Participation, Activism, and Politics: The Porto Alegre Experiment and Deliberative Democratic Theory

This paper examines civic governance in Porto Alegre in terms of deliberative democratic theory, as outlined in Cohen (1997), Fung (1998), and Wright and Fung (1999). Civic governance in Porto Alegre has developed in the ten years of the municipal administration of the Workers’ Party (P.T.) into a complex system of participatory fora where citizens decide and deliberate upon a variety of municipal policies. The cornerstone of the system is the much-publicized Participatory Budget (Orcamento Participativo, O.P.), a neighborhood-based set of deliberative fora on the city’s budget priorities. Based upon interview and historical research as well as a survey I applied (n=1039), in this paper I seek to add to the substantive account of democracy at the center of theories of deliberative democracy. I argue that evidence from these institutions offer a robust defense of the potential of deliberative democracy in face of criticisms deliberation will foster domination of more powerful citizens. Instead, we have evidence of the didactic function of participatory governance in Porto Alegre. I also argue that the institutions of civic governance in Porto Alegre force us to re-examine and theorize the types of civil society-deliberative forum interfaces and the potential impacts of civic governance on civil society. Here, I argue that participatory governance has directly fostered the creation of new autonomous institutions of civil society. Finally, I also argue civic governance in Porto Alegre has flourished under two sets of conditions that may make it not immediately transportable to other contexts: that of an unusually endowed municipal government (for Brazilian standards) and the radical driving vision of Worker’s Party administrators.