This is What Democracy Looks Like: Participatory Budgeting

I’ve been promising discussions on genuine and innovative democratic institutions since the beginning of this blog.  I don’t want this blog to be just a litany of the world’s alterable problems, and then say, “We’ve got to start thinking of solutions.”  Too many people do that.  Here there are solutions.  They are solutions that address the root of problems, the structure of society and institutions.

One problem is that existing representative institutions do not actually serve us very well.  In Brazil, municipal governments and public resources were at the service of the wealthy and connected.  One such city was Porto Alegre, in the Brazilian state of Rio Sul de Grande.  In 1989, Porto Alegre elected Olivio Dutra, a founder of the Workers’ Party and bearer of a magnificent mustache, as mayor.  The Workers’ Party organized a system of “participatory budgeting,” so that the people of the city could determine where and how municipal resources were directed. Over the course of the 1990’s, the process was refined by several additions.

Each of the sixteen municipal districts of Porto Alegre would host an open assembly, which any local resident could attend, as well as municipal officers and administrators and representatives of community organizations.  In 1994, assemblies were added that addressed specific municipal issues, like traffic and public transit.  There are two meetings of each assembly every year.  The first meeting reviews the budget of the last year and informs citizens of what the municipal government requires in the budget.  The various assemblies then elect delegates.  Generally, we don’t think of a delegate as being anything other than a regular elected representative; for example, Virginia has a House of Delegates whose members have no more accountability than other representatives.  However, traditionally, delegates have been considered to be a special sort of representative that is entirely accountable to his or her electors.  Delegates may have an actual mandate, instructions from his or her electors to vote a certain way.  Delegates may in some cases simply be mouthpieces for his or her assembled electors.  Back in Porto Alegre, this is what participatory budgeting delegates are.   From the first assemblies to the next, delegates move back and forth from various delegate councils back to their districts.  Delegates are expected to walk their districts and meet with residents.  A second session of assemblies begins the finalization of the budget.  A Participatory Budget Council is formed of delegates from district- and issue- assemblies, the municipal workers’ union, the union of residential associations, and the municipal government.  The mayor has a veto on the budget proposed, and the Council can either amend the budget or override the veto with a two-thirds majority.  The final budget is sent to the state legislature so that the city can get their money.  Delegates then serve as the medium between district residents and the municipal administration, to ensure that the budget is being implemented.

Participatory budgeting is a democratic process of public administration, encompassing various democratic forms.  First, participatory budgeting is deliberative.  The process enjoins city residents to gather together and determine what the most pressing needs in their district are by mutual reason-giving.  They cannot engage in the horse-trading, log-rolling, back-scratching behaviors of elected representatives; whereas elected representatives have future votes to trade away, ordinary citizens have nothing to trade for the manner in which they vote and argue.  Each citizen cannot be assured that others will be around to reciprocate at future assemblies.  Thus, citizens will deliberate by reasons, rather than negotiate future rewards.

Participatory budgeting is also participatory, in that representatives are not alone deliberating, but rather citizens, associations, representatives, and delegates are all deliberating together, according to how they are affected.  There is mass, multifaceted deliberation, not simply the deliberations of representatives and bureaucrats.

Finally, participatory budgeting is corporative, or associative, in the sense that it involves the deliberations not only of citizens but of citizens organized into particular articulated interests.  The various assemblies, forums, and councils that meet in the course of the budgeting process develop and articulate the interests of citizens in different fashions.  The sorts of conclusions determined in a district assembly will be different than the conclusions of the assembly concerning, say, health and social welfare.  Those interest-formations are then represented by delegates on councils, including the Participatory Budgeting Council.  Contrast this with electing the US House of Representatives, where every representative is purportedly elected by people organized according to the same principle of “one person, one vote.”  And for a legislature, that is appropriate, because such a body should capture the equality of citizens.  But public administration is for the particular application of laws, and each application will have a different balance of affected interests, depending on the law applied.  In that case, associative principles of democracy would be appropriate for the participatory budgeting process.

Those are the principles of democracy that the participatory budgeting captures, but what are the mechanisms by which it operates?  The process is one of the articulation of interests, the circulation of information, and continuous accountability.  Particular interests are variously captured through the open assemblies in the various districts and regarding certain general issues.  Information is distributed through the election of delegates to various councils and forums, and these delegates return to add to the considerations of citizens and civic associations in their deliberative assemblies.  The final round brings it all together in a sufficiently precise budget plan for the next year that represents the collective will and interests of the people of the city.  The Participatory Budget Council ensures that the municipal government agrees to the final plan, and all the elements of the system can then determine whether the plan is being implemented.

Since 1988, participatory budgeting has spread to cities all over the world with the struggle of dedicated democratic activists.  In Brazil itself, the process has become popular enough that subsequent political parties less friendly to democracy than the Workers’ Party have pledged to retain participatory budgeting.  Municipal spending priorities are noticeably different after the adoption of participatory budgeting than before, focusing more on social services, and social indicators have improved.  However, the Brazilian government under the popular Lula de Silva has decided to continue repaying the debts owed to global loan sharks like the World Bank and the IMF.  This means that the government implements “austerity” measures – cuts in public services – for the sake of repaying the debt.  It’s a foolish move that generally reduces most countries to the basket cases that we see littered across the world, but Brazil has so far avoided this fate and is in the process of becoming a regional power.  In any case, Brazilians say that participatory budgeting has become “participatory austerity” as the federal and state governments reduce spending.  Regardless, participatory budgeting is a successful democratic institutional innovation upon which we might build further democratic structures.