From Innovation to Erosion: The Dismantling of Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre

This article investigates the dismantling of participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, once the world's most celebrated experiment in participatory democracy. While existing scholarship has extensively examined its rise and diffusion, far less attention has been given to its decline. Drawing on new empirical evidence, the article complements and updates core accounts of how participatory budgeting operated locally, offering fresh insights into its erosion. The analysis identifies three interrelated drivers of this process: the weakening of political will, institutional restructuring, and the demobilisation of civil society. By explaining how such a globally influential innovation could be dismantled at its very origin, the article advances broader debates on the fragility of democratic innovations and the conditions for their sustainability.