Brazil's participatory budgets

In his first public statement after winning the October 2002 election, Lula pointed to the example of PT governments in various states and cities to point out that fiscal responsibility and "creativity in the social area" can go hand in hand to meet the expectations and aspirations of "all Brazilian civil society".

Huge claims have been made for the participatory budget (PB) in Porto Alegre. Bernard Cassen, editor of the French paper Le Monde Diplomatique, chairperson of ATTAC and co-founder of the World Social Forum, asserts that "a model experience, a participatory budget, is being carried out", which "constitutes an unsurpassed experience of direct democracy".

According to Hilary Wainwright, editor of Red Pepper and a leader of the Radical Activist Network, the PB is "a form of citizens' power that is a democratic check on the apparatus of the state."

According to one of its architects, the participatory budget is "a revolutionary experience of democratic planning as opposed to the techno-bureaucratic vision of central planning. The working out of the public budget and of a plan of investments is not done by the government and its technicians isolated in their offices."

Yet, paradoxically, despite its radical credentials, the whole experience wins plaudits from those on the other side of the globalisation fence. The World Bank, for example, has declared Porto Alegre in the 1990s as the "best pupil" under its tutelage. Together with ex-mayor Tarso Genro, World Bank officials have drawn up a handbook on the whole experience in the hope of spreading "best practice" on responsible democratic local government throughout the world.

So how has this experiment managed to draw together radical anti-globalisation activists and the architects of neoliberalism?

The budget process begins each year in March with a plenary meeting of local residents in each of the 16 regions...

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