This post is a summary of the same book from last week, the book with the title above, published in 2008 at http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=1555501. Now the summary is from Chapter 5, "Participatory Budgeting from Above and Below: Civil Society's Role in the Spread of Democratic Institutions." And chapter 13, "Citizen Engagement and Democracy in the Age of Social Movements."
Over the past 15 years, a policy innovation called "participatory budgeting" (PB) has stimulated citizen paricipation at unprecedented levels and helped to achieve greater transparency. The term "participatory budgeting" can refer to an array of policies and practices that directly involve citizens in decision making. These mechanisms make it possible for citizens to participate in more regularized, active, and informed ways. Used broadly, the term 'participatory budgeting' encompasses policies that engage citizens in budget-related decision making. Here, PB will be defined as regular mechanisms that directly involve citizens in decisions on the allocation of public resources and the monitoring of expenses at the local governmental level. There are at least three distinct approaches to PB: 1) "pure PB" programs engage citizens to vote directly on decisions about the funding or supervision of public works projects. 2) "participation-focused" programs aim to involve historically excluded groups, usually by focusing on citizens in marginalized areas. 3) "transparency-focused" programs increase participation in monitoring public budgets and the budget-making processes, this approach require raising public awareness, improving the quality and quantity of public information, and developing the expertise of citizens around specific policy issues. Just as the approaches vary, the purpose of the PB projects also vary. PB aims to achieve three types of overarching (but not mutually exclusive) objectives: 1) greater efficiency in the provision of services and public goods through the reform of the administrative apparatus. 2) greater social justice through the fairer allocation of resources. 3) more active citizen engagement and greater commitment to democracy. Each goal stands on its own merits, but also connects to broader aims, namely good government and democratic deepening. For instance, the first goal addresses the efficiency of local government and public administration through increased accountability and by exposing corruption. The second goal encompasses a variety of social justice objectives, including efforts to involve underrepresented groups, improve social cohesion, and alter spending priorities. The third goal serves political objectives that may further decentralize democracy, open government processes, and/or inject more deliberation and civic participation into decision-making practices. Each goal advances democracy regardless of the definition used: If one conceives of democracy in simple procedural terms, then PB will improve democracy if PB stimulates greater participation. If one uses the idea of substantive democracy, then PB will improve democracy if PB is able to lead to more egalitarian outcomes. A clearer picture of PB's historical growth improves our understanding of the relevant context: according to a low estimate, by 2000 nearly 100 cities and five states had implemented PB in Brazil. Participatory budgeting came to the fore at the same time that the Latin America's record on government transparency and fighting corruption was poor and stagnating. A host of analysts and major NGOs have long feared that the lack of government accountability could undermine or slowly erode democracy in the region. "Social citizenship" (inclusion, participation, and equality) has not been significantly expanded in most L.A. countries. Though recent polls show that most citizens do not want a return to authoritarian governments, but their unequivocal support for democracy has actually fallen. Many are ambivalent about democracy because they perceive that the misuse of power results in unfairly distributed resources and economic burdens. There are further concerns that the culture and practice of democracy will erode if public institutions are not reinvigorated and reformed. PB is a policy that provide improvement in governance. Reforms of public budget processes can do what few other reforms can do by directly addressing civic participation, accountability, transparency, and the strengthening of public institutions. This set the stakes and hopes are high. Monitoring and evaluation are required after public budgets are implemented. The intention of reformers is that PB will stimulate the latter, leading to fairer and more stable and representative democracies.
The central challenge of this study has been to describe "the direction which future efforts should take to strengthen people's trust in their governments and foster engagement of civil society and to provide guidelines for government, civil society and multilateral institutions in maintaining effective citizen participation in economic and social development projects." The political writer Tilly found that "democratization in itself promotes social movements," so that "by the turn of the twenty-first century, people all over the world recognized the term 'social movement' as a trumpet call, as a counterweight to oppressive power. The surge of such movements has elicited the following rationales: 1) Disillusionment of both the political left and right, with "statism", that is, loss of belief that government should or could be the main instrument for designing and implementing solutions to economic and social problems. 2) political-psychological trauma of citizenry, induced by long periods of authoritarian governments. 3) Demonstration effect and logistic support, from successful social movements in the U.S. and Europe advocating improvements in human rights and the environment. 4) Media, internet, and instant communications helped citizens to develop common bonds, organize and become important in political debate and decision making. An efficient democratic state can not exist where civil society is weak. The past decade has witnessed a increase in the power of social movements in L. A., significant not only in terms of their number but also in terms of its political impact. Citizens in a democracy have two ways to gain the attention of government to their concerns and to influence public decision making, that is, to be effectively engaged with their government: 1) they can join and/or cast their votes for political parties and their candidates that support their views. 2) they can form or join organizations of like-minded citizens (CSO) to represent them in the political forum and in public debate. Our guiding hipothesis is that democracy is "deepened" through both means. People form and join social movements, NGOs and community-based organizations seeking to overcome what they perceive to be political, social or economic "wrongs", for example, to combat deprivation of human rights and abuse of power. The independent citizen organizations are important instruments to oblige governments and others with power to respond effectively to such problems. The dominant governing model in the region has been of a "top-down" adversarial system, where stakeholders assume that all political situations are "zero-sum", with little but rhetorical concern for building consensus. This no-compromisse, bunker mentality characterizes not only reactionary governments, but also governments of the political left. Such a political atmosphere leaves little room for imputs from social movements whose representatives are not selected or controlled by dominant political leaders. For the immediate future, two of our studies, one concerned with mobilization of the diaspora communities in support of community-based CSOs, and the other with the need to expand civil society's role in helping overcome underemployment, point to new paths for joint action by civil society and government that can help mitigate persistent social-economic problems. The traditional and standards of citizen participation in CSOs should be reinveinted to encourage greater engagement. There is a new social phenomenon, a global civic consciousness, that can strongly support the region's civil society. Globalization is enhancing the potential participation of citizens around the world with the region's CSOs for several reasons: a new civic consciousness is forming that calls for the protection of environmental sustainability and enhanced human rights.
