Associations, active citizenship, and the quality of democracy in Brazil and Mexico (original) (raw)
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Associations and Citizenship: Identifying the Relationship in Contemporary Brazil and Mexico
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This paper explores the participation of collective civil society actors in institutional spaces for direct citizen participation in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The data was produced by a unique survey of civil society actors who work for, or with, sectors of the lower-middle class, the working class, and the urban poor. The paper identifies factors that influence the propensity of civil society actors to participate in three types of institutions: the participatory budget, the constitutionally mandated policy councils, and other local participatory councils and programmes. Many political leaders, policy-makers and researchers believe that such forms of direct citizen participation can help democratise and rationalise the state, as well as provide politically marginalised populations with a say in policy. Whether these hopes materialise depends in part on the answer(s) to a question the literatures on civil society, citizen participation and empowered participation have not addressed-Who Participates? Contrary to the focus on autonomy in much of the work on civil society, the statistical findings support the claim that collective actors with relations to institutional actors, and the Workers' Party and State actors in particular, have the highest propensity to participate. The findings also support the idea that the institutional design of participatory policy-making spaces has a significant impact on who participates, and that this impact varies by type of civil society actor. Unlike what has been found in research on individual citizen participation, there is no evidence that the "wealth" of collective actors influences participation.
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Association, The Palmer House Hilton Hotel, Chicago, September 24-26, 1998. It is a revised version of the paper I presented at the conference Democracy and the Rule of Law: Institutionalizing Citizenship Rights in New Democracies, McGill University, Montreal, March 19-20, 1998, and the XIV World Congress of Sociology, July 26-August 1, 1998, Montreal. I would like to thank Manuel Antonio Garretón and Nancy Thede for comments on earlier drafts. DRAFT Not for Citation Without Permission of Authors
Strengthening Citizenship in Brazil's Democracy: Local Participatory Governance in Porto Alegre
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2004
In Latin America, and particularly Brazil, inequality and social exclusion continue to plague the quality of democracy despite two decades of transition and consolidation. Still, in Brazil, the Workers' Party has been remarkably successful over the past decade, explicitly addressing the problem of social exclusion and`incomplete citizenship'. This paper provides an analysis of the case of Porto Alegre covering the four Workers' Party municipal administrations from 1989 to the present in order to assess the significance of social incorporation and citizenship for the quality of democracy in Brazil. The paper discusses some conceptual notions that are relevant for the question of democracy in Brazil, particularly the role of citizenship and civil society in`deepening' democracy. Then the paper goes into the evolution and dynamics of Porto Alegre's system of`participatory budgeting'. The paper's assessment of this experience with respect to its performance, depth and robustness shows that`participatory budgeting' has had positive effects with respect to the provision of public goods services, the quality of governance, and citizens' participation in what is seen as a new`public space' shared by the local state and grass roots organisations. The paper concludes by relating the case experience to the question of citizenship, civil society and democracy and by reflecting upon its wider implications for the current and future quality of democracy in Brazil.
Who participates? Civil society and the new democratic politics in São Paulo, Brazil
This paper explores the participation of collective civil society actors in institutional spaces for direct citizen participation in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The data was produced by a unique survey of civil society actors who work for, or with, sectors of the lower-middle class, the working class, and the urban poor. The paper identifies factors that influence the propensity of civil society actors to participate in three types of institutions: the participatory budget, the constitutionally mandated policy councils, and other local participatory councils and programmes. Many political leaders, policy-makers and researchers believe that such forms of direct citizen participation can help democratise and rationalise the state, as well as provide politically marginalised populations with a say in policy. Whether these hopes materialise depends in part on the answer(s) to a question the literatures on civil society, citizen participation and empowered participation have not addressed -Who Participates? Contrary to the focus on autonomy in much of the work on civil society, the statistical findings support the claim that collective actors with relations to institutional actors, and the Workers' Party and State actors in particular, have the highest propensity to participate.