion of neighborhood-level capital expenditures and ending with discussion of the entire budget document, participants had dif-

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ferent amounts of deliberative power over decisionmaking. I identified four “degrees” of citizen control. Where Bottom-Up Decisions Were Final. In some parts of the budget-formu-

lating process, participants made final decisions with little or no intervention on the part of the government. The rules of the budget policy clearly obligated the government to respect these decisions. Where Bottom-Up Decisions Were “Negotiated” with Government. In other parts of

the process, participants formulated proposals but no clear rules existed concerning the government’s obligation to accept the decisions. Participants engaged in extensive discussion with government. When negotiations went well, participant proposals were likely to be implemented. The opposite was true when they failed. Where Participants Approved Complex Government Proposals. Often, government

officials asked participants for their approval of proposals the officials had designed. When these proposals were highly complex, the government had nearly total control over how participants perceived them, and participants usually lacked the technical capacity to suggest modifications. Nevertheless, participants ultimately had the power to veto or modify such proposals. Where Government Claimed Veto Power. In certain areas of decisionmaking, the government reserved the right to veto the proposals that participants made. Explanation, negotiation, and discussion usually occurred, but the government had the final say. It should be noted that these “degrees” refer to the actual reach of participant decisionmaking rather than legal requirements or official claims about the policy. No law existed at the time of my research determining the extent to which the government was required to fulfill participant demands. The government publicly declared that all budget decisions were “approved by the Municipal Budget Council.” But in practice, it had significant influence over the result of many of the council’s decisions. Not only did the administration have the monopoly on information about government activities, but also government staff included highly skilled professionals who were nearly always capable of formulating convincing arguments. Figure 10.1 lists the stages of budget decisionmaking according to the four degrees of deliberative power. The only important part of the budget-formulating process that clearly fit into the first category, where bottom-up decisions were final, was the process of defining investment priorities at the regional level. Each year, neighborhood groups held meetings and came up

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Figure 10.1

Degrees of citizen control for different budget decisions

Bottom-Up Decisions Are Final

Bottom-Up Decisions Are Negotiated

The order of priorities defined in the regional forums The method of organizing discussion and of prioritizing demands in both regional and thematic forums

Defining thematic priorities Occasional proposals by council members

Government Presents Proposals for Approval

Government Claims Veto Power

General Defining distribution of “technical resources among lack of agencies viability” (including Personnel and Maintenance) Each agency’s investment plan “Institutional” investment proposals How thematic priorities should be incorporated into policy goals What distributional criteria should be and how they should be calculated Each agency’s technical criteria General policy proposals

with ordered lists of priorities in each investment category with little interference from the prefeitura. Delegates elected to the Regional Budget Forums created final lists, determining an ordering of priorities for the region within each category. My comparison of these regional lists and the final investment plans showed that although it was up to the council to determine the amount of funding each region would receive, neither the government nor the Municipal Budget Council ever decided to override the order of priorities defined at the regional level. Exceptions had to do with government claims of “technical feasibility,” as will be discussed below. Aside from this regional priority-setting process, Figure 10.1 shows that most other aspects of the budget process involved a great deal of negotiation between participants and the administration. The

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next section will examine how such negotiations played out within the thematic forums and the Municipal Budget Council. Then I will discuss how they functioned within the Regional Budget Forums.

The Thematic Forums and the Municipal Budget Council: Negotiating Government Proposals At least up to the time of my research, the priorities defined by the thematic forums fit into the second category, where bottom-up decisions were negotiated with the government. Through a series of assemblies each year, participants in these forums would come up with long lists of priorities in different categories: priorities for the capital budget, priorities for the maintenance budget, and priorities for general policy directions. Then, the government would produce an initial proposal that would include some and exclude other priorities defined by the thematic forum participants. Unlike the regional process, the extent to which the government included the forums’ priorities had to do with how successful the negotiating process between administration officials and participants was. Where participants negotiated closely with agency officials, exchanging information about the details of agency activities, they could often come to agreement about which projects that had been implemented should have continued funding, and about changes and new projects. For example, in 1995, the Economic Development Forum met repeatedly with officials from the Secretariat of Industry and Commerce, who convinced the forum to support many ongoing projects. In the Transportation Forum, however, conflicts between participants and officials led to a breakdown of negotiations. The result was that the secretariat’s initial proposal included none of the forums’ prioritized demands but did include continued funding for an automated busmonitoring system that had been soundly rejected by the forum. Most of the work done in the Municipal Budget Council involved the third category of decisionmaking process, where participants approved complex government proposals. Over the year-and-a-half period of my attendance at council meetings, the government presented dozens of proposals for approval. Most of the time, council members had neither the technical capacity nor the time to seriously evaluate them. Most members had little more than primary education and many had full-time jobs that severely limited the time they could devote to council activities. The result was that, with few exceptions, the council simply rubber-stamped government proposals. For example, each year, council members were asked to approve the general

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budget proposal that divided up the revenues of each agency according to capital expenditures, maintenance, and personnel. Since the proposal was ready only after lengthy negotiations between GAPLAN and each city agency, GAPLAN usually presented it just a few weeks before the legal deadline to submit the figures to the City Assembly. In both years that I followed the process, members complained about the rushed circumstances under which the government requested their approval, but they did not challenge the proposal, which always passed within the deadline. Occasionally, council members did resist government proposals. When that occurred, the members were often able to make significant gains. If, for example, the council members representing the thematic forums were unsatisfied with an agency’s incorporation of their priorities, they could mobilize the other councillors to demand modifications in the agency’s capital expenditure proposal. In the first year that the thematic forums existed, no such efforts occurred. In the second year, however, several thematic councillors mobilized to pressure the government to attend to priorities that the agencies had left out of their proposals. After a period of intense negotiation between the Secretariat of Industry and Commerce, GAPLAN, and the councillors, the Economic Development Forum saw two more projects on its priority list included. The Transportation Forum, which had been totally ignored in the initial proposal, also succeeded in getting its top investment priority included in the Investment Plan. Despite the fact that the Municipal Budget Council was apparently capable of changing government priorities, it rarely wielded that power. Sometimes government proposals were accepted only after intense questioning. But in case after case, government officials were able to convince the council that their proposals were appropriate. In some decisions, the council had little technical capacity to contest highly complex planning issues, such as how personnel and maintenance revenues should be distributed among agencies or how many kilometers of street pavement the prefeitura was capable of implementing in a year. But the council also usually approved GAPLAN’s proposals on less technically complicated issues, such as the criteria for distribution of capital expenditures among regions. This compliance suggests that GAPLAN’s ability to convince the council members to favor its proposals was not just a matter of superior technical knowledge and explanatory capacities. The council members were simply overburdened with responsibilities. These unpaid volunteers were expected to meet two or three times a week in the evenings to evaluate the entire city budget. Therefore, there

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was not sufficient time for them to examine and discuss most issues at length. Furthermore, a (government-proposed, council-approved) ruling limited councillors to two consecutive terms. The idea was to ensure “rotation of power,” but the result was to keep council members inexperienced. The councillors had no independent source of technical advice: they relied on the government for all information regarding revenues and expenditures. Most were simply unaware that many of the issues being discussed were potentially controversial. In some ways, the Municipal Budget Council thus seems to fit the description of a “co-opted” participatory organization. The rules for participation were largely determined by the government. Participants were so burdened with responsibilities that they had little time to do anything beyond rubber-stamping government proposals. They certainly had little time to organize among themselves to come up with their own counterproposals. They also had little technical ability to do so. The Municipal Budget Council did have final approval over most aspects of the budget. But it was generally incapable of taking advantage of this power. As the next section will show, although the Regional Budget Councils had much less official power, they were much more likely to challenge government positions and to mobilize against them.

Regional Forums and Struggles over Technical Criteria The fourth category of citizen control, where the government claimed veto power, applied only to one major part of budget decisionmaking: issues of technical feasibility. Participants could not approve projects that the government determined were impossible, economically prohibitive, or unsafe. Officially, even this area of decisionmaking was supposed to be subject to the ultimate approval of the Municipal Budget Council. But in practice most issues of technical viability were negotiated between regional delegates and agency officials and never reached the council. Each year, after the Regional Budget Forums presented GAPLAN with their ordered lists of priorities, GAPLAN would submit each demand to the relevant agency. Agency officials would then meet directly with the Regional Budget Forums to discuss projects that they determined were technically unfeasible. The agencies vetoed some projects outright. More often, they negotiated changes in the projects with budget delegates to make them technically acceptable. At times, under pressure from del-

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egates, agencies eventually agreed to implement projects that they had initially rejected. The outcomes had much to do with the capacity of delegates to mobilize pressure on the administration. City agencies raised four types of “technical” problems about the projects that the regional forums proposed. First, agencies sometimes argued that projects were impossible in practice if implemented the way that participants demanded. For example, it would be impossible to connect a neighborhood to the water system if an adjacent neighborhood was not already connected. Or paving the lower portion of a street while leaving unpaved an upper portion would lead to erosion that would destroy the pavement. Such investments would be effective only if they were made along with other investments that, perhaps, participants had not themselves prioritized. Second, the agencies sometimes argued that demands were “economically prohibitive,” costing more than that region’s annual allocation for a certain type of investment. For example, bringing sewer lines to a lowlands neighborhood would require extremely deep pipelines or the purchase of expensive pumps. Third, the agencies often argued that the projects would break the rules of “good urban form.” For example, on streets narrower than nine meters cars could not pass and sufficiently broad pedestrian walkways could not be built. Fourth, legal barriers were often raised. Privately owned roads could not be paved without permission of the owner. Water and sewer lines also could not pass through private property without permission. During the first PT administration (1989–1992), city agencies rarely vetoed participant demands. The spirit was that “the people decide,” even if the decisions were not technically advisable or economically efficient. One of the hallmarks of the first PT administration was to reject technocratic planning traditions, including the idea of applying “proper urban form” to hillside shantytowns. The result was the paving of many narrow, steep hillside avenues and streets and the investment in expensive drainage and sewer projects in isolated and hard-to-reach areas. But as the years went by and the second administration took office, some of these “alternative” projects came back to haunt the administration. Some projects that the government had agreed to implement turned out to be extraordinarily expensive. One case was a storm-drain project that would require a multimilliondollar flood control and landfill project, possible only through a large development loan from the federal government or from a multilateral organization. Some of the traditional “urban form” rules turned out to have value. In many cases, for example, narrow favela streets, once paved, often became major thoroughfares where traffic piled up.

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In response to these problems, the second administration began to call for more rigorous attention to technical rules. The secretary of public works noted: As a group of problems started to come, we realized the need to have minimum criteria, if only to ensure the projects’ success, so that the commitments the government makes . . . can be fulfilled. Because throwing up a project into the air and saying that you are going to do it, without knowing technically if it is adequate, if its cost is going to be supported by the budget, or if, upon being implemented, it is going effectively to improve the quality of life, is like jumping into the dark. That is why technical issues started to become more important to us. (Estilac Xavier, secretary of public works, 1993–1996)

In this context, the regional forums increasingly found that their demands had been “rejected” for technical reasons. In most cases, the delegates requested more information about why the rejection had occurred. The agencies would then send officials to meet with the forums and explain the problem. Often, the delegates would be convinced, especially if the agency could argue that the project was technically impossible, rather than simply “not recommendable.” But equally often, the explanations were met with suspicion. Delegates wondered if the problems were really insurmountable or if technical issues were raised to justify rejecting projects that the government did not believe were important. The following comments from delegates express a variety of such distrustful opinions: The government tries to create limits. It tries to create obstacles so that it does not have to attend to everybody. (Ivan) The engineers think that a project isn’t so necessary, that it isn’t priority, so they postpone it until next year. We can’t do anything about it. We just prepare for next year. (Humberto) It’s so easy to say that something is not viable! In our case, they didn’t want to put 900 meters of pavement in one single place. If you divide up pavement into small projects of 100 or 150 meters, then you attend to a greater number of communities. It’s not in their interest to accept our demand. (Rubens) These technical criteria are going to make it so that the prefeitura no longer does any public works in the favelas, in the illegal city. The majority of streets in Glória could not be paved according to these rules. (Abel) Now SMOV [the Secretariat of Public Works] comes up with the idea that the streets have to be nine meters wide in order to be paved. . . . It makes sense according to their logic, but if you make all the streets in a favela nine meters wide, you would have to remove one-third of the houses! (Valquiria)

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I know that if they put the machines to work, if they wanted to, they could do it. Everything is possible if there is good will. But then the técnicos [experts] say that it can’t be done. We have no idea if what they are saying makes sense! (Helena) It’s the bad will of the técnicos. Because the incline index that they say we must have is much more than what they ask for in other places. The Vila do Sargento is 30 percent steeper than we are, but they put a sewer in there. (Janio)

Despite their general lack of technical information, these statements show that participants were capable of arguing quite effectively with government personnel. Some questioned the validity of imposing technical restrictions altogether, expressing the belief that the government was able to carry out any project if it had the political will to do so. Other participants noted that such technical criteria were morally unacceptable: if “good urban form” were always given priority, most poor neighborhoods in the city would be excluded from investment. Since the PT administration was supposed to be governing for the poor, and since in other “alternative projects” the government had advertised its commitment to the “informal city,” such appeals had force in the negotiating process. Experienced delegates also often used comparisons to other projects that the government had implemented as evidence against claims of technical lack of feasibility. Since the government had indeed modified its practices, seeking in the second administration to follow technical rules more rigorously, plenty of such evidence was available. And when agency personnel explained that the rules had changed because earlier projects caused problems, they still often failed to convince participants. For example, in one case a Secretariat of Public Works representative appealed to safety in order to defend the need for broad streets. “If you don’t have enough room for sidewalks,” he said, “then pedestrians would be at risk from the cars speeding down newly paved roads.” In response to this appeal, a participant remarked: “If the government is so concerned with safety, why do the municipal buses still use fiberglass seats, which have long been shown to be dangerous?” This type of comparative argument demonstrates the participants’ tendency to use the practical knowledge they have—such as of what the government has done elsewhere in the city—to contest the technical claims of the prefeitura. All this suggests that the regional delegates were far from coopted in the sense that they did not necessarily buy into the government’s well-argued technical explanations. But were they actually able to force the government to implement projects that it considered

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unfeasible? At times they were not. In the case of one sewer project in the Extremo Sul region, the Department of Water and Sewers (DMAE) insisted that the flow requirements could not be met and that the existing septic tanks were the best option for treating sewage. Refusing to believe the government’s arguments, the neighborhood decided to withdraw itself in protest from the participatory budget process altogether.1 But in many other cases, after lengthy meetings with participants, compromises were reached. Delegates would agree to try to convince one home owner to move her house out of the street, so that at least a seven-meter width could be maintained for paving. Or where a road was too steep to pave safely, delegates accepted the construction of a stairway, which would improve access to hilltop houses, although cars would not get through. Certain city agencies were much easier to negotiate with than others. DMAE, with its long tradition of autonomous decisionmaking and technocratic planning, wielded much more complex technical arguments than any other agency. The permeability of aquifers could cause contaminants to percolate into the water supply, or the landscape could prohibit appropriate flows of sewage material. Since such complex arguments referred to unseen, subterranean conditions, they were very difficult for participants to contest. Claims about how many cars could fit on a street or how steep a street cars could safely climb, however, could be contested by pointing to visible examples in neighboring areas where such problems did not arise. Nevertheless, even in cases where the government totally rejected a project, mobilization by participants could be effective. An example was the story of Lageado, a settlement in a distant rural section of the Extremo Sul region that did not have running water. Since shallow wells had dried up or become contaminated, residents depended on the weekly visits by the prefeitura’s water truck. In 1993, the newly organized neighborhood convinced the Extremo Sul budget delegates to place “water for Lageado” in first place for the region as a whole, but DMAE initially rejected the demand, arguing that bringing pipelines five kilometers from the nearest settlement would violate cost-benefit requirements. Over the course of 1994, activists from throughout the Extremo Sul region campaigned intensely, getting petitions signed, mobilizing large groups to meet with DMAE officials, filing endless complaints at the mayor’s office, and threatening to go to the local news media with the story of how the government had ignored their priorities. When a newspaper published one resident’s claims that the shallow-well water was spreading hepatitis, the mayor promised to resolve the problem, instructing DMAE to consid-

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er alternative investment possibilities. DMAE proposed to build artesian wells in the neighborhood, but could not find a subcontractor technically qualified for the job. Two years later, the neighborhood still had no running water. In response, a group of women from the Extremo Sul region held a demonstration in front of city hall, where they banged pots and pans and made speeches about having no water to wash their dishes. If they did not get water soon, they threatened, they would camp out in front of city hall and wash their babies’ diapers in the municipal fountain. The mayor ordered DMAE to take emergency action, and within weeks, DMAE had agreed to build the five kilometers of pipelines that earlier had been considered economically prohibitive. The decision was partly justified by the fact that, in the meantime, the government had decided to pave the road running through Lageado to connect the center city to a new sanitary landfill. But most DMAE technicians with whom I spoke agreed that although the cost of the project was reduced by implementing it together with the pavement project, it still did not make “good technical sense.” Clearly, the mobilization of the entire Extremo Sul region around the issue had the made the difference. Although the Lageado story was particularly dramatic, the ability of participants to get the government to loosen technical restrictions was significant whenever they organized and used their power to put pressure on the administration. The more often the government reversed its initial technical claims under pressure from participants, the more difficult it became for the government to make those claims in the first place. In response to accusations of favoritism, in 1995 GAPLAN began to ask city agencies to define “technical criteria,” which could be presented to participants before they formulated their priorities. If criteria were clear and rigorously adhered to, it would be more difficult for participants to argue that other neighborhoods were being favored unfairly through the manipulation of technical arguments. City agencies began to print documents advising participants of the technical limitations to capital expenditures. DMAE technicians began to meet with delegates in every region of the city to explain a complex index rating a variety of technical conditions. The result was a system that made technical evaluations seem completely immune to accusations of manipulation. Other agencies followed suit, seeking to present lists of technical criteria to participants before the prioritization process took place. GAPLAN then decided that these criteria would have greater legitimacy if they were approved by the Municipal Budget Council. A series of meetings was held in which agency officials explained the criteria to the council. After some

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changes were made to soften overly rigid requirements, the document passed. Was this a victory for an administration seeking to limit the reach of participants’ decisions? Certainly the government agencies preferred to have a set of official rules to fall back on. After the “technical criteria” document passed through the council, I repeatedly heard agency officials telling delegates that they could not complain about technical restraints because they had been approved by their own representatives in the Municipal Budget Council. Some participants believed that the purpose of the rules was to limit their negotiating power. But others noted that the government would also have greater difficulty granting exceptions to neighborhoods when it might have been politically valuable to do so. Indeed, from the perspective of many participants, the establishment of clear criteria was a major improvement in the budget process. To spend several months defending a demand only to have it rejected on technical grounds put a political strain on neighborhood leaders. Even if the criteria were not justified, it was better to know in advance that a project would be rejected than to have to explain to the neighborhood that the project for which it had mobilized intensely would not be implemented. Supporters further noted that only when the criteria were clearly defined could participants effectively resist them. One member of the Municipal Budget Council put it this way: Are we going to stop making the demands just because of the criteria? No! . . . For me, the idea of the technical criteria is not to prune away demands, as some people are thinking. The government doesn’t want to forfeit these criteria. But we in the movement aren’t going to forfeit our wish that these projects be implemented. So what’s the problem? Let’s make the government’s criteria clear at the beginning of the process, and then let’s go to work to change them. (André)

This statement, along with the evidence presented in this and the previous section, suggests that the best way to ensure that the government did not exert undue control over participant decisionmaking was to mobilize. Occasionally, mobilized groups of dissatisfied participants appealed to the media, which willingly published commentary on how the “grassroots administration” had failed to listen to the people. But most of the time, such steps were not necessary: keeping up the pressure on the administration, insisting on good explanations and the equal application of rules, and demanding that the government help participants solve their problems usually led to concessions from the administration. In this light, the establishment of clear tech-

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nical rules themselves could be seen as a bottom-up transformation of the budget policy that had come in response to participant pressure. Changes in those rules would occur only if participants mobilized further.

Testing the Limits of the Budget Policy On balance, the regional forums were able to resist the positions of the government more effectively than was the Municipal Budget Council. Whereas the council almost always passed government proposals, the forums often resisted government claims and fought for their priorities. The principal explanation for this difference lies in the organizational structures of the two forums. The council members were overburdened with responsibilities and were largely occupied with approving government proposals. The regional delegates, however, spent most of their time organizing around the demands that they themselves brought to the table. This led to the processes discussed in Chapters 7, 8, and 9. Neighborhood groups mobilized around specific issues and engaged in cooperative action with groups from other neighborhoods. Under these conditions, delegates had very strong organizational commitments to the proposals with which they dealt. The result was that participants were not easily co-opted: they rarely accepted weak, jargonistic arguments and often rallied against even the best explanations for why a project should not go forward. When the participants were well organized, they were usually successful at contesting government claims. Or, as one neighborhood activist put it: If the participatory budget representatives have a strong organization behind them as a support base, and if they represent this organization and not themselves alone, then they go to the government with a defined position. They put their foot down and fight for that position. . . . If the government doesn’t respect this position, that well-organized community may continue the struggle, demonstrating the power of organization, which sometimes is even greater than the power of explanation. . . . It’s the power of intellect against the power of necessity. They have technical knowledge and the community has knowledge of necessity. (Julia)

Most of the neighborhood activists who participated in the budget assemblies felt that the government genuinely respected their priorities. When participants were asked in our survey, “Does the population who participates in the participatory budget really decide about

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public works and services?” 70 percent answered “always” or “almost always.”2 Seventy-five percent of those who had been elected to a seat in the budget forums thought that the participants always or almost always decided how public works and services were allocated. 3 Chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10 have shown how a virtuous circle of civic organizing grew out of this satisfaction. As the administration convinced people that participation would bring rewards, mobilization in the pursuit of those rewards became the first step in a sequence of experiences through which participants developed political capabilities. Participatory, inclusive associations gained space in the neighborhoods, and bonds of cooperation developed among neighborhood groups. Participants gained sophisticated skills in democratic practice and a growing collective sensibility. These political capacities, I would argue, gave the regional forums the organizational power to contest the positions of the very state that had originally promoted their creation. That is, government credibility, the mobilization it generated, and the cooperation and solidarity that evolved out of that mobilization were all critical for combating co-optation. Thus the regional forums became new organizing spaces in which civic groups could strengthen and grow, but other participatory forums were less capable of resisting government control of decisionmaking. The members of the Municipal Budget Council did not seem to have as much capacity to organize around their own proposals and to challenge government projects as did the regional delegates. The very fact that council members largely engaged in approving projects formulated from the “top down” meant that they had little opportunity to develop the cooperative ties that might have brought them (or groups of them) together against government proposals. Just as Gittel (1983) suggests often occurs in state-initiated forums, council members focused on establishing “vertical” relationships with government officials rather than organizing “horizontally” among themselves. This result suggests that the hypothesis that participatory policy can be used to give legitimacy to government actions while demobilizing potentially radical activists applies much better to state-initiated forums where participants are primarily involved in analyzing topdown proposals than where participation involves a bottom-up priority formulation process. In Porto Alegre, participants were much more likely to mobilize passionately against a government veto of their own proposals than to reject government-defined proposals. How might citizen forums such as the Municipal Budget Council, which are principally engaged in approving top-down government proposals, become more effective at critically analyzing and contesting them when necessary? A key player here could be nongovernmen-

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tal organizations. For example, starting in 1994, one Porto Alegre NGO, CIDADE, received international funding to monitor the budget process and to provide external advice and support to participants. CIDADE staff attended the council meetings and on occasion produced documents to help council members consider alternatives to government proposals. One of the NGO’s staff members was actually elected to the council through a thematic forum and from within it was able to promote a number of changes in the “technical criteria.” Since the vast majority of participants had little formal education and little time outside budget meetings to analyze proposals, the intervention of such “qualified” personnel made a difference. Another general conclusion of this chapter is that when participants were able to mobilize in a challenge to the government— whether in the regional forums or in the Municipal Budget Council— they were usually quite successful. On every occasion that I observed participants questioning government positions, the government took those questions seriously. Officials would meet with participants, present evidence, negotiate alternatives, and, occasionally, agree to reverse original positions altogether. To understand why this flexibility occurred, one must consider the role that participation played in the administration’s broader strategy for governing, discussed in Chapter 5. The government relied on the mobilized support base of participants to help pass projects in the city council, to mobilize at election time, and so on. It also needed to maintain public approval and a public image that the government was “democratic” and “socially just.” Therefore, participants had significant bargaining power when they organized. On occasion, dissatisfied participants would declare that if the government did not listen to their demands, they would “go to Zero Hora,” the local newspaper. They rarely carried out these threats, however, because the image-conscious administration responded quickly. In a context where the government respected the Municipal Budget Council’s right to demand more control, the council ultimately was able to gain power over time, despite the difficulties in organizing. Usually pressure on the administration to open up new areas for the council’s consideration was instigated either by the CIDADE staff members that accompanied the process or by the highly educated professionals that were often elected to the council by the thematic forums. In one case, for example, a CIDADE observer convinced budget participants that they should also be able to examine certain details of the Secretariat of Public Works’ maintenance budget, although the agency’s representative had insisted that the issues were too “technical” to explain. In another case, thematic forum members

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pushed for greater council participation in decisions about the council’s discussion agenda. As a result, in 1994, council meetings, which had previously been coordinated by the government, began to be coordinated by a bipartite commission of council members and administration officials. In that same year, the council successfully pressured for the creation of a joint commission including council members, municipal labor union representatives, and administration representatives, which would have final say on all hiring and layoff decisions. Although the problem still remained that council members had too little time to monitor effectively this growing array of policy issues, the insistence that they should discuss a growing body of decisions further increased the transparency of government decisionmaking and opened up new areas of government action to potential challenges. Interestingly enough, although the Regional Budget Forums were able to resist government control within the narrow sphere of neighborhood-level capital improvements, they did not play as important a role in pushing for decisionmaking control in other areas of policymaking. That, I would argue, was a consequence of the same factors that led those forums to defend their own capital improvement projects so vociferously. Chapter 7 suggested that the mobilizational energy of the budget process came out of the fact that poor neighborhood residents easily recognized capital improvements as intensely important to their lives. The organization processes described in Chapters 8 and 9 occurred as people sought to gain such projects for their neighborhoods. Yet other types of decisions did not seem to generate the same mobilization response, because people for whom the costs of participation are high are not likely to get involved in issues they see as not actually essential for their everyday lives. The irony here is that the same factor that initiated mobilization in Porto Alegre—people’s desire to address easily recognizable, immediate needs—also put the brakes on organization around less immediate, more technically inaccessible issues. Nevertheless, even though it was more difficult to mobilize neighborhood participants around broader policy issues, there was also a slow but certain expansion of the decisionmaking role of the regional forums. By 1997, regional forums throughout the city were making decisions not only on capital improvements but also on spending for social services, cultural programs, and economic development projects. As neighborhood groups learned to identify with the region as a whole, the regional forums increasingly became organizing spaces in which people discussed and designed proposals for long-term planning and policymaking. In the Extremo Sul budget forum, partici-

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pants combined with other regional activists to formulate a regional plan for the southern part of the city. This proposal was later integrated into the Master Plan. In Glória, several recent budget participants joined in an older Conselho Popular effort to gain more control over how the administration provided everyday services—ranging from trash collection to road maintenance. These discussions of regionwide, longer-term projects tended to mobilize fewer people than the discussions about capital improvements. But they were becoming more and more common, engaging many participants who had initially entered into the budget process only to obtain specific improvements for their neighborhoods. All this suggests that the success of the budget policy that I have described in this study led to the development of a participatory system that went beyond the immediate confines of capital improvements. The budget policy was a proving ground in which a skilled, organized, and politically conscious citizenry could grow even in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Through it, participant decisionmaking gained legitimacy as an effective form of governance. Whereas citizen groups learned how to take advantage of their bargaining power, participatory forums in Porto Alegre became true spaces of negotiation through which civic groups could gain increasing control over the direction of state policies.

Notes 1. This strategy backfired, according to one resident, because by leaving the table, they missed the opportunity to convince the government to reconsider or to implement an alternative project. 2. All percentages in this paragraph exclude those who did not respond to the question or who “didn’t know.” 3. Those who participated in the thematic assemblies were (with reason) more skeptical, but still largely believed that they had real decisionmaking power: 60 percent of respondents answered “always” or “almost always.”

Part Five

CONCLUSIONS

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Overcoming the Dilemmas of Participatory Democracy

At the time of this writing, the PT is in its third term in office in Porto Alegre and Olivio Dutra, the first PT mayor, has gone on to govern the State of Rio Grande do Sul. What seemed in 1989 to be a rash, radical experiment in “giving power to the people” has become a way of life in Porto Alegre. Today, dozens of regular forums and councils discuss nearly every area of local decisionmaking. Seminars, conferences, and community meetings in which state officials and citizens discuss and decide together on issues ranging from street lighting to economic development policy are an everyday occurrence. Civic groups outside the state-sponsored participatory structure—ranging from innumerable neighborhood associations to a powerful Urban Reform Movement—have bloomed in the context of political opportunity. This study has explored the first steps in the making of what many will agree is the “most democratic city in Brazil.” Although today participatory democracy goes well beyond the discussion of capital improvements in the neighborhoods, it was the participatory budget policy and its initial focus on localized, immediate needs that blazed the trail of participation in Porto Alegre. I have examined the complex evolution of that policy, exploring how state actors came to implement it and how civic groups within Porto Alegre’s neighborhoods were affected by it. To conclude, I will outline some of the interconnections between processes that have been until now described separately and will reflect on their significance for our understanding of state-society relations.

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Mutually Reinforcing Solutions to the Problems of Participation Chapter 1 presented a triangle of participatory dilemmas, suggesting that building an empowering participatory policy is particularly difficult, because not only does each of the problems of participation exist on its own, but also solutions to one of them can exacerbate the others. Contrary to the generally pessimistic literature on participatory experiments, however, this study has suggested that there are ways that the solutions to the problems of participation can be mutually reinforcing. Figure 11.1 shows how the PT administration’s response to each of the problems helped mitigate the others. Two factors had a critical impact on the (at least partial) resolution of all three problems. First, the policy mobilized large numbers. Second, the government pursued an alternative political strategy that garnered support around the ideas of citizen participation, investment in poor areas, and government transparency. The left side of the triangle in Figure 11.1 indicates how the administration’s solution to the implementation problem also helped

Figure 11.1

Overcoming the dilemmas of participation

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HITHERTO EXCLUDED ORGANIZES AND RESISTS CO-OPTATION. PARTICIPANTS DEVELOP RULES WITHOUT INTERVENTION.

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IMPLEMENTATION

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resolve the inequality problem. The literature on left-wing parties in power suggests that they often have to forfeit efforts to benefit the hitherto excluded, making concessions instead to those groups that are most powerful, in order to maintain political support. In Porto Alegre, that could have meant handing over the budget process to the “participation” of the groups that were best organized, thereby reproducing political inequalities for the sake of political survival. Instead, the administration pursued an alternative strategy of gaining political backing that, in part, involved the mobilization of new civic groups in poor neighborhoods, thereby reducing political inequalities among neighborhoods. The right side of the triangle shows two reasons that the budget policy was implemented without using co-optation. Some studies of participation note that even when a government creates participatory forums open to the “hitherto excluded,” it often attempts to reduce the organizational capacity of participants lest they contest its broader priorities. But in Porto Alegre, both mobilizing poor neighborhoods and attending to their likely demands were themselves central priorities of the administration. As Chapters 7–10 showed, the mobilization that was initiated by the budget policy led to the development of a new type of civic organization that in many ways resembled a “combative” organization. Horizontally organized, the budget forums were the locus of an emerging political consciousness. These groups had the will and capacity to defend their demands, even when government agencies used complex technical arguments against them. In sum, the political strategy of the administration led it to encourage rather than fear the organization of civic groups that were capable of resisting co-optation. At the same time, the government’s situating the budget policy within broader efforts to build an image of an alternative government dedicated to democracy and social justice might be seen as a sign that the administration sought not to empower civic groups but to use them to create a veneer of political legitimacy for its own projects. But in Porto Alegre, the fact that the government’s legitimacy stood on its democratic reputation actually helped participants pressure administration officials to change the policies that they questioned. Certainly, the government always sought to convince participants that its positions were correct. But controlling the details of policymaking was less important than maintaining a strong grassroots support base and an image that it was responsive to citizen demands. The bottom of the triangle shows how the administration managed to address inequality and co-optation simultaneously. To avoid co-opting neighborhood participants, the administration could have

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engaged in a policy of total nonintervention, simply handing over control to preexisting organizations (as some of the “combative” neighborhood groups in the city would have preferred). Yet that would have solidified the inequalities that existed in Porto Alegre between regions that had strong civic organizations and those that did not. Instead, the administration created its own forums for participation and made direct efforts to encourage previously unorganized groups to join them. But these efforts did not lead to co-optation, as some scholars would expect. The forums turned out to be environments enabling the development of new groups, which, like the combative organizations existing before the policy was implemented, were capable of resisting co-optation. At the same time, certain types of state interventions in the name of resolving the inequality problem could have been detrimental to the autonomous decisionmaking ability of participants. As suggested in Chapter 9, the administration sometimes threatened to force the regional forums to distribute capital improvements according to predefined rules for distributional justice. It was a good thing that did not occur, I argued, because not only could it have jeopardized other mechanisms of diminishing the inequality problem (the mobilization of new groups) but also, in most regions, participants tended over time to take distributional justice into account on their own, although usually combining it with a preference for the most mobilized. In sum, although the participatory budget policy was the cause and effect of very complex political processes in Porto Alegre, two aspects of the policy were clearly most central for overcoming the dilemmas of participation: its central role in a broader political strategy of the government and its mobilizing power. A policy that provided neighborhood-based capital investments to those who participated naturally keyed into the basic needs that poor people identified as their own and promised to resolve those needs in a relatively short period of time. This promise led to the massive mobilization of poor neighborhoods throughout the city. The effect was threefold: (1) the capacity of the policy to mobilize was fruitful for an administration seeking to develop political support; (2) it helped incorporate the “hitherto excluded” into the participatory process; and (3) it triggered the organization of new civic groups that vociferously defended their demands even when the same state that had invited them to participate questioned their priorities. The power of mobilization described here is a lesson to those who would seek to promote participatory democracy. As political theorists from John Stuart Mill to Carole Pateman have noted, citizen participation is likely to be most effective if it begins at a level close to the everyday lives of participants. The fact that the budget policy

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focused on localized, immediate needs was perceived by some observers in Porto Alegre—within the administration and the city’s social movements—as a limitation that distracted participants from broader-based discussions of larger, longer-term policy issues. Indeed, this study suggests that there were limitations to this localized approach. Often, people who organized in the effort to resolve immediate needs demobilized once those needs were fulfilled. It took many years for the Regional Budget Forums to initiate serious discussions of broader-based issues such as economic development and city planning, and only a small number of regional budget participants went on to join broader policymaking groups such as the thematic forums. But I would suggest that, although it is a slow and difficult process, and the costs of participation are high for most people, the only way of drawing most people into such discussions is indeed by “starting small.” Where policymakers can engage people in public discussion around issues of immediate needs, they can set off a process of social learning in which democratic capacities can flourish. Such social learning certainly occurred in Porto Alegre. But choosing an issue that mobilizes the poor is not enough. Essential for the long-term success of participatory policy was the fact that the Porto Alegre government made it “the hallmark of the administration.” Other cities where the PT came to office have promoted the participatory budget. For example, during the PT administration of the Federal District of Brasília (1995–1998), the group that coordinated the participatory budget policy lacked basic resources and personnel and there was little consensus within the administration about the importance of the policy. As in Porto Alegre, the participatory budget had a huge mobilization effect, involving thousands of people in regional assemblies. But since it was relatively unknown to the population in general, it had little broader impact. Whereas in Porto Alegre in the first reelection campaign, all major candidates defended the participatory budget, in the Federal District, not even the participants mobilized in favor of a continuation of the policy (Mendes, 1999). The failure of the government to prioritize participatory policy likely contributed to its failure to win reelection. Thus, mobilization is not enough: participation must fit into a broader political strategy if it is to have lasting impact on political life.

Rethinking State-Society Relations The complex interrelations of implementation, inequality, and co-optation suggest that creating a state-initiated participatory policy that empowers the “hitherto excluded” requires the navigation of a rocky

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river in which some kinds of state interventions in civic organizing are beneficial and others are not. Whereas some authors have suggested that any kind of state intervention in the way civil society is organized can only be disempowering, in fact, it is possible for state actors to help civic groups gain political capabilities. Furthermore, civic groups, as they develop those capabilities, become increasingly able to pressure for change within the state itself. The result in Porto Alegre was not only the empowerment of civil society through the budget policy, but also a gradual process through which participants transformed that policy, exerting pressure for control over more and more government decisionmaking. This could certainly be understood as a very positive process of state-society “synergy.” In countries like Brazil, state efforts to influence civic organizing have usually been geared toward weakening rather than strengthening civic groups representing the poor. The Brazilian state has historically combined the outright repression of civic activity with powerful mechanisms for regulating and co-opting civic groups through corporatist controls of labor unions and clientelist manipulations of neighborhood associations. In this context, grassroots movements and their proponents in Brazil have been wary of partnerships with the state and have loudly proclaimed the importance of “autonomy.” The participatory budget forums were created from the “top down,” largely in the absence of strong pressure from autonomously organized civic groups. And yet, I have argued, that policy promoted the empowerment of organized civil society to such a degree that new civic groups were increasingly able to challenge the very state that helped them organize. This idea will be disturbing to those who believe that participatory policies empower the poor only if they are “grabbed from below” by groups that first organize on their own. In order to demonstrate that the Regional Budget Forums were spaces of empowerment, I have argued that in a number of critical ways they resembled the regionally based “combative” neighborhood movements that formed autonomously in Porto Alegre during the 1980s. During that period, scholars suggested that the mass mobilization, the inclusiveness, the horizontal organizing patterns, the solidarity among members, and the resistance to co-optation that were presented in the “ideal type” of combative neighborhood organizing were all signs of a new democratic political culture that could transform Brazilian politics “from the bottom up.” Part 4 of this study showed that each of these characteristics was present within the Regional Budget Forums, despite the fact that the forums were created “from the top down.” As noted in Chapter 2, scholars had already begun to question

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the “ideal type” of combative organizing during the 1980s when, with democratization, the state became more responsive to the demands of poor neighborhoods and the “antistate” character of the combative organizations became more ambiguous. When government is totally unresponsive to civic organizations, there is little chance of co-optation. But when resources begin to be available, the risk of co-optation increases because state actors can use resource distribution as small change to quell larger demands. In Porto Alegre those risks seemed to be particularly extreme because the organizations themselves were created by the state. Yet this study has shown that even in Porto Alegre, participants were capable of resisting co-optation when they had strong civic organizing processes behind them. At the same time, my description of the budget forums also suggests that other aspects of the combative ideal type become more ambiguous in the context of responsive government. Combative neighborhood organizations typically mobilized on the basis of the intense vitality that collective action gains when people are struggling against a common enemy. In this context, solidarity among neighborhood activists made protest possible. But once resources begin to be available to civic groups, the next question will always be, Who should have first access to them? Founded as they were by a highly responsive government, the Regional Budget Forums were competitive environments from the very beginning. Indeed, whereas the mobilization of the combative neighborhood movements resulted from the realization that only by unifying would neighborhoods be able to obtain improvements, neighborhood groups joined the Regional Budget Forums with the primary purpose of winning access for their own areas and usually with little concern for the needs of other neighborhoods in their regions. Yet, this study has shown that even this extreme case of mobilization without unity provided the groundwork within which horizontal ties and a certain amount of solidarity could develop. The Porto Alegre administration did more than simply respond to the demands of poor neighborhood groups. In a variety of ways it intervened directly in the organizing process. If the mere existence of responsive government shakes up our understanding of “healthy” state-society relations, then direct interventions like those certainly set off alarms. With so much experience in Brazil’s past and present of political bosses organizing civic associations in order to use them for their own benefit, how can those wishing to empower civic associations ever trust state actors with such direct interventions? Throughout this study I have shown that some kinds of interventions by the state promote empowerment and others do not. There

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are two ways that the efforts of state-employed “external agents” helped ensure that those for whom the costs of participation were greatest were not excluded from the budget process. First, community officers played a crucial role in helping unorganized neighborhoods form civic groups. Much of this effort involved what one state official called “politicizing potholes.” The Community Relations Department and the community officers of other city agencies made it their practice to help individuals who came to the prefeitura with small complaints to organize their neighbors and begin to articulate larger demands. What is more, in both regions I studied, community officers did not wait for people to come to them: they went out into the neighborhoods that were not sending residents to the budget assemblies, identified potential leaders, and helped them organize. Second, community organizers employed by the state also worked as popular educators. They helped inexperienced neighborhood leaders identify their needs and understand the workings of the municipal government and of the budget process. The dissemination of this information lowered the costs of participation for those for whom the budget otherwise seemed no more than an arcane document accessible only to technical experts. State employees also played a critical role in encouraging participants in the priority-setting process to think about distributional justice. In most cases, it was the state employees who brought the idea of using a criteria system for distributing priorities to the forums and who suggested ways that participants could develop such a system. These interventions helped bring excluded groups into the process and develop political capacities, which had implications not only for the inequality problem but also for co-optation. The actions of state-employed community organizers contributed to the development of well-organized, politically conscious participants who over time were increasingly capable of challenging the very state that helped them get to where they were. Nevertheless, some direct state interventions in the organizing process were not beneficial to civic organizing. In particular, as I suggested in Chapter 9, attempts by the government to impose preset rules on how participants went about determining priorities contradicted the organizing and politicization processes that were so empowering. Imposing rules on the regional forums dictating that they eliminate the influence of more mobilized neighborhoods over the distribution of priorities and insisting that they incorporate the needs of more needy neighborhoods according to specific criteria would have discouraged the very mobilization processes that countered inequality and would have preempted the valuable experience of participants developing such rules on their own.

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I would suggest, then, that state interventions are most empowering when they are directed, rather than toward controlling the specific outcomes of participatory decisions, instead toward promoting the effective participation of those who otherwise might be systematically excluded. Providing an open space in which all were welcome and in which minority voices could be heard was one aspect of this. But mobilizing work and educating participants were also critical. Indeed, the administration could have worked even harder at its “external agent” role. At the time of my research, many neighborhood groups still remained unaware of the policy. Extra efforts to facilitate the participation of the very poor—such as providing transportation, holding informational meetings within the settlements themselves, and providing special training opportunities for the poorest and least educated citizens—would further mitigate inequalities in the budget forums. Furthermore, the Porto Alegre administration could have intensified its educational role. Without efforts to educate participants on complex policy topics, it will always be more difficult to mobilize participation on issues that are less obvious than the need every poor neighborhood has for paved streets and sewer lines. For example, as seen in Chapter 7, a better organized training program would have helped regional participants understand the impact of Master Plan decisions. As it was, the administration failed to mobilize poor neighborhoods on this issue, even though planning dictates have much relevance to residents. Furthermore, as participatory councils propagated in Porto Alegre, it became increasingly difficult to find people, especially those representing poor neighborhoods, willing and confident enough to take on the numerous high-level participatory decisionmaking posts. Further efforts by the administration in the area of popular education might have given more people the confidence to fill leadership roles. In particular, women were an underutilized reserve of potential leaders within the budget process. In Chapter 6 I noted that although women participated in parity to men at the base of the participatory process and were often the ones who dedicated the most time to neighborhood organizing, they were much less likely than men to be elected delegates and councillors, in part because many simply felt incapable of such complex decisionmaking tasks. Special training and confidence-building workshops geared toward women could have helped them fill the leadership gap and, in doing so, not only could help redress the inequality but also could contribute to the expansion of participatory decisionmaking into other arenas. All this is not to say that state officials can ordinarily be trusted

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with the task of organizing and educating civic groups. Obviously, in Brazil the experience of Porto Alegre is an exception. The “blurred boundaries” between state and civil society (Tendler, 1995) were particularly foggy there because the interests of the government and of poor neighborhoods largely coincided. That was not only a result of the PT’s democratic-socialist ideology. It also came out of a political practice in which neighborhood-based participation played a fundamental role in the government’s political success. Not every PT administration that had the same ideological presuppositions was able to follow such a strategy in practice. Although civic groups should always be wary of the motives behind the work of external agents (whether hired by the state or by other groups), this practical coincidence of interests provided some assurance that partnerships between state actors and civic groups would create the empowering processes of mutual transformation that I have described in this study.

Inventing Local Democracy The state-society relationships that occurred in Porto Alegre in the context of the participatory budget policy set in progress a chain of events that ultimately transformed entrenched political traditions in the city, traditions that plague most other political arenas in Brazil to this day. Those traditions had their roots in a different type of statesociety relationship. In clientelism, organized groups within civil society provide electoral support for local bosses in exchange for access to state resources. The participatory budget struck at the heart of this kind of politics. Many of the changes on the state side were made within a few years after the PT came to power. Because of the relative autonomy of local government in Brazil at the time, an alternative political group, once in control of the prefeitura, was able to impose new rules on how state resources would be distributed. Simply by taking control of public coffers, and insisting that from then on budget decisions would be made transparently and independent of any exchange of favors, the administration brought centuries of backroom troca de favores to a halt. Of course, that did not occur without resistance. Powerful political and economic elites lost their preferential access to city bank accounts. If the PT had not been able to carefully construct an alternative political coalition that could provide backing for the party in the absence of clientelism, the influence of these elite groups over the local media and their ability to wreak havoc on the government’s

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service-providing capacity would have undermined the project. The PT was able to build such a coalition in time to win a second municipal election four years after the first PT victory. But transforming local clientelism was more than just changing the rules from the top down. It also involved changing entrenched traditions of associationalism that had left most poor communities without organizing capacities or leadership. The processes of mobilization, of organization, and of developing political capacities took time. Indeed, had I conducted this research during the PT’s first term in office, I most certainly would have come to different conclusions. In the first years, participation was lopsided, favoring those regions of the city that had the longest history in “combative” organizing. The remainder of the city was still largely represented by the eminent leaders of aging clientelist associations, leaders who were backed by political parties but not by grassroots organizing. Only after several years did new cooperative groups arise and old clientelists fall in Porto Alegre’s neighborhoods. Today, state-society relations continue to evolve in Porto Alegre. As many poor neighborhoods have begun to receive a large part of their most basic capital improvements, participation in government decisionmaking has increasingly emphasized service provision and broader policy issues. This turn raises new challenges for participatory democracy, since those issues do not have the easy mobilizing effect of capital improvements; the political consensus that formed around localized investments may be more difficult to achieve in other areas of local decisionmaking. Moreover, certain aspects of the political context in which the PT came to power in 1989 have changed. In particular, several federal laws have reduced transfers to municipalities, diminishing freedom in city spending for both government and participants. With a smaller “pie” of state resources, it may become increasingly difficult to devolve power to the hitherto excluded. More recently, political developments have raised new questions about the limits and possibilities of state-sponsored participatory democracy. In 1999, the first PT mayor of Porto Alegre, Olivio Dutra, became the governor of Rio Grande do Sul state.1 Now, the PT is faced with the prospect of transforming traditions of political decisionmaking on a much larger scale. In many ways, the first months of Dutra’s state administration followed a trajectory similar to the PT’s initial experience in Porto Alegre: the first, most publicized government acts directly challenged both the business sector and the federal government, dramatically reversing lucrative agreements the previous government had signed with Ford Motor Company and taking the

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federal government to court in order to avoid huge debt payments that debilitated governing capacity. Many observers agree that with the PT now heading one of Brazil’s most economically powerful states, the opposition from political and economic elites will be much more intense than what the Porto Alegre administration faced a decade earlier. Attempts to re-create the participatory budget process at the statewide level immediately met with intense opposition, marked by a court injunction prohibiting the use of the existing Regional Economic Development Councils as the organizational base for discussing the state budget. Even Porto Alegre’s municipal-level participatory budget, until now largely supported by most political groups in the city, has suddenly received much more negative media attention. The looming question is whether Dutra’s state government will be able to emerge from a crisis-ridden first year to define an alternative political strategy that will keep such conflicts from consuming the government and will garner widespread support for the genuine democratization of public policy at the statewide level. This book, I hope, has shown that such changes, although often extremely difficult, are at least possible. Making them will require overcoming new dilemmas on the part of both policymakers and civic groups.

Note 1. In the same year, the PT won two other state governments, Mato Grosso do Sul and Acre. It also participates in the PDT government of Rio de Janeiro.

Methodological Appendix

Case study research provides a “vehicle” for examining other cases, a tentative theory of the relationship between context and phenomena that must be tested through comparative analysis (Yin, 1984:40). Throughout this study, I have sought to initiate such comparison by contrasting the Porto Alegre experience with case studies of state-initiated participatory policies elsewhere in the world and with some of my own research in other cities where the PT has held office. But the main focus of the study has been to develop an overall understanding of the complex processes that occurred in Porto Alegre itself. One of the benefits of in-depth analysis of a single case is that it allows us not only to identify the factors that are present in a successful or unsuccessful policy situation but also to explore how those factors relate to one another. Politics and policymaking are characterized by what Forester (1991) calls “messiness,” the whole network of human interactions that forms the basis of how problems are defined and how goals are reached. The triangles of policy dilemmas presented in Chapters 1 and 11 are examples of such messy interrelationships, where each policy problem not only exists in itself but also affects other problems in complex and unpredictable ways. The study of these kinds of processes requires a complex research methodology incorporating a variety of qualitative and quantitative research techniques. My field research in Porto Alegre therefore involved data collection from many types of sources and an attempt to cross-check facts and the implications of those facts in the different sources. In my field research and analysis of the data collected, I have attempted to follow what Diesing (1971:142–169) calls the “pattern model of explanation.” In the study of the complex interactions 229

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among actors and between actors and social conditions, the researcher identifies “patterns” of interaction and traces those patterns through the complex web of social relations. Campbell, similarly, refers to “pattern-matching.” When “testing” a hypothesis, the qualitative researcher attempts to see if the logical implications of the hypothesis can be identified empirically: “If theory A is true, then B, C, and D ought to follow” (1975:186). Similarly, McCorcle notes, “Detail is, to the case researcher, what a larger sample size is to the experimental or survey researcher—each detail adds another data point, thus increasing the potential precision of the conclusions” (1984:206). I first visited Porto Alegre in 1993 on a preliminary research mission; I also traveled then to five other cities where the PT held office and interviewed people who had worked in a total of eight PT administrations since 1989. On this first trip I discovered that Porto Alegre was the only PT administration at that time around which there was widespread consensus that participatory policy had been successful at mobilizing people and at actually giving participants real deliberative power. This consensus led me to choose that city as an “exemplary” case of a successful participatory policy. I returned to Porto Alegre in 1994, to spend one and a half years living there and conducting research. I returned for two weeks in 1997 for follow-up research. The most important empirical research method I used was extensive, in-depth interviews with government personnel, participants, local activists, and other key informants. These interviews usually took one and one-half to two hours. A number of informants were interviewed multiple times, in some cases becoming regular contacts with whom I spoke often about the policy. I interviewed fifty-six current and former government officials, including members of the City Assembly. Some of these officials had been participants in the budget process before they joined the government, and most of them had been active in the city’s social movements or in the PT prior to 1989, when the party took office. I sought to interview several key informants in each of the agencies that implemented neighborhood infrastructure and all the main actors in the agencies that specifically coordinated budget activities. I also interviewed at length forty-two budget participants and community activists, fairly evenly divided between the two focus regions, although also including a number of activists residing elsewhere in the city. In the focus regions, I sought to interview at least one or two informants from each neighborhood that participated as well as people who had participated during the early phases of the policy even if they were not continuing in the budget process at the time of my research. During preliminary research and

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over the course of the principal research period, I also conducted twenty-three in-depth interviews with government and nongovernment informants in other cities where the PT held power, providing some of the comparative information presented in Chapter 3. All were lengthy, open-ended interviews in which I would both seek answers to specific questions and allow participants to bring up those issues that they thought were most important. In collaboration with two Porto Alegre NGOs—FASE and CIDADE—and with the municipal administration, I also conducted a short sample survey of 622 participants in the budget process. The survey was administered at the second-round regional and thematic budget assemblies in June and July 1995 by selecting 1 out of every 10 individuals entering the assembly halls in each of the sixteen regional and five thematic assemblies. The 622 people interviewed represent 10.7 percent of the participants in the second round. The majority of the interviews took place during the hour-long “entertainment” and video portion of the assemblies, so as to disrupt the decisionmaking process as little as possible. The questionnaire focused on socioeconomic data, previous experience in the budget process, experience in civic associations, and evaluation of the policy. Most questions were multiple choice, although there were several open questions as well. The margin of error of the results of the survey is about 4 percent within 95 percent confidence limits. As an accompaniment to this survey, I also applied a modified version of the same survey among delegates in the two Regional Budget Forums I focused on. I had hoped to question every budget delegate in the two regions, but only sixty-five of the more than one hundred delegates elected actually appeared at budget meetings over the several-month period that I circulated the questionnaire. Most of the results proved to be compatible with the much larger sample of participants in the Regional Budget Forums that were interviewed in the citywide survey. Another major research method was participant observation. I attended 109 assemblies and community meetings, called by the government and neighborhood residents. This included attending nearly all the meetings of the Municipal Budget Council and of the budget forums of the two focus regions during an entire budget cycle. I also attended numerous neighborhood meetings and the weekly assemblies of the Conselho Popular in the Glória region as well as many meetings in other regions of the city. At these meetings, I was able to observe the processes of negotiation and discussion as they evolved over the course of more than one budget cycle. I also carried out dozens of more informal conversations with participants and govern-

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ment officials, which have added immensely to my understanding of the micropolitics of the process. Finally, I collected hundreds of documents on the policy, on the government more generally, on local politics, and on history. These documents were produced by the government itself, by the PT, by the local universities, by local nongovernmental associations, and by neighborhood groups. They included not only data about investments and demands but also commentary, proposals, analyses, critiques, and complaints about the process by government and nongovernment actors. In the text, I have relied on many quotes from interviews with participants, government personnel, and other key informants. As a rule, I have identified the government officials with their full name and office. However, to protect the identity of the activists interviewed, I have used pseudonyms for all nongovernment informants quoted. The logic of this choice is that whereas government informants were interviewed for the most part while doing official business and with the full expectation that they might be cited, most community members were interviewed in their homes. They often made clear that they would not like their names to be associated with the political intricacies of which they spoke. Place-names have, however, been preserved.

Glossary of Portuguese Words and Phrases

arrastão: dragnet abertura: opening, political liberalization Articulação: Articulation (PT faction) cabo eleitoral: local ward boss, or vote getter carência: impoverishment/neediness Cidade Constituinte: City Constitutional Assembly Comunidade Solidária: Solidarity Community, federal social program Conselho Popular: People’s Council coronel (plural: coroneis): local political boss coronelismo: rule by local bosses Democracia Socialista: Socialist Democracy (PT faction) Estado Novo: New State (dictatorship instituted by Vargas—1937– 1945) favelas: urban slums, or shantytowns Frente Popular: Popular Front (coalition governing Porto Alegre) inchaço: the onetime “swelling” of assemblies by leaders seeking to mobilize people in order to win elections, without actually promoting longer-term participation inversão de prioridades: inversion of priorities loteamentos clandestinos: clandestine subdivisions mutirão (plural: mutirões): community self-help construction project Nova Esquerda: New Left (PT Faction) nucleo, nucleos: nucleus, nuclei (PT party organizations) participação popular: popular participation petistas: PT militants prefeitura: executive branch of municipal government subhabitações: inadequate housing 233

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técnicos: technical experts tendência: tendency, or faction trabalhismo: form of populism peculiar to Rio Grande do Sul trabalhista: characteristic of trabalhismo troca de favores: exchange of favors vereadores: city deputies, members of the City Assembly vila: poor neighborhood, or slum

Acronyms and Abbreviations

ARENA CAPES

CAR CEB CIDADE CRC CUT DMAE FASE

FRACAB

GAPLAN HDI

Aliança Renovadora Nacional, Alliance for National Renewal (government party during military rule) Coordenacão de Aperfeiçoamento do Pessoal de Nível Superior, Commission for the Promotion of Upper-level Personnel Centro Administrativo Regional, District Administrative Center Comunidade Eclesial de Base, Christian Base Communities Centro de Assessoria e Estudos Urbanos, a Porto Alegre nongovernmental organization (literally “city”) Coordenação de Relações Comunitárias, Community Relations Department Central Única dos Trabalhadores, Central Workers Union Departamento Municipal de Agua e Esgotos, Department of Water and Sewers Federação de Orgãos para a Assistência Social e Educacional; Federation of Social Assistance and Educational Organizations Federação Riograndense de Associações Comunitárias e de Amigos de Bairro, Rio Grande do Sul Federation of Community and Neighborhood Friends Associations Gabinete de Planejamento, Planning Office Human Development Index (propagated by UN Development Program)

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ICMS IPTU ISSQN MARE MDB

NGO PCB PCdoB PDT PFL PMDB PPS PRC PRN PROPUR PSB PSD PSDB PT PTB PV SAB SPM UAMPA

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Imposto de Circulação de Mercadorias e Serviços, state sales tax Imposto Predial e Territorial Urbano, municipal property tax Imposto Sobre Serviços de Qualquer Natureza, municipal services tax Ministério de Administracão e Reforma do Estado, Ministry of Administration and State Reform Movimento Democrático Brasileiro, Brazilian Democratic Movement (opposition party during military rule) nongovernmental organization Partido Comunista Brasileiro, Brazilian Communist Party Partido Comunista do Brasil, Communist Party of Brazil Partido Democrático Trabalhista, Democratic Labor Party Partido da Frente Liberal, Liberal Front Party Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro, Brazilian Democratic Movement Party Partido Popular Socialista, Popular Socialist Party Partido Revolucionário Comunista, Revolutionary Communist Party Partido da Renovação Nacional, National Renovation Party Programa de Planejamento Urbano (at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul) Partido Socialista Brasileiro, Brazilian Socialist Party Partido Social Democrata, Social Democratic Party Partido Social Democrata Brasileiro, Brazilian Social Democratic Party Partido dos Trabalhadores, Workers’ Party Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro, Brazilian Labor Party Partido Verde, Green Party Sociedade de Amigos do Bairro, Neighborhood Friends Society Secretaria do Planejamento Municipal, Municipal Planning Secretariat União das Associações de Moradores de Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre Union of Neighborhood Associations

Acronyms and Abbreviations

UDN UMVP

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237

União Democrática Nacional, National Democratic Union União dos Moradores das Vilas Populares, Union of the Residents of Popular Neighborhoods (a real-estate company)

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Index

Acre, PT government of, 228 Administrative control, and participatory budget, 81 Administrative reform, 75, 77–78, 106; commission, 79 Alfonsin, Betânia, 36 Allende, Salvador, 104 Alvarez, Sonia, 17, 18 Araújo, Carlos, 58 ARENA, 27 Arendt, Hannah, 194 Arnstein, Sherry, 7 Articulação faction, 57 Assemblies, regional budget, 140–141 Assembly size, 123–126, 130–132, 135 Augustin, Arno, 70 Baierle, Sérgio, 38, 41, 42, 45 Baiocci, Gianpaolo, 133, 166 Barber, Benjamin, 179 Barcellos Road, 144 Bargaining power of participants, 212, 219 Basic needs, as motive for participation, 146, 147–148, 220– 221; going beyond discus-

sion of, 173–174, 213–214, 227 Belém Novo neighborhood, 139, 141, 186–187 Belo Horizonte, PT administration of, 57 Benhabib, Seyla, 179, 194 Block, Fred, 13 Bodea, Miguel, 62 Boggs, Carl, 104 Boschi, Renato, 30–31, 33 Brasília, Federal District of, PT administration, 221 Budget delegates. See Delegates, budget Budget forums. See Regional Budget Forums, Thematic Budget Forums Budget priorities. See Priorities, budget Budget regions. See Regions, budget Budget, participatory. See Participatory budget Bureaucracy, professionals in, 13 Business groups, implementation problem, 9; opposition to par257

258

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Index

ticipation, 9, 66; support for budget policy, 91–95, 106, 111 Cabos eleitorais, 29, 96, 101, 162 Campaign proposals, 67, 84 Campbell, Donald, 230 Capital expenditures 87–88, 107, 109, 112; and construction companies, 92; in Extremo Sul region, 142; perceptions of, 148; region-wide, 169 CAR, See Centro Administrativo Regional Cardoso, Ruth, 33 Carnoy, Martin, 22 Case studies, 18, 229, 230 Castells, Manuel, 31 Catholic Church: and PT, 49, 57; and social movements, 31, 38, 44, 137 Ceará, 93 CEBs. See Christian Base Communities Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), 81, 104–105 Centralization, 88 Centrão, 27 Centro Administrativo Regional (CAR), 140, 141 Centro region, 124 Centro Sul region, 124 Chapeu do Sol Road, 141 Chile, 104 Christian Base Communities (CEBs), 31, 44, 49 Chubb, Judith, 29 Cidade Constituinte, 85 CIDADE, 212–213, 231 Citizen control. See. Control, degrees of citizen; Participation and citizen control City Assembly, power of, 95–96, 105–106; property tax increases,

94, 97; support for participatory budget, 94, 95–97, 101, 106 City Constitutional Assembly. See Cidade Constituinte Civil society: autonomy of, 17, 51, 104, 222; promotion by state, 11, 15, 16,138, 148–153, 160–161; and PT governments, 55–56. See also Collective action; Horizontal ties; Social movements Clientelism, 3, 16, 27, 44; and collective action, 159–160; eliminating 3, 110, 226–227; and favor exchange, 25, 29–30, 33; in local government, 25–59; vertical relations in, 44, 157–160, 166. See also Clientelist neighborhood associations Clientelist neighborhood associations, 3, 29–30, 33–34, 157–158, 227; adaptation to participatory budget, 163, 164–165; and City Assembly, 96–97; and co-optation, 158; in Extremo Sul region, 139–140, 160–161; in Glória region, 164; in Porto Alegre, 38–39, 60 Coit, Katharine, 196–197. See also, Clientelism, Combative neighborhood associations Collares, Alceu: and 1988 Campaign, 58; government of Porto Alegre, 40–43, 68; and participatory budget, 41–42; relations with neighborhood associations, 40–42, 60 Collective action: and clientelism, 158–159; and cooperation, 159–160; costs and benefits of, 15, 116, 118–119, 132 136–138, 148; enabling environment for 12, 17, 138, 152, 220; incentives for, 15, 116; previous experi-

Index

ence with, 119, 129, 159–160, 173; recognition of returns for, 138, 142, 149–150; theories of, 15, 136–139; and trust, 159, 171; windows of opportunity for, 137, 149. See also Civil Society; Cooperation; Horizontal ties; Participation; Self-interest; Solidarity Collective identity, 137–138, 178–181 Collor, Fernando, 53 Combative neighborhood associations, 30–35, 44, 158, 179; in Porto Alegre, 39, 60, 129–132, 219, 227; solidarity in, 158; characteristics in participatory budget forums, 158, 220, 222–223; support for participatory budget, 99 Community organizers, 139–142, 151–152, 224; and political consciousness, 193, 224 Community Relations Department (CRC), 77–78, 90, 224 Comparative methods, 229 Congress of the City, 85 Consciousness, political. See Political consciousness Conselho Popular da Grande Glória, 39–40, 143–147, 164, 214 Conselho Tutelar (Guardianship Council), 128 Constitution, Federal, 27–28, 43, 44; 105 Construction companies, 66, 92–93, 106, 111 Construction projects, community, 93 Contractors. See Construction companies Control, degrees of citizen, 198–201. See also Participation and citizen control

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259

Cooperation: and collective action, 159–160, 223. among neighborhood associations, 167–171; within neighborhood associations, 161–167 Co-optation, 17, 18, 222; in clientelist neighborhood associations, 158; in Municipal Budget Council, 199, 200, 201–203, 210–212; and organizational capacity of participants, 211; in Regional Delegate Forums, 200, 203–210, 213–214; in Thematic Budget Forums, 201–202. See also Co-optation problem Co-optation problem, 10, 11, 22, 195–198, 219–220; in Porto Alegre, 60, 198–214. See also Cooptation Coraggio, José Luís, 21 Corporatism, 15, 16, 47 Corruption, 52, 53, 61,103 Council communism, 50 Councils, participatory, 57, 90; food in Mexico, 119, 160; health, 51; housing, 173; village, 93. See also Popular councils Credibility: of PT governments, 62; of Participatory Budget, 142, 152; of Porto Alegre administration, 75, 89 Criteria, for distributing investments, 80–81, 109, 125, 131, 188, 193–194, 224; in Glória region, 188–192 Criteria, technical. See Technical criteria Cruzeiro region, 29, 39, 60, 109–10, 130, 170 Culture, political. See Political culture CUT. See Central Única dos Trabalhadores

260

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Index

Decentralization, 88–89. See also Fiscal decentralization Delegates, budget: election of, 72; association membership of, 166, 174; and co-optation, 200; and knowledge of technical issues, 205–207; profile of, 126, 128. See also Regional budget forums; Thematic budget forums Delegation, pyramidal, 50, 51 Demobilization, 34, 145, 171–173, 197, 221 Democracia Socialista faction, 58, 59 Demonstration effect, 138, 144, 151, 152 Department of Water and Sewers (DMAE), 87, 207–209 Development, individual, 5, 6, 21, 178–181, 184–185, 194, 196 Diadema, PT administration of, 50, 54 Diesing, Paul, 229–230 DMAE. See Department of Water and Sewers Dutra, Olivio, 57, 59, 70, 87, 217, 227–228 Economic Development Forum, 202 Education, of budget participants, 121–122; popular, 225. See also Inequality; Inequality problem Efficacy, political. See Political efficacy Eixo da Baltazar region, 125, 130, 170, 192 Elections, municipal: in 1985, 40, 43, 52; 1988, 52–57; in 1988, 58–59; in 1992, 84; and PT, 52, 53–54 Elites, economic. See Business groups Elites, traditional, 110; support for PT, 92, 95–97

Employees, public. See Public employees Empowerment, 5–8, 12 Enlarged thinking. See Political consciousness Escobar, Arturo, 17, 18 Estado Novo, 37 Eurocommunism, 48, 62 Evans, Peter, 17, 22, 174 Expenditures, capital. See Capital expenditures External agents for collective action, 137, 138, 151–152, 224. See also Community organizers Extremo Sul region, 19, 130, 131; alliances among neighborhood groups in, 167–169, 186–188; discussing region-wide issues in, 186–188, 213–214; neighborhood mobilization in, 139–142; political consciousness in budget forum, 184–185; and opposition parties, 101; regional plan for, 213–214; resettlement project, 186–188; resisting technical criteria in, 207–209; solidarity in budget forum, 186–188; and transformation of neighborhood associations, 161–163 FASE. See Federação de Orgãos para a Assistência Social e Educacional Federação de Orgãos para a Assistência Social e Educacional (FASE), 39, 74, 231 Federação Riograndense de Associações Comunitárias e de Amigos de Bairro (FRACAB), 38, 39 Federal District. See Brasília Fedozzi, Luciano, 89 Field research, 19 Filho, Eno, 69 Finances, municipal: in Porto Alegre, 68, 75–77; in PT govern-

Index

ments in general, 54. See also Fiscal decentralization; Revenues Financial crisis, 54, 67 Fiscal autonomy. See Fiscal Decentralization, Fiscal decentralization, 27–28, 105; and opportunities for opposition groups, 28, 43; in Porto Alegre, 61, 72, 105–106 Ford Motor Company, 227 Forester, John, 229 Fortaleza, 50, 54 Fox, Jonathan, 119, 160 FRACAB. See Federação Riograndense de Associações Comunitárias e de Amigos de Bairro Free rider problem, 15–16, 116, 181 Frente Popular, 58–59, 84, 90 Gabinete de Planejamento (GAPLAN): creation of, 77–78; negotiating priorities, 202, 203; and technical criteria, 208 Gadotti, Moacir, 62 GAPLAN. See Gabinete de Planejamento Gay, Robert, 33 Genro, Tarso, 58, 59, 70, 84, 112 Gittel, Marilyn, 196 Glória region, 19, 60, 130, 131, 214; cooperation among associations in, 167–168; demobilization in, 172; discussing broader issues in, 214; mobilization in, 142–147; transformation of neighborhood associations in, 163–165. See also Conselho Popular da Grande Glória Gondim, Linda, 117 Goodman, Robert, 197 Goulart, João, 48 Goulet, Denis, 5

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261

Governability, 65–67, 88–89 Government, local: in Brazil, 25–29; finance, 28; services, 28. See also Fiscal descentralization; Governments of the Partido dos Trabalhadores Governments of the Partido dos Trabalhadores: in Belo Horizonte, 57; in Brasília, 221; and credibility, 62, 75; conflicts between party and administration, 50, 54–55; 61, 69, 78; conflicts with public employee unions, 55; conflicts with social movments, 55–56; conflicts with state and federal government, 55; in Diadema, 50, 54; early experiences, 50–52; elite opposition to, 55; and implementation problem, 54–57; in Fortaleza, 50, 54; in Ipatinga, 56, 62; moderation of radical goals in, 56; participatory policies in, 56–57; in Rio Grande do Sul, 217, 227–228; in Santa Quitéria, 50; in São Paulo, 55, 56, 128; in Santo André, 56, 128; in Santos, 56, 62. See also Partido dos Trabalhadores Gramsci, Antonio, 108, 112 Graziano, Luigi, 158–159 Green Party, German, 104 Guaíba River cleanup, 109 Gutmann, Amy, 117, 179–180 Habermas, Jurgen, 179 Hagopian, Frances, 28, 110 Health movement, in São Paulo, 51 Hegemony, 108, 112 Held, David, 13, 14 Hirschmann, Albert, 173–174 Homepage, of the Porto Alegre administration, 103–104 Horizontal ties, 158–161, 223;

262

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Index

among neighborhood associations, 167–171; within neighborhood associations, 161–167; and co-optation, 211. See also Cooperation; Solidarity Household size, 133 Identity, collective. See Collective identity Immediatism of budget policy, 146, 147–148, 213–214, 220–221; going beyond, 173–174, 213–214, 227. See also Basic needs Implementation problem, 8–9, 21–22, 65–67, 218–219 ; in Porto Alegre, 59–60; in PT governments in general, 54–57. See also Participation Inchaço, 145, 163, 168 Income: of budget participants, 121–125, 133. See also Inequality, Inequality problem Inequality problem, 9–10, 22, 60; 115–121, 219–220; exacerbation of, 9–10, 120, 147; and political consciousness, 193; and procedural rules, 179–180; and solidarity, 177. See also Inequality Inequality: gender, 9, 120, 127–129; versus political liberty, 11; socioeconomic, 9, 37, 117, 120, 124–127; in previous experience with collective action, 129–132. See also Inequality problem Interviews, key informant, 230–231 Investment plans, 72–74, 202 Investments. See Capital expenditures Ipatinga, 56, 62 Jacobi, Pedro, 32, 132, 137, 179 James, Susan, 119

Jardim Renascença neighborhood, 145–146 Keck, Margaret, 50 Kohli, Atul, 16–17 Kowarick, Lúcio, 56, 120 Krieger, Joel, 13, 14 Kubitscheck, Jucelino, 49 Labor movement, 47, 60 Lageado neighborhood, 141, 162; struggle for potable water for, 207–209 Lam, Wai Fung, 160 Lami neighborhood, 139, 162 Land tenure legalization, 149–150, 187 Land use legislation, 95 Leste region, 60, 192 Lima, Jõao Alves, 69 Linha do Tiro neighborhood, 144–145, 168, 172 Lomba do Pinheiro region, 60, 170 Loteamentos clandestinos, 139, 143 Mansbridge, Jane, 116 Marketing, 102 Marris, Peter, 197 Master plan, discussion of, 85, 150, 152, 225 Mato Grosso do Sul, 228 Matus, Carlos, 79 McCorcle, Mitchell, 230 Media coverage, 94, 212 Mellucci, Alberto, 137, 174 Methodology, 18–19, 229–232 Middle class: participation, 124–125, 132, 143; support for participatory budget, 86, 102–104, 106 Migdal, Joel, 16–17 Miliband, Ralph, 13, 104 Mill, John Stuart, 178 Mobilization for participatory

Index

budget 17, 83–84, 131, 135–153, 182, 218–221; in Extremo Sul region, 139–142, 182; in Glória region, 142–147, 182 Moisés, José Alvaro, 53 Motivations for participation, 136–139, 147–148, 173–174; 181–184, 220–221 Movements. See Social movements Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST), 57 MST. See Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra Municipal Budget Council, 80, 87; compensation for councillors, 153; and co-optation, 199, 200, 201–203, 210–212; elections for, 80; and regional disputes, 125; profile of councillors, 126, 128 Municipal elections. See Elections, municipal Municipal government. See Government, local. Mutirões. See Construction projects, community Needs, basic. See Basic needs Neighborhood associations: autonomy of, 32; and Catholic church, 31, 38, 44; co-optation of, 33; conceptions of, 31–34; decline of, 35, 61; horizontal ties within, 158–167; military regime, 30–31; opposition to state, 31; political culture, 32–33, 44; in Rio de Janeiro, 31, 33; in São Paulo, 31, 137; transformative potential, 32. See also Clientelist neighborhood associations; Combative neighborhood association; Neighborhood associations in Porto Alegre; Participation Neighborhood associations in

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263

Porto Alegre, 38–43, 60, 61, 129–132; alliances among, 167–171; disputes among, 169–171; fragility of, 99–100; and participatory budget, 98–101, 129–132, 139–147, 161–167; support for PT, 98–101; transformation of, 161–167. See also Networks of Neighborhood Associations; Popular councils Neighborhood-based clientelism. See Clientelist neighborhood associations Networks of neighborhood associations, 51–52, 72, 74; influence of participatory budget on, 167–169 Nongovernment organizations, 211–212 Nordeste region, 130, 169 Noroeste region, 125 Norte region, 60, 130 Nova Esquerda faction, 57–58 Núcleos, 49 Nunes, Edson, 132 Nylen, William, 62 O’Donnell, Guillermo, 44 Observation, participant, 231– 232 Offe, Claus, 13 Oliver, Pamela, 117 Olson, Mancur, 15–16, 115–117, 132 Opinion, public. See Public opinion Opinion of participants, 210–211, 214 Opposition parties: electoral success, 28, in government, 44; and participatory budget, 101 Oscar Pereira Road, 143 Ostrom, Elinor, 160

264

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Painter, Martin, 197 Paris Commune, 50 Partenon region, 60, 130, 131 Participation in government decision-making: arguments for, 4, 5–7; and citizen control, 5–8, 12, 198–201 ; and collective identity, 21, 137–138, 178–181; dilemmas of, 10–12, 218; and elitism, 120; and empowerment, 5–8; and free time, 118; and gender, 116, 225; and governability, 65–67, 88–89; and individual development, 5, 6, 21, 178–181, 184–185, 194, 196; initiation by the state, 11, 222, 223–224; instrumental approach to, 5, 7; ladder of citizen, 7; problems of, 4, 8–12, 218–221; in PT ideology, 49–52; in PT governments, 56–57; versus representation, 115–121; and selfconfidence, 119, 129, 137–138, 225; sustaining, 172–174. See also Collective action; Co-optation problem; Implementation problem; Inequality problem; Motivations for participation Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB), 48, 58, 62, 97, 175 Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCdoB), 170, 175 Partido da Frente Liberal (PFL), 53 Partido Democrático Trabalhista (PDT), 40–43, 97; in Extremo Sul region, 139, 163 Partido do Movimento Democratico Brasileiro (PMDB), 27; decline in late 1980s, 52–53; in Porto Alegre, 38 Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT): 1988 municipal elections, 53; history, 47–52; disassociation with corruption, 53; ideology of 49–53,

67; and mainstream opposition, 53; and neighborhood associations in Porto Alegre, 40; organizational structure of, 49; and participatory budget, 100; popularity, 53; in Porto Alegre, 57–58; in Rio Grande do Sul, 57–58; and social movements, 47–48. See also Governments of the Partido dos Trabalhadores Partido Revolucionário Comunista, 57–58 Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB), 38, 62 Pateman, Carole, 178 Pattern model of explanation, 22, 229–230 Pattern-matching, 230 Payroll costs, 82 PCB. See. Partido Comunista Brasileiro PCdoB. See Partido Comunista do Brasil PDT. See Partido Democrático Trabalhista Pereira, Otaviano, 62 PFL. See Partido da Frente Liberal Phillips, Anne, 118 Pinhanez, Mónica, 62 Plan, Master. See Master plan Planning: strategic, 78–81, 100; technical traditions, 86, 204 PMDB. See Partido do Movimento Democratico Brasileiro Police, Military, 153 Political consciousness, 177–181, 184–185, 192–194; in Extremo Sul budget forum, 185, 186–188; role of community organizers, 193, 224. See also Rules, procedural. Political culture, in late 1980s, 53 Political efficacy, 137–138, 196. See

Index

also Political consciousness, Selfconfidence Political strategy, 14, 78–81, 91–112, 218–221 Political support: for budget policy, 66, 91, 112 Pont, Raul, 57 Ponta Grossa neighborhood, 141, 163, 168, 194 Popular councils, 51–52, 72, 74, 169. See also Conselho Popular da Grande Glória; Networks of neighborhood associations Populism, 44, 49 Porto Alegre: history of, 35,36; local politics in, 37–43; PT in, 57–58; social conditions in, 36–37, 120; 1985 municipal elections, 40, 43, 52; 1988 municipal elections, 52 Poulantzas, Nicos, 13, 62 Poverty programs in United States, 8, 117 Priorities, defining, 72; contractor influence of, 93; in Municipal Budget Council, 80, 202; in Regional Budget Forums 80, 131, 141–142, 144, 174–175, 186–192; 203–210; in Thematic Budget Forums, 201–202; Procedural rules. See Rules, procedural Programa de Planejamento Urbano (PROPUR), 150, 153 Property owners, support for PT, 92, 94–95 PROPUR. See Programa de Planejamento Urbano PT. See Partido dos Trabalhadores PTB. See Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro Public employees, support of, 66, 81–83, 89, 105; role of appointed, 83

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Public opinion: and 1988 election, 59; and appeal of PT, 53; and corruption, 52; and distrust of politicians, 53; of Porto Alegre government, 75, 84, 102–104, 107; and public transportation take-over, 69, 98 Putnam, Robert, 119, 159–160, 171 Radicalism, 56, 97–98, 108–109 Redistribution, 109 Reform, administrative. SeeAdministrative reform Reforms, taxes. See Tax reforms Regional budget forums 80, 85–86, 87, 222; combative characteristics of, 158, 220, 222–223; and co-optation, 200, 203–210, 213–214, 222; discussing broadbased issues in, 168–169, 186–188, 221; in Extremo Sul region, 163, 168, 184–188, 207–208; and women’s participation, 128–129. See also Conselho Popular da Grande Glória; Delegates Regional Economic Development Councils, 228 Regions, budget: definition of, 72–73, 90; participant income by, 123–126 Representation: proportional in PT, 58; versus participation, 115–121 Resettlement, 186–188 Revenues: recuperation of municipal, 75–77, 82, 92 95, 110, 227 Rio de Janeiro, 228 Rio Grande do Sul: political history, 37–38; PT government of, 217, 227–228 Rodríguez, Alfredo, 251 Ronge, Volker, 13 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 6, 178

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Rules, procedural, 179–180, 184–185. See also Criteria for distribution Santa Quitéria, 50 Santo André, 56, 128 Santos, 56, 62 São Paulo, 56, 128 Sartori, Giovanni, 120 Schmitter, Philippe, 44 Schofield, Norman, 159 Scott, James C., 158–159 Secretariat of Industry and Commerce, 202 Secretariat of Public Works, 206 Self-confidence, 119, 129, 137–138, 225 Self-interest, versus solidarity, 181–184, 187, 191–193, 223 Selznick, Phillip, 196, 197 Shue, Vivienne, 16–17 Silberschneider, Wieland, 50, 51–52, 62 Singer, André, 56, 120 Skocpol, Theda, 13, 22, 105–106 Social capital, 160–161, 169, 171, 174 Social energy, 174 Social movements: in Brazil, 2, 31–35, 55–56, 137 ; decline of, 34–35, 55–56; in Porto Alegre, 38–40; and PT, 47–48, 55–56; labor, 47, 60; life cycles of, 172. See also Civil society; Collective action; Combative neighborhood associations; Neighborhood associations; Neighborhood associations in Porto Alegre Sociedades de Amigos do Bairro (SABs, Societies of Neighborhood Friends), 30; in Porto Alegre, 38 Socioeconomic status of budget participants, 121–127

Solidarity, 15, 136, 168, 177–181; in combative neighborhood associations, 158; discourse of in Extremo Sul region, 186–188; versus self-interest, 181–184, 187, 191–193, 223 Soviets, 51 Stalinism, 48 State: actors, 13, 14; and economic development, 13; and elite interests, 13; as external agent, 138; -initiated participatory policy, 11, 222, 224–225; promotion of civil society, 15–16, 138, 148–153, 160–161; Marxist perspectives of, 12–13, 51; pluralist perspectives of, 12; neighborhood association opposition to, 31; society-centered views of, 15; society synergy, 17, 22, 222; transformation of, 13–15. See also State autonomy State autonomy, 13,–15, 22; and capital expenditures, 107; in Porto Alegre, 14, 105–107 Stiefel, Matthias, 6, 21, 65, 88–89, 100, 104 Strategic planning. See Planning, strategic. Strategy, political. See Political strategy Subdivisions, clandestine. See Loteamentos clandestinos Support, political. See Political support Survey of participants, 231 Tarrow, Sidney, 15, 138, 172 Taxes: property, 28, 76, 94–95, 98, 111; sales, 76; services, 28, 76, 95 Tax reforms, 76, 94–95, 97–98, 111 Technical criteria, 208–210 Technical viability of demands,

Index

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267

149, disagreements over, 198, 203–210 Telles, Vera, 32, 179 Tendler, Judith, 17, 160 Tennesse Valley Authority, 196 Thematic budget forums, 85, 87, 173, 214, 201–202, 201–202 Tilly, Charles, 15 Trabalhismo, 38 Transparency, 109 Transportation, public: government take-over of, 68–69, 89, 97–98 Transportation Forum, 202 Trotskyites, in Rio Grande do Sul, 57 Trust, 159, 171

Porto Alegre (UAMPA), 40–43, 44, 57, 100 Unions, municipal employee, 47, 55, 81, 104–105. See also Labor movement Utzig, José Eduardo, 90

UAMPA. See União das Associações de Moradores de Porto Alegre União das Associações de Moradores de

Young, Iris Marion, 21

Vargas, Getúlio, 37, 48 Water, struggles for potable, 141, 207–209 Weffort, Francisco, 50, 62 Winchester, Lucy, 251 Wolfe, Marshall, 6, 21, 65, 88–89, 100, 104 Women: and inequality problem, 9, 118; in participatory budget, 127–129, 225

Zero Hora, 94

About the Book

Countless studies of citizen participation in public decisionmaking point out the limitations of direct democracy when it is transported from the realm of political theory into the “real world.” In contrast, this book examines a case where an innovative city government gave major decisionmaking power to ordinary citizens on a large scale— and managed to survive and prosper. Since 1989, the government of Porto Alegre, Brazil, led by the Workers’ Party, has implemented a participatory budget program that is becoming a model for policymakers worldwide. Each year in this regional capital of 1.3 million people, residents meet in their neighborhoods to determine budget priorities. Tens of thousands attend the annual budget assemblies. Nearly a thousand work as delegates year-round, and a popularly elected council has final say on all city spending. Inventing Local Democracy tells the dramatic story of a group of activists who came to power in a city long dominated by patronage politics and elite rule. At the same time, it is a sociopolitical study of the impact that state-sponsored participatory forums can have on civil society. Examining this dual transformation, Abers provides a groundbreaking contribution to the theory of participatory democracy. Rebecca Abers is associate researcher at the Núcleo de Pesquisa em Políticas Públicas (Center for Public Policy Research) of the University of Brasília, Brazil.

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