Goldfrank "The Politics of Deepening Local Democracies" (2007)

The Politics of Deepening Local Democracy: Decentralization, Party Institutionalization, and
Participation
Author(s): Benjamin Goldfrank
Source: Comparative Politics, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Jan., 2007), pp. 147-168
Published by: Ph.D. Program in Political Science of the City University of New York
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The PoliticsofDeepening Local Democracy

Decentralization,PartyInstitutionalization,
andParticipation
BenjaminGoldfrank
Though nearly all Latin American countries currently have democratic regimes, ana
lystswidely agree that these democracies are "shallow."1 While
scholars deplore the
quality of national regimes, one detects increasing excitement about thepotential of ex

periments inparticipatory government to deepen local democracy in a growing number
of cities.2 Dozens
of concepts have emerged to interpretthese experiments, but causal
analysis of why some failwhile others succeed remains underdeveloped. Nascent de

bates recall earlier studies of democratization, with attention given to context and insti
tutional design yet little concern for linking the two to provide a complete explanation.
Three initially
similarexperiments
thateventually
yieldedwidelydifferent
results
offer a more thorough explanation of success and failure of local participation programs
inLatin America. Heading each experimentwas a party on the left thatwon themayor's
seat for the firsttime promising participatory reforms in order to deepen democracy: the
Broad Front (FA) inMontevideo, Uruguay, from 1990 to thepresent; theWorkers' Party
(PT) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1989-2004;
and theRadical Cause
(CR) inLibertador, the
in themetropolitan
areaof Caracas,Venezuela,1993-1995.3The
largest
municipality
core reforms created new institutions to give citizens influence over government spend
ing,yettheir
ambitions
weregrander:revitalizing
citizenship,
openinglocaladministra
tion topublic scrutiny,and responding to backlogs of demands for services. Only inPorto
Alegre, with its participatory budgeting, was each objective achieved. This innovation
has been adopted in some formby an estimated 250 cities worldwide, mostly inBrazil.4
The experiment inCaracas, by contrast, failed to advance either civic engagement or gov
ernmentresponsiveness,
Montevideo's
transparency
thoughadministrative
improved.
new participatory institutionsaided transparencyand service provision but did not gener
ate sustained,widespread citizen activism.5
Two factors best explain these diverging outcomes: the degree of national decen
tralization of authority and resources tomunicipal government, and the level of institu
tionalization of local opposition parties. These conditions shaped the ability of progres
sive incumbents to design meaningful participatory institutions that could attract
citizeninvolvement.
lasting
Only inPorto
AlegreandMontevideodid citygovernments
have this capacity, because only inBrazil and Uruguay had the central state devolved
147

Comparative
Politics Januaiy2007
and resourcesto the local level.Perhapscounterintuitively,
sufficient
jurisdiction
ofweakly institutionalized
opposition
parties
democracy
deepenedmost in thecontext
community
organizations
pushedtheincumbents
inPortoAlegre.There,autonomous
to design an open participation program that allowed citizens tomake decisions across
institutionalized
oppositioninMontevideo
a rangeof issues.Conversely,thestrongly
and Caracas derailed the incumbents'
participation
programs,forcingchanges that
inwhichcitizeninput
was
yieldedmore regulated
and restrictive
designs,respectively,
withinformal,
party-dominated
structures.
Stronglyinstitu
limitedand subordinated
benefitsforlocal
tionalized
partieshave thepotentialtoundermine
decentralization's
make seriousreform
efforts
incities
evenwhendedicatedpoliticalleaders
democracy,
withactivecivilsocieties.
FromParticipationtoDeepeningDemocracy
Critics of Latin America's
shallow democracies
increasingly point to expanding oppor
has become the

tunities
forcitizenparticipation
as a remedy.6
Expandingparticipation
virtual mantra of international agencies promoting both democracy and development
For itsadvocates,participation's
scholars.7
benefitsconsistprimar
andof development
citizensand civil society(foundinconceptslikeempowerment,
ilyof strengthening
stateresponsiveness
civil society),8improving
participatory
publics,and synergizing
or
foraccountability
and redistributive
and accountability
(cogovernance
democracy),9
and
The
both (state-society
governance).10 concept
synergy empowered
participatory
of deepening democracy builds on these ideas, particularly those emphasizing partici
pation's potential tomutually empower state and society.11
At its core, democracy means that thatgovernment treats citizens equally and that
citizens have equal rights to participate in government. Holding periodic elections for
representatives is the established form of realizing these ideals. Deepening democracy
citizenshipand democratizing
thestate.
requiresfurther
stepstowardsstrengthening
from
means transforming
residents
passivesubjectsindepen
Strengthening
citizenship
dent relationships with particular politicians or parties into active citizens who know
theyhave rightsand can legitimatelymake demands on government. One way to discern
strengthened citizenship in practice is to see if thenumber of citizens who regularly and

directly participate in government decision making increases, which was themajor goal
of these experiments. A second way is examining changes in the strengthof collective
social actors, or civil society, to see if existing associations become more politicized and
emerge. Democratizing the state also involves two dimensions:
transparency and responsiveness. Improving transparency entails that the state's deliber
ations and actions are more public, with the expectation thatcorruption and clientelism
recede ifnot disappear. Responsiveness may be conceived in termsof how well the state
if new associations
delivers on the demands emanating from the new participation programs. That is, given
the desperate need and desire for basic services in the poor neighborhoods of Latin
148

BenjaminGoldfrank
American cities, and the demands of these services unleashed by the opening of partici
patory channels, one can ask whether the state delivers. The answer could count as evi
dence of state responsiveness, and thusof democratization of the state.
Deepening democracy does not entail participation by all citizens in all public de
cisions at all levels of government, nor does itmean that representative democracy is
replaced. Rather, it implies thatcitizens have more opportunities to participate than the
occasional election. The fundamental question that scholarship on participation fails to
toparticipate
iswhyopportunities
onlysometimes
producethe
addresssystematically
assumed or desired effects of strengtheningcitizenship and democratizing the state.
Keys toSuccessfulDeepening:Actors,Conditions,or Institutional

Design?
Two debates about democratization reappear in studies on participation and democratic
deepening. Which types of actors, state or society, play themost crucial role? And is
clever institutional crafting all that is needed, or instead are certain propitious condi
tions necessary? The debate about actors is approaching resolution. Most agree that
successful participation programs require a partnership between state and civil society
actors. 12Those who focus on one or the other alone miss the importantpoints made by
early observers thatboth are necessary and thatwhile progressive politicians elected to
local office seem "to play a decisive role . . . this itself could be the result of previous
mobilizations by popular organization."13 Differences remain concerning the relative
importance
participatory
institutions.
ofpartyversussocialactorsininstigating
views thesereforms
The predominant
essentiallyas creationsfrom
perspective
or left
stateofficials
abovebyprogressive
partiesholdingsubnational
Typically,
office.14
authors in this perspective cite the PT's expenrence with participatory budgeting as a
prime example. Others argue that the genesis and dissemination of participatory budget
ing rest not with the PT but with civil society.15The implication is that scholars should
lookbelow to"participatory
democraticinnovations.16
This
publics"forotheremerging
challenge is welcome and necessary, as many overlook civil society's importance in

proposing and shaping participatory reforms. In the cases examined here, both civil so
ciety and party actors promoted participatory reforms and attempted to shape theirde
sign. Further,party and civic organizational membership often overlapped. The original
discussions about participation occurred simultaneously inboth organizational sites, and
reforms
had dualmembership.
manycityofficialsimplementing
Thus,determining
thepreciseancestry
of institutions
and exactcontributions
of
Forexample,participatory
individual
actorsisdifficult.
budgetinginPortoAlegrewas
the "product ofmultiple subjects," not thePT or civil society alone. 17Itwas also not in
fromother parties had submitted budget matters to public
vented from scratch.Mayors
discussion in several Brazilian cities previously. Both PT and community leaders knew
of theseexperiments
beforenegotiatingthedesignof participatory
budgeting.In a
149

Comparative Politics
January 2007
documentpreparedfordiscussionswith cityofficialsinPortoAlegre, theUnion of

withexperiences
Neighborhood
Associations(UAMPA)describedeight
municipalities
of participation in budgeting.18 Social actors, including UAMPA,
played vital roles in
designing
butshouldnotbe attributed
solepaternity
or sole re
participatory
budgeting
sponsibility for its diffusion, as some suggest.19 Of the 140 Brazilian cities using par
ticipatory
budgetingin thelate1990s,PT mayorsgovernedseventy-three,
and thirty
threehad mayors fromother leftparties. Inmany of the rest the PT held the vice-mayor
position.20 Yet thePT governed only 115 of Brazil's 5000-plus cities. The critical role of
leftpartiesinpropagating
participatory
budgetingisunderscored
by thefactthatleft
administrations
similarinstitutions
LatinAmerica,notonly
implemented
throughout
independently in Caracas
model
inMexico
and Montevideo,
but also based partly on Porto Alegre's
City, Rosario, and Cuenca, among others.
The debate over the importance of context versus institutional design for the suc
cess of participation
programsis stillincipient.
Generally,scholarseitherprovidelists
of potentially relevant variables or attempt to extract lessons fromone ormore success
ful cases. The contextual and design features purportedly affecting success begins (and,
for some, ends) with the existence of an incumbent party committed to participation,
sometimes with theproviso that theparty not be riddled with internaldivisions, and the
presence of a vigorous civil society.21The former is seen as necessary to open and sus
tain attractive spaces for participation, the latter for filling them with activists. For
some, an alliance between the incumbents and civic associations is key.22Others sug
gest furtherenabling conditions: some degree of political or social equality among par
a sufficient
ticipantsthatencouragesdeliberation;23
levelof government
resourcesto
ensure concrete results, sometimes linked to prior decentralization;24 and an effective
to inspire
trust.25
bureaucracy
participants'
The importance of these factors and their relation to institutional design are not al
ways clear. Often, they drop out once attention turns to institutional engineering. One
study of Porto Alegre's participatory budgeting concludes that crucial to success were
its focus on "localized, immediate needs" and its central placement within city adminis
trationas a "hallmark."26Another highlights the institution'sopen format,which invites
individual and group participation but neither privileges already organized groups nor
allows leadership encrustation.27A review of successful programs found three common
design features-devolution of power to local units, centralized supervision, and coordi
nation, based on formal state institutions as well as threegeneral principles-practical
needsorientation,
and"deliberative
solutiongeneration."28
grass-roots
participation,
This great variety of agential, contextual, and design requirements posited for suc
cessful participation programs may explain why so few existed until recently.Yet de
spite valuable individual arguments, problems emerge. First, a compelling framework
that integrates actors, conditions, and design remains elusive. Second, the overuse of in
variant models (with one case or only successful cases) makes generalization difficult.
Third, thedebate misses or deemphasizes opposition political parties. Since participation
150

Benjamin Goldfrank
programs may lure important constituencies to incumbents, one can not assume that
opposition parties will passively accept their implementation. In turn, the tenacity of
the opposition's reaction to participation programs should increase with the amount
theyhave to lose and the organizational resources at theirdisposal. Parties with a long
history of local power, strong social ties, and robust organizations should reactmore
vigorouslythanlesserrivals.
Inviewof theselacunae,thisarticleoutlinesan integrated
explanatory
framework
with contrasting
thatcomparesparticipation
programs
outcomesand takesopposition
parties into account. Specifically, the ability of progressive incumbents to design effec
tive participation programs is linked to the extent of national decentralization and the
levelof institutionalization
of politicalrivals.The designfeatures
thatultimately
deep
eneddemocracyinPortoAlegre-high degreeof participant
decision-making
power,
wide range of issues under debate, and informal structure-were contingent upon a de
centralized national state that afforded resources and responsibilities to themunicipal
ity and a set of weakly
institutionalized local opposition parties that failed to resist
forcefully.These three cities shared several traits scholars identifyas potentially deter
in terms
of decentralization
andopposition
partyin
miningsuccess.Theirdifferences
stitutionalization
affectedthe incumbents'
programs.
abilityto designparticipation
or restrictive-had
conse
Finally,thedifferent
designs-open, regulated,
significant
quences for theprograms' ability to deepen democracy.
A Tale of Three Cities

The participatory experiments began in similar fashion in the early 1990s. The incum
never held
bents-the CR inCaracas, FA inMontevideo, and PT in Porto Alegre-had
executive office in these cities, and none knew exactly how theirprograms would work
in practice. However, they all started by dividing the cities into a roughly equal number
of districts to hold public assemblies: nineteen inCaracas, eighteen inMontevideo, and
sixteen inPorto Alegre. In the assemblies citizens were invited tomake demands on the
executive branch, bypassing themunicipal council where opposition leaders remained
prominent. The firstyear hundreds and sometimes thousands of citizens identified and
prioritized
publicworksprojectsforinclusionin theannualinvestment
budget(repre
senting between ten and twentypercent of each city's budget). In all threecities thenew
institutions
includedoccasionalopen assembliesinvolving
directvolunteer
eventually
participation and more frequentmeetings of smaller district forums forwhich represen

tativeswere selected throughan established procedure. All includedmeasures to decen
tralizeadministrative
functions.
At firstglance, these programs bore a striking resemblance, sharingmany design
features scholars stress. However, within a few years participation rates in Porto
itsfuture
whileparticipation
in
success,
Alegre'sprogram
jumped,foretelling
stagnated
151

January 2007
Montevideo and declined inCaracas. Currenttheoriescan not explainthesediffer

ences. The cases were fundamentally similar concerning most elements thatare empha
sized: incumbent
party,civil society,citydevelopment(whichshapesequality),and
municipalbureaucracy.
The CR, FA, and PT exemplify the ideological transformationmuch of the Latin
Americanleftunderwent
inthe1970s and 1980s.29
Theymoved from
viewingdemoc
racy as bourgeois formalism or an instrument to achieve power to adopting democracy
as an essential value and deepening democracy as a permanent goal. Notions of an om
nipotent centralized state gave way to calls for a transparent, decentralized state that
would cogovern
with societythrough
mechanismsbywhichcitizenscould in
regular
fluence
policyandmonitorperformance.
Partyandgovernment
documents
proclaimed
these ideals for each city almost indistinguishably, and each mayor showed personal
throughout the city.30These new leftparties also
dedication by attending assemblies
had in common division into factions with varying political tendencies, a membership
base in union and community movements, a mostly middle and working class con
stituency, a lack of government experience, and local victory by a bare plurality due
to protest votes against national politicians than to votes for participatory re
more
forms.No party had any inherent advantages, therefore, in implementing a participa
tionprogram.
The situation of local civil society might inspire less optimism. Though
each
and other community-based or

ganizations, their history largelymirrors the regional pattern of a rise of such orga
nizations in the 1970s and early 1980s followed by a decline in their numbers and
influence by the end of the 1980s. The impetus of thesemovements partially reflects
the regional deterioration of urban services in the 1970s. The movements' subse
quent decline corresponds to the state's weakening ability to respond to demands
during the debt crisis. For countries under dictatorship in the 1970s, like Brazil and
Uruguay, community organizations were also often an outlet for opposition. Once
city housed hundreds of neighborhood
associations
democracy returned, thismotivation disappeared. Both achievement of movement

goals (restoring democracy) and failure (lack of improvements in living conditions)
contributed to diminished interest in neighborhood activism by the late 1980s.
associationsexpe
Venezuela'sneighborhood
Though ina different
politicalcontext,
rienced a similar pattern, with success in achieving local rather than national democ
racy in 1989 and failure epitomized by the spontaneous riotingof theCaracazo that same
year. Another source of declining activism, particularly inCaracas, Montevideo, and
Porto Alegre, was the attempt by governments to use neighborhood associations to dis
of community
milk.Thisdomestication
tribute
groupsfre
benefits,
especiallysubsidized
quently resulted in residents' seeing them as state appendages rather thanprotest vehicles.
Recognizing thepattern of rising and falling fortunesof communitymovements, scholars
of Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela have separately analyzed them in terms of "protest
cycles."31
152

BenjaminGoldfrank
inMontevideo
Consistent
with thispattern,
oncevibrantcommunity
organizations
and Porto Alegre entered a disenchantment phase in the late 1980s and inCaracas by
the early 1990s.32 Despite
theirdecline in termsof thenumber of new groups, member
ship, level of activity, and political weight, several hundred neighborhood associations
were registered in each city around the time the participation programs began: 427 in
Caracas in 1994; 300 inPorto Alegre in 1988; and 626 inMontevideo in 1988, of which
Dozens of cooperatives,
436 were knowntobe functioning.33
soupkitchens,
mothers
clubs, and cultural and other groups also existed. Federations arose to coordinate de
mands
for urban services and participatory reforms: FACUR
(Caracas), MOVEMO
(Montevideo),
andUAMPA (Porto
Alegre).
Each citypossessed a relatively
organizedcivil society,albeitnot so dynamic
as in the past. The protest cycle bequeathed
zens belonged
to community organizations
an activist legacy, as thousands of citi

or had participated
in them recently.
Two othersimilarities
meritattention.
First,thecontinuedactivityof neighborhood
associations
was
often due solely to the persistence
of their presidents. Second,
community-based
groupsheldheterogeneous
politicalviews,particularly
regarding
relationships
toparties.Some had strongclientelistor ideologicaltiesto individual
parties, and some sought balanced
party representation in leadership positions,
The specificmix differed

across
while othersrejectedpartyinvolvement
altogether.
cities, but in ways closely related to the type of local parties that had historically
predominated.
Along with similar incumbents and stocks of social capital, these cities were
also all profoundly inegalitarian. Geographic differences reinforced class and ethnic
stratifications, separating citizens into distinct levels of worthiness. In each city, a
of neighborhoods,
formalor informal,is stronglyingrained,
binarycategorization
social division.Such bifurcation
relatesto similardevelop
markingan important
ment patterns. Accelerated population growth of themid twentieth century slowed in
the 1970s, when downtown areas began to lose population to less developed periph
eral areas. This centrifugal growth created difficulties formunicipal governments. A
prior pattern of service provision concentrated on the formal urban core and ignored
illegal squatter settlements in the periphery. By the late 1980s these patterns com
bined. A sizable contingent of residents lived in the informal,peripheral areas and de
manded improvements in urban infrastructureor inclusion in the legal city.The level
of services and socioeconomic profile in the three cities were more alike than different
(see Table 1).
The largemajority of residents had essential services likewater and electricity,yet
often access was "informal" and unreliable. Other basic services-street
paving, trash
and lighting-showed
cleardeficiencies.In addition,
collection,
publictransportation,
a considerable minority of each city's inhabitants lived in poverty, and unemployment

rates had grown. The cities vary substantively on only two dimensions: Porto Alegre's
lower rate of irregular housing. These differences
greater inequality and Montevideo's
153

January 2007
Table 1 SocioeconomicIndicators
(Circa1990)
Population (1990)
Percentage
of
Households
Below
Caracas
Montevideo
PortoAlegre
1,826,222
1,323,926
1,263,043
28%
(1990)
27%
(1991)
24%
(1991)
10%
(1990)
9%
(1991)
11%
(1993)
thePovertyLine
Percentage
ofLabor
ForceUnemployed
Percentage ofAdults
3%
3%
6%
Illiterate*
(1990)
(1985)
(1991)
GiniIndex(1990)
.40t
.39
.59
Infant
Mortality,
per
21.4
20.3
18.7
1000 Live Births
(1990)t
(1990)
(1992)
41%
(1993)
12%
(1996)
34%
(1991)
92%
(l990)t
93%
(1996)
96%
(1991)
Percentage
of
Residents
Livingin
IrregularHousing
Areas
Percentage
of
Domiciles
With
WaterSupplied
Internally
Percentage of
96%
Domiciles
WithElectircity
*For Caracas,
over 10 years old; forMontevideo,
the defunct Federal District, which

Source: Adapted
99%
(1996)
(1990)t
over 18; forPorto Alegre, heads of households.
included Vargas'
fromGoldfrank, 63, 71, 72, Tables
99%
(1991)
tFigures for
poplation of roughly 280,000.

2.2, 2.4, 2.5.
seem less prominent than overall similarities, especially since most housing units in
irregular areas have electricity and basic sanitation services. Further, Porto Alegre's
success.
greaterinequality
would suggesta lowerlikelihoodforparticipation's
Finally, these cities' bureaucracies were a far cry from theWeberian model reform
ers might covet. They conformed, rather, to the patrimonial model described formost
LatinAmericancities.Bloated payrolls,inefficiency,
pettycorruption,
and failureto
maintain government installations afflicted each administration.34 Porto Alegre's newly
installed PT officials complained of 4,000 "ghost" employees who did not work, and
theCR and FA made similar accusations. Most municipal workers viewed reformpro
posals with suspicion; some resisted.Many Porto Alegre municipal employees "tried to
154

BenjaminGoldfrank
put the brakes on the new administration" by deliberately delaying administrative pro
cedures.35 In Caracas and Montevideo numerous cityworkers refused to perform tasks
not listed in rigid job classifications.
workers only washed
In the Caracas maintenance
department, some
floors, some only windows. Strikes were also held in each city to
demand wage increases and express rejection of reform.

In sum, in each city a newly incumbent leftparty installed participatory institu
tions in order to deepen democracy, expand its base, and appeal to community move
mentalliesdisenchanted
with inequality,
poor services,andunresponsive
government.
The parallelcreation
ofparticipatory
institutions
didnotgenerate
parallelresults,
how
ever, because of two crucial differences.
NationalDecentralizationand Local Opposition Institutionalization

Consistent with a regional trend, national governments in Venezuela, Uruguay, and
reforms
Brazilundertook
decentralization
local
duringthe1980sand 1990s,increasing
and politicalauthority.
governments'
fiscal,administrative,
However,Uruguayanand
Brazilian localgovernments
historically
enjoyedgreaterresourcesand responsibilities
inVenezuela,andBrazil's reforms
wentfurthest.
thanlocalgovernments
Until 1988 Venezuela was extremely centralized. National administration con
trolledmost revenues, provided nearly all public services, and appointed state gover
nors. City councilors were elected to runmunicipalities, but voters could choose only
party slates, not individual candidates. Decentralization reforms of 1988-1989 estab
lished directly elected mayors, greater transfers of central resources, and new (but
forsubnational
governments.
New formsof citizenparticipa
shared)responsibilities
tionwere introduced
districts
withelectedboardstoserve
by creating
(calledparishes)
as interlocutors between mayors and community organizations. In practice, however,
municipalrevenuesincreased
onlyslightly
(from4.2 percentof totalgovernment
rev
enues in 1989 to 5.7 percent in 1993), and thenational government continued providing
most services inmost cities.36 Caracas' municipal government saw little improvement.
Of the five metropolitan-area municipalities, Caracas City Hall had the lowest per
capita budget in the 1990s, and urban services remained at themercy of overlapping ju
risdictions
acrossdifferent
levelsof government.37
With a strong federal tradition dating back to 1889, Brazil had a long history of
greaterdecentralization
than
Venezuela.Brazil's 1988 constitution
granted
municipali
ties higher shares of direct transfers,more sources of revenues, more service responsi
bilities, and guaranteed autonomy.Municipalities
nearly doubled theirportion of total
revenuesafterthe1988 constitution.38
The autonomy
government
clause allowedmu
nicipalities to pass organic laws (similar to a city constitution) not subject to state or
federal approval. In Porto Alegre municipal government revenues increased 82 percent
from 1988 to 1992.39
155

January 2007
Uruguay, uniquely in Ibero-America, has only two levels of government: the na

tional government and nineteen provincial governments, known as departments and
headed by mayors (intendentes). The provinces have a long record of raising revenues,
providing services, and operating as outlets forpolitical opposition. Following military
rule, when mayors were appointed and taxation powers reduced, Uruguay reverted to
elected mayors, transferred responsibilities downward, and enhanced local revenues
and spending. Real per capita spending by provincial governments grew by 100 percent
between 1985 and 1997.4 However, the central government retained thepower to over
ride provincial taxationmeasures
otherprovinces.
and denied Montevideo
financial assistance granted
The different national decentralization processes led to varying capabilities for

municipal governments inCaracas, Montevideo, and Porto Alegre. Figure 1 compares
each city's average annual per capita budget and scope of jurisdiction over urban ser
vices during the first term in office. Compared toCaracas City Hall, the Porto Alegre
and Montevideo
administrations could spend twice as much per person per year.
Figure
1 Decentralization
Indicators
$160
100
-i
$140
............0
$120
....
.--'.'.''-.
O ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...........
l.:.-. :
r a $100- -
ope of Jurisdictiong
-nn>/
E~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~....-..-.t..I
O..
m
a
OU
a)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. ,,.........
L ~~~~~~~~~~~~...,
D
.90
$80
o
..
60 D
. ..-.-..-..
........o
- - ----------500-
_
O 0.,:,S
,:::::,..
.
$60
_
$4
.........
.)
..........
- n~~~~~~~~~~~~~.....-
j0
t a) w ii x0iiiiiiii
::020 :::
$20
:0
1 0E ....
C,t,~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.................
PortoAlegre
Montevideo
Caracas
Source:Goldfrank,
97,Figure2.3. To measurejurisdictional
scope,I examined25 servicesprovidedby at
leastone (andusuallytwo)of thecitygovernments
andcoded themon a scaleof 0 to4, from
nomunicipal
roletomunicipalresponsibility
defactoandde jure.
156

BenjaminGoldfrank
inPortoAlegre andMontevideoalso had significantly
Governments
greaterresponsi
bilityover services,includingat least sharedresponsibility
over public housing,
sewage, and water.
InCaracas themunicipaladministration
lackedthejurisdiction
and revenues
nec
essary to address residents'most importantneeds. The CR attempted to overcome these
limits
by inviting
serviceprovidersfrom
otherlevelsof government
tocollaborate
with
theirparticipation
program.
since
were
not
However,
theseentities
committed
to the
CR's participatory project, participants usually could not convince them to pay atten
tion to their requests. The program's design in Caracas thus included only a limited
rangeof issuesthatcitizenscouldmeaningfully
debate.Furthermore,
themunicipal
government's nearly empty coffersmade
itdifficult to respond to citizen demands, thus
reducingthepowerofparticipation.
InPortoAlegre andMontevideo,however,incumbents
benefitedfroman encom
passing jurisdictional scope and a relatively large budget. Because of this combination,
the design of the participation programs could theoretically allow participants input
over a wide range of issues, and themunicipal governments had resources to carry out
decisions, which would give participants a taste of real power. Indeed Porto Alegre
eventually followed thispattern, but notMontevideo. Decentralization
goes a longway
toward explaining theoutcomes across cases but can not account for the differences be
tween
MontevideoandPortoAlegre.The roleof oppositionpartyinstitutionalization
thusbecomesimportant.
The conceptemployedhereborrowsfrom
Huntington's
originalformulation
and
others'adaptations.41
Generally,
partiesare consideredinstitutionalized
themore they
create ties of loyaltywith members, voters, and interestgroups and thegreater theiror
ganizationalcomplexity(multipleterritorial
or functional
subunits,regularinterac
tions,and independence
froma singlecharismatic
leader).Partylongevity
reflects
and
reinforces institutionalization.Most studies of party institutionalization focus on indi
vidual incumbent parties or entire party systems.42 The concern here iswith local op
position parties for empirical and theoretical reasons. Empirically, the type of incum
bent that introduces participation programs is generally the same, an unseasoned
challenger seeking innovations to expand constituencies. Theoretically, the level of in
stitutionalization of individual parties can vary both within a party system and within a
single party across cities or states.Though national party systemswere largelymirrored
inCaracas,Montevideo,andPortoAlegre,with twostrongly
institutionalized
partiesin
the former cities and several inchoate parties in the latter,the local incumbents did not
fit thepatterns.At the time theywon local office, theCR, FA, and PT were all relatively
weakly institutionalized, though the former twowere less institutionalized than their ri
vals and thePT somewhat more.
Most
important, the new incumbents inMontevideo
and Caracas
faced two histor
icallydominant
parties
with rootsintheearlynineteenth
and twentieth
century,
respec
thathad developedpatron-client
tively,
networks,
deep partisanidentification
among
157

January 2007
members and voters (creating distinct party cultures), and a custom of power sharing to
exclude challengers. The historic parties had lost themayor's seat but maintained
eral city councilors with strong ties tomunicipal
sev
bureaucrats, community organiza
thenewlyincumbent
tions,andpowerful
nationalleaders.InPortoAlegre,by contrast,
PT represented just one more partywithin an array of weakly institutionalized parties.

There were no historically dominant parties, but rather several parties founded within
the past decade, displaying little internal coherence or discipline despite one or more
popular leaders. The parties had not yet established stable alliances with each other or
durablelinkstovoters,community
groups,andcityworkers.
inoppositionpartyinstitutionalization,
opponentsof
Because of thedifferences
the CR and FA had more to lose from participation programs than did the PT's rivals
and had more weapons. The opposition parties' resistance was thusmuch stronger in
Caracas andMontevideo, and itprevented theCR and the FA fromdesigning theirpar
OppositionreactioninPortoAlegre
ticipation
programsas theyoriginallyintended.
was comparatively insubstantial, giving the PT more freedom to design participatory

budgeting. Porto Alegre's
community organizations also enjoyed greater autonomy
constantly
foughtforan effec
frompoliticalparties.Themost organizedcitydistricts
tiveparticipation program, with greater decision-making power over an ever-expanding
range of issues. Many community groups inCaracas, by contrast, had ties to rival par
ties and tried to sabotage the CR's participation program. Such groups' loyalties in
Montevideo were split between the FA and the opposition and either timidly supported
or rejected
participation.
The CR's rivals inCaracas were notmerely institutionalized. Since the 1960s
Caracas
Accion Democratica (AD) and Copei completely dominated the political and social
arenas, leading scholars to label Venezuela a "partyarchy."43AD, particularly, had
strong labor ties, and partymembership surpassed twomillion in 1985.44 AD's domina
tion extended to Caracas. AD won the city's firstmayoral race with Claudio Fermin,
who solidified AD's tieswith themunicipal workers' unions and neighborhood associa
tions. He was helped in the latter by AD's national policy of distributing subsidized
powdered milk through the associations and granting party leadership positions to asso
ciation presidents.45 By the early 1990s AD had significant clout in the city's neighbor
hood associations. A new municipal federation (Favemli), for example, had an AD
affiliated president and over 300 member associations. When the CR barely defeated
AD in the 1992 Caracas municipal election, AD had many resources at its disposal,
Before
fromneighborhood
associationstounions to itsextensive,loyalmembership.
the results were announced, rumors circulated thatAD would try to steal the election
from theCR, and supporters of both parties clashed in the streets.This confrontation
was a preview of AD's battle to retake Caracas during the next three years. This battle
took on many forms and placed furtherconstraints on theCR's ability to design and im
calledparishgovernment.
program,
plementitsparticipation
158

BenjaminGoldfrank
workers' unions
Municipal
linked to AD
constantly protested, starting with a
month-long strike delaying all public works contracts.Workers also committed sabo
and cityrecordsand stealing

including
tage,destroying
computers
municipalproperty,
tires from city buses. But given AD's control of unions and labor courts, Mayor
Aristobulo Isturiz had difficulty firingworkers. It took Isturiz over a year to fire a mu
nicipal employee who had assaulted him; even thenAD kept theworker as a union rep
associations,
joinedtheattack,refus
resentative.
AD's other
main allies,neighborhood
ing to attendparish government
meetings or disruptingand ridiculingthem.
Furthermore,
AD's andCopei's citycouncilorsand localoperativesfoughttheparish
government proposal from the outset, arguing that its emphasis on direct citizen partic
ipationundermined
democracy.
When Isturiztriedto consolidatethe
representative
parish governments through a city ordinance debated and designed
in public assem
blies, the opposition fought ituntil one month before the 1995 elections. The ordinance
was approved inNovember;
theCR lost theDecember
elections; and thenewly victori
ousAD immediately
annulledtheordinance.
Uruguay's two strongly institutionalized parties, the Colorado and

National parties, jointly received over eighty percent of the vote until the 1973 coup.
Montevideo
system,theydistributed
politicaland administrative
Throughtheir"coparticipation"
positions proportionally, staffingnational and provincial bureaucracies with their sup
porterswith impunity.The Colorado strongholdwas Montevideo, where itused the bu
Withminorexceptions
(1958-1962
reaucracy
tocultivate
andmaintainpoliticalsupport.
Montevideoconsecutively
from1918until1989.
and 1983-1984),theColoradosruled
The Colorados
set up hundreds of "political clubs" across Montevideo,
each with a
Through
neighborhood
caudillowho was bothpublicemployeeandpoliticalactivist.
ofpoorandworking-class
out
fa
theseclubs,residents
personal
neighborhoods
sought
vors and sometimes public services. Even dictatorship did not interruptColorado dom
ination; the elected Colorado mayor continued in his post until themilitary's last year.
the
Afterwinningthefirst
postmilitary
election(1984) inMontevideoandnationally,
Colorados resumed patronage politics, reestablishing the clubs and creating a new of
fice (UAPE) to stimulate the growth of neighborhood associations by distributing food
stamps. Over half of the existing associations in 1988 had been founded between 1985
and 1988, and 26 percent started theyear UAPE was created, 1985.46
When the FA Mayor, Tabare Vazquez,
took office in 1990, the Colorados at
tempted to use their links to neighborhood associations and municipal workers to ob
structhis participation program. Colorado-linked associations were less likely topartic
sloweddowntheprocessingof
ipate,andColorado-appointed
bureaucrats
deliberately
paperwork and pushed themunicipal union to strike.These attemptswere less success
ful than theunited campaign by theColorado and National parties to denounce the FA's
congressional
leaders,andevenPresident
Lacalle (from
program
usingcitycouncilors,
theNational
Party). In more
than 150 attacks in the press, they accused
the FA of
159

January 2007
borrowing tactics from theKGB
and the Cuban Committees
for theDefense
of the
Revolution;Lacalle called theFA administration

The oppositionalso
"totalitarian."47
blockedrevenuesto theFA'smunicipaladministration
by cuttingtransfers,
reneging
tax
on contracts,
and rejecting
municipal
increases.
elevenoppositioncity
Critically,
councilors exploited Uruguay's unitary constitution by appealing
to the national con
gress tovoidVazquez's municipalresolution

theparticipation
program.
establishing
WhenVazquez invitedthecouncilorstohelpdesignnewparticipatory
institutions,
they
stalled the negotiations for two years and insisted thatparty representatives play a cen
tralroleinany localdecision-making
bodies.Overridingconcernsvoicedby someFA
allies incommunity-based
ceded to theopposition's
organizations,
Vazquez eventually
demands.The resulting
reformsin theparticipatory
institutions
severelylimitedthe
decision-making
powerof citizenparticipants
andprivileged
partyactors.
PortoAlegre Brazil's notoriously
underinstitutionalized
partiesstempartlyfromthe
permissive electoral rules themilitary regime reintroduced in 1979 in order to divide
thedemocratization
movement.
dozensofpartiesemerged,
butnone
Shortlythereafter,
gained hegemony either nationally or in Porto Alegre. Eight parties gained city council
seats in the 1988 election, and eight again in 1992. Alliances among parties encom
passed strange bedfellows and changed frequently,but parties often ran alone. Five can
didates competed in the 1985 mayor's race, and eight in 1988. That decade, voters never
returned an incumbent party tomunicipal or state executive office.
Despite the general fragmentation and weakness of local parties, twomight have
developed enduring social linkages: the PMDB (Party of theDemocratic Movement of
Brazil) and the PDT (Democratic Labor Party). The PMDB formed out of the official
opposition during the dictatorship and thus had a longer history than other parties.
However, the PMDB did not have a municipal party organization in Porto Alegre.48
Furthermore, the creation of new parties in the 1980s weakened the PMDB nationally,
as many of its leaders left to join other parties, particularly the PDT. The PDT was
founded by Leonel Brizola, ex-mayor of Porto Alegre and ex-governor of Rio Grande
do Sul. Though competing labor parties were founded in the 1980s, Brizola's PDT re
ceived themost support in Porto Alegre. In the firstmayoral election in 1985 PDT can
didate Alceu Collares won easily, and Brizola received overwhelming support in his
1989 presidential bid. Yet the PDT consisted mostly of Brizola, Collares, and a few
other historic leaders. It failed to establish a strong party organization, despite attempt
ing to create a network of neighborhood leaders during Collares' administration
(1986-1988).Collarespromisedcitizencouncilslinkedtoeach administrative
division
but never implemented theproposal, which tarnished his image with activists.
By the late 1980s no political party in Porto Alegre had established enduring con
nections with voters or social organizations. Unlike inCaracas, themunicipal workers'
union in Porto Alegre always had a plurality of parties in its leadership.49 And unlike
both Caracas and Montevideo, few neighborhood associations were subordinated to a
160

BenjaminGoldfrank
single political party. It is not that clientelist associations did not exist. In fact, neigh
borhood associations were arenas of party competition. And both the PDT municipal
government and thePMDB state government tried to cultivate relations with the associ
ations, the latter through "milk tickets."What differed in Porto Alegre was thatmany
relation
clientelist-style
associations
weremercenary.
Theydevelopedonlytransitory
ships with politicians and parties or, more often, allowed multiple parties in so that
nonecoulddominate.
UAMPAs leaders,forexample,came from
multipleparties.Less
formal,
district-level
coordinating
groups,knownas popularcouncils,also hadmulti
partyleadership.
When thePT implemented
participatory
budgeting,localoppositionpartieshad
little to lose compared toAD
in Caracas
or the Colorados
inMontevideo,
and they
lacked the organizational resources thatwould have enabled them to challenge the PT's
program effectively.Unlike in theother cases, theopposition inPorto Alegre offered no
The PMDB neverdiscussedparticipatory

when it
uniform,
unitedreaction.
budgeting
began. The PDT was divided. Some city councilors and ex-mayor Collares tried to con
vince PDT members not to participate, particularly through their allies inUAMPA. Yet
attacking participatory budgeting was not a priority, and lower party echelons did not
always follow theCollares line. Even members of UAMPA-affiliated associations ig
nored PDT instructionsnot to participate. Joao Dib, an ex-mayor and veteran city coun
cilor for the conservative PPB (Brazilian Progressive Party, an outgrowth of the dicta
torship's official party), argues thathis party was the only one that resisted, and only
because he did. Even
then his colleagues
did not always vote with him. Opposition
inthepressbutfocusedalmostentirely
on issues
leaderscriticized
thePT administration
otherthanparticipatory
budgeting.
especially
The PT did facecoordinated
pressurefromcommunity
organizations,
thedistrict-level
popularcouncils,which ledprotestsagainstthePT administration
when it failed to carry out promised investments and constantly pushed for changes in
the design of participatory budgeting. The administration acceded to several commu
nity demands: expanding the number of districts to increase access, creating an annual
investment
plan listingall projectsand estimatedcosts,and dispersinginvestments
across districts and neighborhoods according to local priorities, needs, and population
size rather than focusing investments on a few "showpiece" neighborhoods. The even
tual result was a more open, effective participation program than in Caracas and
Montevideo.
DeepeningLocal Democracy
parties
The degreeofnationaldecentralization
and institutionalization
of localopposition
affected the incumbents' ability to deepen local democracy invarious ways. Most
impor
institutions.
tantly,
theyshapedtheincumbents'
abilitytodesignthenewparticipatory
161

Jan uarv 2007
Design variedalongthreeaxes: structure,

including
the
methodof choosingrepresenta
tives and the periodicity of meetings and representatives' terms; range, or number of
significant
issuesopen todebate;anddecision-making
power,stretching
fromconsul
tativepower,suchas receiving
andprovidinginformation
and/or
opinions,todelibera
tivepower,such as providingproposals,makingnonbinding
decisions,andmaking
bindingdecisions.The designhad particularly
important
effectson encouraging
and
sustaining
citizenparticipation.
In Caracas
nationally centralized authority and strong opposition parties led to a
restrictive
programdesign.The restrictive
design includeda formalstructurein
which party leaders in parish boards (elected to three-year terms) and municipal bu
reaucrats in parish technical cabinets competed for power at the topwhile volunteer
participants, those intended to play the central role, were often excluded. Given
the
minimalscopeof jurisdiction
inVenezuelaand there
granted
municipalgovernments
fusal of national and state organs to collaborate with theparish governments, the range
of significant issues thatparticipants could effectively debate was narrow. And, with
fewexceptions,participantslackeddecision-making
power.City residentsoffered
suggestions, received and provided information, and made demands but did not, by
and large, make decisions. In the budget process the parish governments created
lists of demands, often in public assemblies, but party representatives drew up the
parish's final priorities, and themayor's cabinet decided how to allocate investments
across parishes and municipal departments. As a result of the restrictive design, the
original eagerness to participate shown by thousands of residents who attended as
semblies in the beginning of 1993 went unmatched in the next two years.50 When
participants realized they could not effectively decide on the issues they cared most
about, they gradually dropped out.
Montevideo's pattern of decentralized authority in the context of strongly institu
tionalized parties yielded a regulated program design. After beginning with a more in
formal structurewithout designated seats for political parties, the FA was essentially
forced by the opposition to regulate participation. The structure ismore formal than
thatof Caracas, but it similarly established competing legitimacies. Each district has a
local board, with party-selected representatives from the incumbents and the opposition
(for five-year terms), and a local council, where formal elections determine civil soci
ety representatives (for thirty-monthterms). The districts also have a secretary, ap
pointed as themayor's delegate, and a director of the community service center.While
the range of issues is fairlybroad, the citizens' role in decision making is limited, as the
local councils are legally subordinated to the local boards and designated only consulta
tive powers. The budget process begins when
the mayor's
cabinet determines the
amounts for each district and aspect of city government. The local boards and councils
receive the resulting budget, detailing how much each district can expect for several
types of spending, such as forpublic lighting and street paving. The boards and coun
cils then agree on priorities for each category, with some input from residents through
162

BenjaminGoldfrank
public assemblies and suggestion boxes. As with all local issues, theboard has the final
word. In contrast to the residents' enthusiasm about taking part in the participatory de
centralization program in the early 1990s, by mid decade participation had declined.
Local councilmembersfrequently
at publicassembliesdimin
resignedand turnout
ished, leading to official concern for the "crisis of participation."51
parties,combined
withBrazil's
PortoAlegre'sweakly institutionalized
opposition
highdegreeof decentralization,
led toan opendesign.Participatory
budgeting's
infor
mal structure is based on two premises. Anyone can participate in the annual budget as
semblies, and everyone who does participate has the same rights to voice, to vote, and to
be elected delegate to the district or thematic forums and themunicipal budget council.
Terms last one year, and delegates may recall councilors with a two-thirdsvote. All
meetings at each level are open to the public. No
formal arena exists for official party
representatives.The range of issues open to debate is also widest, not only because Porto
Alegre controls
more servicesbutbecauseparticipants
demandedan ever-expanding
on investment
role,suchas input
priorities,
municipalwages,andpolicymaking
(forex
of daycarecentersforgovernment
supportand
ample,rulesconcerning
qualification
decision-making
powerismuchgreater
their
management).
Crucially,theparticipants'
in Porto Alegre. They can make real decisions. One set of decisions, the list of priori
tizedprojectsfromthedistrictassemblies,is bindingon citygovernment.

Assembly
participants select and rank these projects, the delegates vote on the final list, and nei
Otherdecisions,partic
therthe
mayornorthebudgetcouncilmay alterthesepriorities.
ularly those of the budget council concerning broader policy issues, are subject to the
mayor's veto. In practice, themayor almost never uses theveto but attempts to negotiate
until an agreement can be reached. Finally themayor's cabinet uses theparticipants' de
liberations
toallocatespendingacrossdistricts
and cityservices.The accessible,soci
ety-dominated structure,wide range of issues under debate, and deliberative decision

making power all encourage participants. Consequently, only in Porto Alegre did
participation increase over time. In 1990 fewer than a thousand people attended the two
rounds of budget assemblies.Ten years later,nearly twenty thousand participated, a two
thousand
percentincrease.52
Deepening
democracy can be seen in other dimensions-strengthening
ciety and increasing state responsiveness
and transparency-as
well. Only
civil so
in Porto
Alegre did theparticipatory

experiment
reversethetrend
of decliningcivicorganiz
ing.While neighborhoodassociationsremainedundemocraticinCaracas (domi
nated by a life-term president, often the sole active member) and declined in
Montevideo
(from 371 in 1991 to fewer than 300 in 1998), active associations in
Porto Alegre increased from approximately 300 in 1988 to about 540 in 1998 and to
664 in 2001.53 The associations' character changed from a more presidentialist to a
more participatory style,with an increase in elections and regular meetings.54 A sur
vey of Brazil's six largest state capitals in 1996 shows that,while themembership
rate in community organizations of various
types fell in other state capitals after
163

Conmparative Politics
January 2007
1988, it increasedinPortoAlegre.55Participatory
budgeting'sopen design stimu
lates associational
blies where
growth and democracy because key decisions are made
large numbers count and because
these assemblies
in assem
provide arenas to
demonstrate
and evaluateleadership.
As for state responsiveness, both Porto Alegre and Montevideo
have seen vast im
provements
since implementing
participation
programs.
Advances inareas likehous
ing,sewageconnections,
street
paving,healthcare,transportation,
andpreschooledu
cation have been well documented and need no furtherdetails here.56 In the less studied
case of Caracas, the lack of resources and responsibilities and the disruption fromAD
affiliated unions made
itexceedingly difficult for theCR administration to expand ser
vices and thusimproveresponsiveness.

Newspaperreports,
publicopinionpolls, and
interviews, even with CR supporters and activists, all indicate thatno dramatic expan
sion of services occurred during Isturiz' term.57Community leaders complained that
themunicipal government invested too little in public works projects to improve their
were frequently
and thatthefewprojectsundertaken
neighborhoods
delayedor never
completed.
On the other hand, transparency improved over the prior administrations in each
city.The very creation of participation programs forced governments to open decision
in
makingprocessestopublic scrutiny.
The administrations
all providedparticipants
public meetings with detailed information about the city budget and particularly how
much money was available for investment.City officials also provided printed records
disclosing the implementation of the previous year's budget. Clean government was a
hallmark of the three administrations. By contrast, in both Caracas and Montevideo
previous mayors had been accused of corruption (one served jail time,while the other
was forced to resign).
Conclusion
The design of participatory institutions reflects their national and local contexts.
Specifically, variations in the experiments' design in the three cities reflected the
greater degree of national decentralization inUruguay and Brazil, which allowed the
FA and PT more flexibility than the CR, and the strongly institutionalized opposition
parties in Caracas and Montevideo, which forced the CR and FA to compromise on
theiroriginal programs while the PT negotiated itsprogram with independent commu
nity organizations rather than opponents. These same factors, through the program de
sign mechanism or on their own, affected the quality of local democracy more gener
ally. The open design of Porto Alegre's participatory budgeting produced a virtuous
cycle that strengthened citizenship and democratized the state. Participants saw the ex
tension of the services theyhad prioritized, participated again, and revitalized old civic
associations or formednew ones. Further, theparticipants demanded greater transparency
164

BenjaminGoldfrank
power,supported
highertaxrates,obtainedgreaterservice
andmore decision-making
thecycle.The parishgovern
provision,
and intensified
theirinvolvement,
continuing
ment program in Caracas
provides a sharp contrast. The program's restrictive design
lackofdecision-making
contributed
toa short,
viciouscycle,inwhich theparticipants'
power over important issues and the continued dominance of party representatives dis
couraged participation as well as formation of new associations. At the same time, the
limited
jurisdictional
scope,paucityofmunicipalfunds,and sabotagebyAD-ledmu
abilityto respondcapablyto citizen
nicipalunionsrestricted
theCR administration's
shallowinCaracas.Montevideo'sparticipatory
demands.
Overall,democracyremained
and transparency
butwas less
decentralization
program
helpedimprove
responsiveness
programdesign,
citizenship
because,with theregulated
successfulin strengthening
participants saw little connection between their attendance atmeetings and actual pol
icy outcomes. Without a direct link between the advances in service provision and par
eitherindi
had littleincentive
tobecome involvedin theprogram,
ticipation,
residents
thus
Uruguay'shigh degree of nationaldecentralization
viduallyor collectively.
allowed for the FA's partial success inMontevideo.
Budget councilors in Porto Alegre say that any city could successfully replicate
participatory budgeting, with some qualifications. "All you need is an organized
community and a politician with thewill to do it.And of course money. You need
money. It's not enough to have thewill if you don't have money."58 This statement
comes close to representing

thescholarlyconsensuson participation
programs,
but
it is incomplete at best. It helps explain the case of Caracas, where the small munic
ipal budget presented a significant hurdle for the Causa
Radical's
parish govern
ments. InMontevideo,however,despitehundredsof neighborhoodassociations,a

committed progressive party in government, and a substantial city budget, the Frente
Amplio's participation program did not achieve the kind of success found in Porto
Alegre. Deepening democracy requires more than political effort, social organiza
tion, and money. The political context is important in shaping the effects of decen
will
parties,decentralization
tralization.In citieswith stronglyinstitutionalized
likely result in elite capture and exclusionary politics. Even where new parties win
office, established parties can debilitate institutional reforms. In cities with weakly
democracy-enhancing
benefits
institutionalized
parties,however,decentralization's
are more likely to filter through.

Contrary to the generally negative assessments of the democratic prospects of
Brazil's weakly institutionalized parties, this political context allowed the PT to cre
ate an effective channel of citizen participation and to deepen democracy in Porto
democ
echoes theconclusionof some studiesofposttransition
Alegre.This finding
racies that overinstitutionalized party systems often prevent new ideas from being
implemented.59 It also helps explain why other attempts by progressive parties to
implement participation programs in some Latin American
cities have met with such
andperhapswhyparticipatory
budgetinghas succeededmost inBrazil.
difficulties,
165

Janluary2007
NOTES
I would like to thankWally Goldfrank, Mark Peceny, Andrew Schrank, Eliza Willis, and two anonymous
reviewers for helpful comments.
1. United Nations Development Program (UNDP), La democracia en Am?rica Latina (New York: UNDP,
2004).
2. Yves
Cabannes,
"Participatory Budgeting: A Significant Contribution to Participatory Democracy,"
versus
16 (April 2004), 27-46; William Nylen, Participatory Democracy
Environment and Urbanization,
and Leonardo Avritzer,
Elitist Democracy
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2003); Brian Wampler
"Participatory Publics:
(April 2004), 291-312.
Civil
Society and New
Institutions inDemocratic
Brazil,"
Comparative
Politics,
36
3. Except where noted, references to Caracas

indicate Libertador municipality, containing the city's center
and known as Caracas City Hall. Data, gathered during fifteenmonths of fieldwork, include 145 interviews with
and Porto
government and party officials, opposition leaders, and community leaders, surveys inMontevideo
Alegre, observations from 100-plus meetings, government documents, and media reports.
4. Cabannes, p. 27.
5. Participatory institutions contributed to FA popularity. Its first Montevideo
mayor
Uruguay's presidency in 2004.
eventually won
6. Nylen; Wampler
and Avritzer; Jonathan Fox, "The Crucible of Local Politics," NACLA:
Americas, 29 (July-August 1995), 15-19.
as Institutional Change," Studies in Comparative
7. UNDP;
Peter Evans, "Development
38 (Winter 2004), 30-52.
Development,
Report on the
International
8. Nylen; Wampler
and Avritzer; Gianpaolo
Baiocchi,
"Synergizing Civil Society: State-Civil Society
Regimes in Porto Alegre, Brazil," Political Power and Social Theory, 15 (2002), 3-86.
for Accountability,"
World Development,
32 (2004), 447-63;
9.
"Co-Governance
John Ackerman,
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, "Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre," Politics and Society, 26 (December
1998), 461-510.
10. Peter Evans,
24 (1996),
World Development,
"Government Action, Social Capital and Development,"
Innovations in Empowered Participatory
1119-32; Archon Fung and Erik Wright, "Deepening Democracy:
Governance," Politics and Society, 29 (March 2001), 5-42.
in Chile
11. See, also, Kenneth Roberts, Deepening Democracy?
The Modern Left and Social Movements
and Peru (Stanford: Stanford University, 1998); Kurt von Mettenheim and James Malloy,
in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998).
Democracy
as Institutional"; Ackerman;
12. Evans,
Baiocchi,
"Synergizing";
"Development
Avritzer.
13.
Hilda Herzer
Environment
and Pedro Pirez, "Municipal Government

3 (April 1991), 91.
and Popular
Participation
eds., Deepening
Wampler
and
in Latin America,"
and Urbanization,
and
Abers, Inventing Local Democracy
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000); Daniel Chavez
as
Goldfrank, eds., The Left in the City (London: LAB-TNI,
2004); Evans, "Development
and
Institutional"; Fung
Wright; Nylen.
and Avritzer, although alternate readings are possible, cf. pp. 297-298,
15. Ackerman, p, 452; Wampler
301, and 303.
14.
Rebecca
Benjamin
16. Wampler
and Avritzer;
Leonardo
Avritzer, Democracy
(Princeton: Princeton University, 2002).

17. Sergio Baierle, "The Explosion of Experience,"
1998), p. 128.
of Cultures (Boulder: Westview,
18. UAMPA,
19. Wampler
20. O Estado
and
Sonia Alvarez
do Or?amento Municipal"
"Participa?ao na Elabora?ao
and Avritzer, pp. 297-98, 303.
de Sao Paulo, Mar. 5, 2001.
the Public
Space
et al., eds., Cultures
in Latin America
of Politics/Politics
(mimeograph, no date), pp. 1-2.
166

BenjaminGoldfrank
"Local Politics and the Peruvian Left," Latin American
Gerd Sch?nw?lder,
(1998), 73-101.
22. Ackerman, p. 459; Wampler and Avritzer.
23.
Fung and Wright, pp. 24-25; Evans, "Government Action," p. 1128.
24.
Sch?nw?lder; Wampler and Avritzer, p. 291; Abers, pp. 28, 105.
21.
25.
Evans,
26.
Abers, pp. 220-21,
"Government Action,"
ch. 4.
27.
Gianpaolo
Baiocchi,
Research
Review,
33
p. 1126.
"Porto Alegre: The Dynamism
of theUnorganised,"
inChavez
and Goldfrank, eds.,
pp. 54, 57.

28.
Fung andWright, pp. 17-24.
29. Roberts.
30.
Bases
Alcald?a
1993-1995
Libertador, Gesti?n Municipal:
(Caracas:
1995); Frente Amplio,
6 (Montevideo: Comisi?n Nacional de
para el gobierno departamental, Documentos
1989); Ol?vio Dutra, "A Hora das Defini?oes
(Porto Alegre: Administrac?o
Estrat?gicas"
del Municipio
Program?ticas
Propaganda,
Popular, April 1990).

in Peter Kingstone and Timothy Power,
31. Kathryn Hochstetler, "Democratizing Pressures from Below?,"
eds., Democratic Brazil (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000); Eduardo Canel, "Democratization
inArturo Escobar and Sonia Alvarez, eds., The
inUruguay,"
and the Decline of Urban Social Movements
in Latin America (Boulder: Westview,
Making
of Social Movements
Survival and Transformation of Democracy
Exhaustion of theModel:
1992); Daniel
inVenezuela,"
Levine, "Beyond the

inDamarys Canache
and Michael
Kulisheck, eds., Reinventing Legitimacy (Westport: Greenwood,

1998).
Canel; Abers, p. 43; Sergio Baierle, "Urn Novo Principio ?tico-Pol?tico"
(Master's thesis, Universidade
to the Consolidation
Estadual de Campinas,
of the
1992), pp. 10, 68, 75, 106; Steve Ellner, "Obstacles
Venezuelan Neighborhood Movement,' 'Journal of Latin American Studies, 31 (February 1999), 75-97.
in Citizen Participation"
33. Benjamin Goldfrank, "Urban Experiments
(Ph.D. diss., University of
32.
California, Berkeley, 2002), p. 75, Table 2.6.

La Ciudad
34. Alvaro Portillo, Montevideo:
de la Gente (Montevideo: Nordan-Comunidad,

1996),
La Alcald?a
pp. 51-52; Baierle, "Um Novo Principio," pp. 37-43, 46, nl05; Marta Harnecker, Caracas:
Donde se Juega la Esperanza
(Havana/Caracas: MEPLA-Fundarte,
1995), pp. 10-12, 58-62.
35. Leticia Schabbach, "Pr?ticas e Repr?sent?mes
de Funcionarios P?blicos,"
(Master's thesis, UFRGS,
1995), pp. 86-87.
36. Carlos Mascare?o,
en Venezuela
Balance
de la Descentralizaci?n
PNUD-Ildis-Nueva
(Caracas:
Sociedad, 2000), pp. 62-63, 66, Cuadro 8.
en Venezuela,"
inAngel Alvarez, ed.,
37. Gabrielle Guer?n and Giorgio Manchisi,
"La Descentralizaci?n
El Sistema Pol?tico Venezolano (Caracas: UCV,
1996), p. 392.
38. Alfred Montero,
Political Decentralization
and the New
Brazilian
Democracy?
"Devolving
Federalism," inKingstone
39. Goldfrank, p. 91.
and Power, eds., p. 65.
Fernando Filgueira et al., "Decentralization

and Fiscal Discipline
in Subnational Governments"
(Montevideo: Interamerican Development Bank, CIESU-CINVE,
1999), pp. 7, 15.
41.
Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).
Recently, see Marcus Kreuzer and Velio Pettai, "Political Parties and the Study of Political Development,"
40.
World Politics, 56 (July 2004), 608-33; Vicky Randall and Lars Sv?sand, "Party Instirutionalization inNew
Democracies,"
Party Politics, 8 (January 2002), 5-29.
42.
Steven Levitsky, Transforming Labor-Based
in Latin America
Parties
(Cambridge: Cambridge
and Timothy Scully, eds., Building Democratic
Institutions (Stanford:
University, 2003); Scott Mainwaring
Stanford University Press, 1995).
Michael Coppedge, Strong Parties
43.
44.
and Lame Ducks
(Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1994).
Ibid., p. 29.
167

Jantaryi 2007
45.
Interview, Elias Santana, FACUR president, 1988-1989, December

Silvana Bruera, "Apuntes Para una Evaluaci?n
del Proceso
46.
Comisiones
Vecinales,"
in CIEDUR-CIESU-ICP-FESUR,
ierno (Montevideo: Trilce, 1993), p. 49.

Ger?nimo de Sierra and Blanca Charbonnier,
ICP-FESUR,
pp. 18-19, 28, En 9-10.
47.
Participaci?n
"Descentralizaci?n
23, 1999; Ellner, p. 82.

de Descentralizaci?n
ciudadana
desde
y relaciones
y Participaci?n,"
Interview, Sebasti?o Mello, municipal PMDB President, May 4, 1999.

Interview, Cesar Pureza, union President, 1995-1999, May 20, 1999.
50.
Comisi?n Permanente de Participaci?n Ciudadana, Experiencia
de Gobiernos
1994), Table 1.
Municipio Libertador (Caracas: Alcald?a de Caracas,
las
de gob
inCIEDUR-CIESU
48.
49.
Parroquiales
en el
en Foro
de Montevideo,
II
Intendencia Municipal
Ciudadan?as:
Montevideo
Construyendo
(Montevideo: IMM, 1997), pp. 9-10.
52.
Raul Pont, "Porto Alegre e a luta pela democracia,
igualdade e qualidade de vida," inRaul Pont and
Adair Barcelos, eds., Porto Alegre (Porto Alegre: Artes e Oficios, 2000), p. 27, Table 4.
53. Goldfrank, pp. 300-7; Baiocchi, "Synergizing," Table 3; Porto Alegre municipal records.
51.
54.
Abers, pp. 161-66; Baiocchi, "Synergizing," pp. 49, 83.

e Participa?ao nas M?tropoles
Orlando dos Santos, "Gest?o Urbana, Associativismo
Brasileiras,"
Luiz de Queiroz Ribeiro, ed., O Futuro dos M?tropoles
(Rio de Janeiro: Revan-FASE,
2000).
55.
56.
58.
Portillo; Chavez and Goldfrank,

Goldfrank, pp. 278-81.
Interview, Felizberto, December
59.
Mettenheim
57.
eds.; Abers;
Sousa
Santos.
3, 1998.
and Malloy.
168

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The Politics of Deepening Local Democracy: Decentralization, Party Institutionalization, and

This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:08:34 PM

The PoliticsofDeepening Local Democracy

scholars deplore the

quality of national regimes, one detects increasing excitement about thepotential of ex

of concepts have emerged to interpretthese experiments, but causal

analysis of why some failwhile others succeed remains underdeveloped. Nascent de

and theRadical Cause

(CR) inLibertador, the

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increasingly point to expanding oppor

has become the

virtual mantra of international agencies promoting both democracy and development

strengthened citizenship in practice is to see if thenumber of citizens who regularly and

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Keys toSuccessfulDeepening:Actors,Conditions,or Institutional

challenge is welcome and necessary, as many overlook civil society's importance in

vented from scratch.Mayors

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documentpreparedfordiscussionswith cityofficialsinPortoAlegre, theUnion of

played vital roles in

but also based partly on Porto Alegre's

City, Rosario, and Cuenca, among others.

ensure concrete results, sometimes linked to prior decentralization;24 and an effective

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institutionalized local opposition parties that failed to resist

A Tale of Three Cities

participation and more frequentmeetings of smaller district forums forwhich represen

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Montevideo and declined inCaracas. Currenttheoriescan not explainthesediffer

dedication by attending assemblies

forms.No party had any inherent advantages, therefore, in implementing a participa

and other community-based or

democracy returned, thismotivation disappeared. Both achievement of movement

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theirdecline in termsof thenumber of new groups, member

for urban services and participatory reforms: FACUR

an activist legacy, as thousands of citi

often due solely to the persistence

of their presidents. Second,

party representation in leadership positions,

The specificmix differed

a considerable minority of each city's inhabitants lived in poverty, and unemployment

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1000 Live Births

over 10 years old; forMontevideo,

the defunct Federal District, which

over 18; forPorto Alegre, heads of households.

fromGoldfrank, 63, 71, 72, Tables

poplation of roughly 280,000.

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In the Caracas maintenance

demand wage increases and express rejection of reform.

NationalDecentralizationand Local Opposition Institutionalization

nearly doubled theirportion of total

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Uruguay, uniquely in Ibero-America, has only two levels of government: the na

and denied Montevideo

financial assistance granted

The different national decentralization processes led to varying capabilities for

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essary to address residents'most importantneeds. The CR attempted to overcome these

government's nearly empty coffersmade

itdifficult to respond to citizen demands, thus

Goldfrank "The Politics of Deepening Local Democracies" (2007)

Goldfrank "The Politics of Deepening Local Democracies" (2007)