Two women join thousands of black women from across Brazil in a march to protest the violence and discrimination they say they suffer, in Brasilia, Brazil, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015. AP Photo/Eraldo Peres.In 2011, Harvard political scientist Archon Fung wrote that “many of us may soon turn our eyes to Latin America, and to Brazil in particular, to understand their accomplishments in democratic governance”. Focusing on mechanisms that enhanced the participation of citizens and civil society in the policy process, he concluded that as for “the vast range of ambitious and successful democratic reforms all over Brazil . . . there are simply no analogs of similar scale and depth in North America, Europe, Asia or Africa” [1].
At that moment, Brazil was seen by many scholars as a laboratory of democratic experimentation with citizen participation and institutional innovation. Participatory budgeting, created by the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) in Porto Alegre in 1989, was labeled a “best practice” by the United Nations in 1996 and was ranked among the world’s 40 best policy programs. In only a few years, this participatory institution became Brazil’s main “democratic export” and by 2015 had been adopted in over a thousand municipalities in more than 40 countries[2].
After the Workers’ Party won the presidential election in 2002, participatory practices were adopted at the national level and on a large scale. An intense process of institutional innovation was underway, with existing institutions being reformed in order to make room for civil society organizations in the policy process. New institutional designs were put in place, giving citizens a voice and a role in the drafting of relevant policies. The creation of a national system of social participation was in motion, interconnecting participatory institutions designed to channel the needs and opinions of citizens at the municipal and state levels to the decision-making arenas in Brasília. The media never mentioned it, but millions of citizens participated in these new institutional channels between 2003 and 2016.
