I will start by making a reference to what is known in academic circles as “the paradox of democracy”. There is a general assumption among educational researchers and political scientists that a more educated population generates a better democracy. The theory says that increases in the level of education of the population increase the quality of our democracies. The paradox is that in the last several decades we had unprecedented increases in educational enrolments (to the extent that we have now more people with university education than ever before in the
history of humanity), but the quality of our democracies is not increasing at the same rate. Some would even claim that is not increasing at all, or that is decreasing.
Decades ago, the expectation of many educators and political scientists was that the impressive educational achievements of the 20th century should translate into more democratic institutions, more transparent governments, and a more active citizenry. Unfortunately, in many countries
of the world, this is not the case. We are experiencing what political commentators, and also some politicians, call “the democratic deficit”. Poll after poll, all over the world, tells us that citizens’ do not trust politicians and political institutions, and that they believe that politicians have lost touch with those they claim to represent. All this results in lower and lower election turnouts. So, instead of higher quality democracies, what we got is cynicism and a general lack of faith in democracy. Why is this happening? What are some of the reasons for this democratic deficit?
Some observers claim that the root of this democratic deficit is apathy. This may be part of the problem, but this psychological diagnosis puts excessive blame on each of us, individual citizens, and pays little attention to broader institutional and social factors. We could discuss several of these factors, but due to time limitations let’s just tackle two of them.
The first is the discontinuity of representative democracy. We are asked to engage in democracy once every four years, when we go to elections, and during the rest of the time we are asked to go home and watch the political show on TV from our sofas. We know since Aristotle that a democracy based on elections is more aristocratic than democratic, and we also know from reading the newspapers that politics are too important to leave in the hands of politicians. What happens with citizen engagement in-between elections? Not much, because we are only called to participate every four years. As a result, in many cases the political class became only accountable to itself, and sometimes also to its corporate funders. Some of the outcomes of this situation are the corruption scandals that can be seen (and many that cannot be seen) in many countries at the municipal, provincial and federal levels. But corruption is just a symptom of a bigger problem, which is that the contract of representation that binds voters and elected candidates has lost legitimacy. All over the world, many citizens do not feel properly represented by professional politicians. An important contract, the contract of representation, has been seriously eroded. It is a crisis of representation. So, summarizing, the first cause is the discontinuity of representative democracy, which inhibits the democratization of democracy. This suggests that democracy should be more than going to the ballot box every four years.
The second cause is that educational systems pay little attention to the development of an active, critical and engaged citizenship. Our education systems do not promote citizenship; rather they promote leadership and followership. Leadership is cultivated among the few, usually in elite
schools that prepare the future managers of society, and followership is cultivated among the rest, the future workers and consumers. This is not an accident. John Stuart Mill used to say that healthy democracies need active citizens, but governments prefer passive citizens. Passive citizens do not control governments. A passive citizenry does not hold governments accountable for their actions. This helps to explain why educational expansion did not translate automatically in higher quality democracies. As long as our educational institutions are not seriously promoting
democratic processes and outcomes, and that citizenship education is reduced to memorizing names and describing governing mechanisms, it should not be surprising that more schooling is not resulting in more active citizens. This suggests that we need to find new ways to learn democracy. This leads us to the participatory budget idea.
1. The PB is one tool to address these two challenges, namely the continuity of democracy and the development of an active citizenship. The PB is just one tool, among many others, to promote democratic participation in the city. Like many other social tools, it is imperfect, and should not be seen as a magic wand to solve the democratic deficit problem.
2. Although PB is imperfect, it is perfectible. While it is not a panacea, it has a proven record of 15 years of experience and constant improvement. From its modest origins in Porto Alegre in 1989, the model has been refined, deepened and expanded to many other cities. In Brazil alone there are today 194 experiences of PB. Many Latin American cities outside of Brazil are also experimenting with PB, from Buenos Aires, Rio Cuarto and Rosario in Argentina, to Montevideo in Uruguay, to cities in countries such as Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia, and El Salvador. There are also PB experiments in Africa, Asia, Europe and, yes, Canada. In a few moments we will hear from the city of Guelph and from the Toronto Housing Community Corporation about their recent experiences with PB.
3. The PB is essentially an open and democratic process of participation that enables ordinary citizens to deliberate and make decisions collectively about municipal budget allocations. This includes neighbourhood discussions and decisions about priorities regarding investments in local infrastructure like pavement, sewage, storm drains, schools, health care, child care, housing, etc.. It also includes forums on citywide issues such as transit and public transportation, health and social assistance, economic development and taxation, urban development, and education, culture and leisure.
4. The PB goes beyond alternative budgets, which are mainly academic exercises that do not deal with real budgets, and beyond traditional consultation mechanisms, which are often characterized by token participation. The PB is a real decision-making body.
5. The PB has four key moments: diagnosis, deliberation, decision-making, and follow-up (control). Each one is important in itself, and is connected to the other three.
6. In the PB, participation is governed by a combination of direct and representative democracy rules, and takes place through regularly functioning institutions whose internal rules are decided upon by the participants.
7. The type and amount of investments are decided in annual budget cycles. Resources are allocated according to a method based on two main criteria. On the one hand, there are "substantive criteria" decided by the participants to define priorities (e.g. equity criteria, majority criteria, a combination of both, etc.). On the other hand, there are "technical criteria" of juridical, political, technical or economic viability related to laws and regulations, financial resources, technical factors, safety issues, etc.
8. In operational terms, cities are divided into regions. For instance Porto Alegre is organized in sixteen regions, Montevideo in eighteen regions, etc. Each region is also divided in smaller geographical units. These regions engage in the budget allocations of their own territory. This is known as the “regional PB”. To make decisions on city-wide issues that go beyond a particular region, since 1994 Porto Alegre includes a parallel PB process in five thematic areas: (1) Transportation and Circulation; (2) Education, Leisure, and Culture; (3) Health and Social
Welfare; (4) Economic Development and Taxation; and (5) City Organization and Urban Development. This is known as the “thematic PB”.
9. There are two operational levels: the Fora of Delegates and the PB Council. There are also plenary assemblies, and a multitude of intermediate sessions. It is not direct democracy, but a combination of participatory and representative democracy. Direct democracy is not feasible in large cities, and Porto Alegre has 1.3 million people. It is a problem of scale, which can be solved with a combination of direct democracy and representation mechanisms. A genuine process of direct democracy, in which everyone participates in all deliberations and decisions, is difficult to achieve even in smaller communities. Even the Western ideal of direct democracy, the Athenian Agora, was not perfect. On the one hand, it excluded women and slaves, as only citizens who owned property were allowed to participate. On the other hand, of those who were allowed into the Agora, only a minority did in fact participate.
10. As most decision-making processes that deal with resource allocations and involve a variety of groups, the PB is characterized by conflict. The existence of conflict is a healthy sign, but to deal with conflict it is necessary to have clear and agreed upon rules for deliberation and for solving those conflicts.
11. For a successful PB program, an important condition is the political will of the authorities to ensure the sustainability of the process. Authorities also need to be able to resist pressures to cancel the process in the early years, when everyone is still learning through try and error and frustrations abound. Authorities also need to have a commitment to accept conflict, to respect democratic decisions and to resist the temptation to co-opt the process. Co-optation can also be further prevented by organized communities and the generation of a new political culture. Likewise, a successful PB program requires democratic processes that take proactive initiatives to include those that are less likely to participate and make special efforts to reduce internal inequalities. These range from the provision of childcare and translation when needed, to the rotation of delegates to avoid perpetuation in power and concentration of knowledge in a “people’s bureaucracy”.
12. The PB can contribute to society in five different ways:
a) First, it helps to promote equity in the allocation of municipal resources. Those who need more receive more. For instance, concerning the lack of services or infrastructure, the greater the need, the higher the grade it is assigned in the overall ranking. Because of this equity principle, the PB played a key role in improving the living conditions of many people, especially in poor neighbourhoods.
b) Second, it helps to democratize the state, making it more transparent, accountable, efficient and effective in serving local communities. It is, if you want, a partnership between government and civil society, a type of co-governance. It is more transparent because ordinary citizens have a clear grasp of the budget revenues and expenses, and hence there is less room for inflated budgets and other corruption practices. In fact, in Porto Alegre corruption levels have decreased drastically. It is more accountable because people are invested and empowered to follow up on the decisions made in the budget process, making sure that the quantity and quality of the infrastructure or service delivered is the same one that was agreed upon. Indeed, the follow up generates a new culture of accountability in government and civil society. It is more efficient and effective because decisions are not made on the basis of what authorities think is good for the people, but on the basis of the real needs and dreams of organized communities.
c) Third, it provides a space of encounter for diverse populations who otherwise would be unlikely to meet. The attractiveness of the PB has also become more transclassist in nature. While in the beginning, the middle classes stayed away from the PB, they gradually became more involved. Middle-class participation has increased for three reasons. First, because the municipal government increased effectiveness and reduced corruption in the use of public resources, and improved the kind of services particularly cherished by the middle classes like garbage collection, public spaces, gardens and parks, and cultural activities. Second, because the public discourse around urban issues and the improvements enhanced the self-esteem of the city as a whole, a symbolic urban value. Finally, because since 1994 the PB opened the thematic areas, and middle classes who have their basic neighbourhood needs already solved found a new space to discuss city-wide issues. The pluralist nature of the PB also nurtures solidarity among groups, reinforces social ties, and promotes the collective pursuit of the common good. A particularly interesting pedagogical strategy to make the shift from an exclusive focus on self-interest to a spirit of solidarity is a bus city tour that takes place at the beginning of each cycle. This trip allows participants to have a direct experience of the situation of other neighbourhoods, and to better understand the other’s perspective at the time of deliberation.
d) Fourth, it helps to create a model of co-governance in which the municipal government and civil society work together to pursue the public good. In the traditional model of governance, which is characterized by confrontation and clientelism, citizens’ role is reduced exclusively to demand, to protest, to scream, and eventually to be consulted. The government role is to diagnose what is best for each community, to set priorities and to design and implement the corresponding actions and allocate the necessary resources, usually in exchange for votes. In this model, citizens complain that the government doesn’t do enough for them, that public monies are wasted in inefficiencies and corruption, that their voices are not heard, that the government priorities are incomprehensible, and that all decisions are guided by electoral politics. On the other side, government officials complain that citizens demand more services and more infrastructure while at the same time demand less taxes, which shows not only ignorance of basic budgeting principles but also irrationality. They claim that citizens dont understand that resources are limited, and that they are unable to set priorities. The PB reduces those problems, and sets the basis for a new type of relationship between the municipal government and civil society, one based on codetermination, mutual understanding, partnerships and cooperation, in what in Spanish is called “corresponsabilidad social”, which we could translate as “social
co-responsibility”.
e) Finally, and this is the most important aspect in my view, the PB is a school of citizenship. It is a place where citizens learn democracy by doing, where people acquire a great variety of political skills, knowledge, attitudes and values. It is a place where people acquire self-esteem and political efficacy. In this sense, the PB contributes to the redistribution of political capital in the city, from the haves to the have-nots. The PB demystifies the concept of budget, which before 1989 was perceived as something obscure, highly technical in nature, and left only to a selected group of experts. Ordinary citizens were not considered capable of understanding a budget, let alone doing one. As people gain political efficacy, they stop seeing laws and policies as permanent things ordered from above, and start believing in their own capacity to propose changes when they see something wrong with them. The PB also breaks with the traditional clientelistic relationship between politicians and voters. To ensure that know-how is democratically distributed and not concentrated in a few people, PB councillors can only serve two consecutive years. It also promotes new values and attitudes, including the preservation of public property and reduction in vandalism. In sum, the PB nurtures a virtuous circle between citizenship learning and participatory democracy: the more people participate in democracy, the more they learn about it, and the more competent they are, the more equipped they are to improve its quality.
13. To conclude, a quick update on PB in Brazil. Now PB is also done in schools, first secondary (since 1997), and since last year also in elementary schools. This is called “OP Crianca”, or “Children’s PB”, and it is an important contribution because, as far as I know, nobody had tried before to include elementary school children in decision about school budgets. As one Porto Alegre woman told me, “a good thing about Brazilians is that we have the courage to try”.
14. In Canada we are also trying, and we have in Ontario two concrete cases of experimentation with PB: the Toronto Housing Community Corporation, and the City of Guelph. In Toronto we also have a network of organizations and individuals called 10 x 10, because the idea is that by
2010 at least 10% of the municipal budget is allocated through PB mechanisms. Given the importance given to citizen participation by the current Mayor of Toronto, and the fact that there are more groups in civil society interested in PB, this is not a crazy idea. By the way, our 10 x 10 network is now connected with a group of academics, municipal authorities and community groups in British Columbia who are also trying to advance PB in that province, and we are working on undertaking some projects together. In closing, I think that we have two tasks ahead of us. One is to continue learning from our sisters and brothers in the South, who have accumulated a great deal of experience in PB and have learned a few lessons that can share with us. The second is to continue experimenting with participatory democracy in Canada. We need to thank the Toronto Housing Community Corporation and the City of Guelph for having taken the initiative, because the first steps are the most difficult ones.