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THE DYNAMISM OF THE UNORGANIZED: LESSONS FROM THE PT IN PORTO ALEGRE Gianpaolo Baiocchi**

INTRODUCTION When Tarso Genro assumed, for the second time, the prefeitura (municipal government) of Porto Alegre in January of 2001, the city became home to the first four-term Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores - PT) administration in Brazil, and one of the longest running leftist city governments in Latin America. The successes of the PT administration in Porto Alegre, the capital of the relatively wealthy state of Rio Grande do Sul, are by now well-known in the literature, and are largely credited with the PT victory at the state level when ex-Porto Alegre Mayor Olvio Dutra became Governor in January of 1999. And the successes in Porto Alegre are indeed impressive: the PT administration here has succeeded in creating a form of municipal governance that is efficient, redistributive, and that has enjoyed wide approval by the local citizenry. The cornerstone of the administration has been a participatory system of decision making over city investments that not only has attracted thousands of participants, but has made for effective governance and created an environment where civic activism in general has been energized. The participatory reforms revolve around the Participatory Budget (Oramento Participativo) meetings, which by themselves drew over 16,000 participants in 1999 and 20,000 in 20001. Budget meetings form the bulk of citizen participation in municipal government and have been in place since the PTs second year in government, in 1990. They have evolved over the years into a structure of councils where citizens deliberate year-round and decide on both district-specific projects as well as broad municipal investment priorities. The literature on Porto Alegre has by now become quite extensive and has generally addressed the basic functioning of this participatory system, its background and origins, and its impact on civil society2. The city has also recently achieved a sort of 'global status' for this participatory scheme, being recognized by acitivists, international organizations, and policy makers from North and South alike.
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Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Email: baiocchi@pitt.edu. The data about participation comes from the prefeitura of Porto Alegre. 2 See Rebecca Abers. 2001. Inventing Democracy (Boston: Lynne Ryner); Gianpaolo Baiocchi. 2001. From Militance to Citizenship; The Workers' Party, Civil Society, and the Politics of Participatory Governance in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis in Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Regina Pozzobon. 1998. Porto Alegre: Os Desafios da Gestao Democratica. Sao Paulo: Instituto Polis; Luciano Fedozzi. 1997. Oramento Participativo: Reflexoes sobre a experiencia de Porto Alegre. Porto Alegre: Tomo Editorial.

Most recently, as the host city to the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre has continued to attract attention among progressives throughout the world. Writing on the PT itself has addressed many different facets of this fascinating 'social movement-party', which, until now, appears to continue to frustrate academic predictions about solidifying party hierarchies or the submission of social movement logic to legislative machinations once in power. The PT has also garnered attention as one of the clearest examples of the recent 'social' (and 'local') turn of the left in Latin America, with its increased concern with broad social issues away from 'purely classist' platforms.3 While leftist parties have failed to achieve significant successes at the national level, many have gone 'local' and developed platforms for 'good governance.'4 In fact, the current cohort of 172 municipal administrations (2001-2004) that PT mayors direct is unprecedented for the left in Brazil. The centerpiece of PT strategies at the municipal level have been loosely based on the Porto Alegre model: a series of redistributive administrative schemes based on instutionalized forms of broad popular participation. The successful formula of combining the two, particularly at the municipal level, has proven a potent strategy, and the PT has now become known to very many Brazilians as a party of sound municipal policies.5 After a few failed experiments in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the PT has shown that leftist parties like it are not only able to carry out successful local administrations and effectively manage traditional city-planning concerns, but that they are unusually well-poised to do so and have can profit tremendously in terms of building up electoral support. But the PT story is also somewhat counterintuitive. Common sense dictates that leftist parties in power tend to either lose their radical edge or be voted out of power. On one hand, ossifying social movement hierarchies tied to the ruling party, and the rationalbureacratic demands of governance eventually wear away at the radicalism of even the most progressive parties. On the other, the romantic platforms on which leftists are elected often do not stand up to the demands of governance, and eventually powerful elites and/or dissatisfied citizens opt for more reasonable, and conservative, options. Scholars generally agree that in the case of Porto Alegre, broad participation in the Participatory Budget is what links the administration's successes: electoral victories, good governance, and legitimacy with the citizenry. In other words, broad empowered participation is what solves the puzzle: the party keeps in touch with the populace, it offers efficient service provision, and it enjoys the approval of its citizens by virtue of public decision-making. Here I pursue a version of this argument, but a more specific one, because there are many examples of failures of PT administrations that despite offering participatory reforms, still failed to either deliver good governance or remain
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Jorge Castaneda. 1993. Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War. New York: Knopf. In addition to the essays in this volume, see William Nylen. 1998. Popular Participation in Brazil's Worker's Party: Democratizing Democracy in Municipal Politics. The Political Chronicle 8:1-9; Gianpaolo Baiocchi. 2001. Urban Brazil in the Nineties and Beyond: New Utopias and Dystopias. Socialism&Democracy 31:41-63. 5 For the history of the PT, see Sue Branford, and Bernardo Kucinski. 1995. Brazil: Carnival of the Oppressed. London: Latin American Bureau; Gay Seidman. 1994. Manufacturing Militance: Workers' Movements in Brazil and South Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press; Margaret Keck. 1992. The Worker's Party and Democratization in Brazil. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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legitimate. Here I argue that one of the most important lessons from the Porto Alegre experiment is that, despite the fact that the city has a certain tradition of social movement activity, it has consistently relied on unorganized sectors of the population. This reliance has kept the participatory system dynamic while helping insulate it from either charges of patronage or excessive demands from the party's own bases of support. Clearly there are hosts of other factors that have brought down well-meaning leftist administrations in Latin America and elsewhere, including lacking the capacity to deliver services and insurmountably well-organized oppositions, and the full force of my argument can only be tested in a comparative context beyond this essay. Nonetheless, the 'dynamism of the unorganized' is one of the most important parts of the Porto Alegre success story, and one that has not often been explicitly addressed by scholars who have instead pointed to other types of explanations for Porto Alegre's apparent exceptionalism. PORTO ALEGRE The city of Porto Alegre, today with a population of 1.3 million, stands at the center of a metropolitan area of almost three million people. It is a city with high social indicators. Literacy rates of over 90% are among the highest in the country for a large city, as are its life expectancy (72), and other social indicators, such as those for child mortality. 6 But Porto Alegre is also a highly socially segregated city. Almost a third of its population lives in irregular housing, such as slums or invaded areas; these slum areas fan outward from the city center, with the poorest regions generally the farthest from downtown. Illegal makeshift settlements are scattered throughout the city, but have often been often removed from downtown areas and moved to these peripheral regions. By the time the PT administration was voted into office in 1989, the city had also experienced, like much of Brazil, an exacerbation in urban poverty and a decline in service provision throughout the 1980s, especially in the citys periphery. What makes Porto Alegre distinctive is that it has been home to the power base of a succession of populist politicians, originally associated with the PTB (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro), since renamed the PDT (Partido Democrtico Trabalhista). The PTB essentially controlled the urban political machine until the military coup of 1964, and the PDT machine has continued to exert significant influence in local politics since the transition to democracy in the 1980s. Neighborhood associations in Porto Alegre have a long history of dialogue with populist leaders linked to the PTB. In the period of 1945 until 1964, for example, neighborhood associations grew and were able to achieve a number of urban improvements in the city's working class neighborhoods. Under the Brizola municipal government, municipal councils were created in 1956 that allowed some popular representation in the various municipal departments (secretarias). And in 1959, FRACAB (Federao Regional de Associaes de Bairro) a statewide organization of neighborhood associations was founded under the incentive of the PTB.7 The PDT is today a political party most often associated with left-populism, with a
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Porto Alegre's literacy rate was 93%, against metropolitan Brazil's average of 87%.Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica. 1988. Indicadores Sociais: Regies Metropolitanas, Aglomeracoes Urbanas, Municipios com mais de 100,000 habitantes. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE. See also, Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre. 1999. Regies do Oramento Participativo de Porto Alegre - Alguns Indicadores Sociais. . Porto Alegre: Fundacao de Educacao Social e Comunitaria.

history of significant ties to the neighborhood association movement and some sectors of unions in a few urban centers, notably Rio de Janeiro and some cities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in addition to Porto Alegre itself.8 PDT-style populism today is a contradictory mix of progressive elements, family and country discourses, and an accomodationist posture. PDT practices include votes-for-works, a strong personal identification with its leaders, but also a nationalist discourse of empowering the poor. Porto Alegre has also been home to an active neighborhood movement that from the midseventies started to act in coalition for demands for urban services. In 1977, FRACAB broke with the military government's instructions and acted as a support organization for a May 1st strike in Porto Alegre, and grew in numbers and strength as it continued to harbor the pro-democracy opposition in the state.9 The influence of national 'new urban social movements' in the late 1970s, were felt in Porto Alegre, as part of a diffuse democratic movement that brought a new vision of urban democracy and participation to Brazilian politics. 10 In some contexts these were led by new 'militant' neighborhood associations linked to radical clergy that resisted the favor-trading of older neighborhood associations. In 1983, UAMPA, the Union of Neighborhood Associations of Porto Alegre (Unio de Moradores de Porto Alegre- UAMPA) was founded to orchestrate the demands of growing movements. UAMPA was founded as a broadly oppositional union, with activists from many different parties as part of its directorate. It called for accountability, participation, and improved urban services. One of the first opposition11 mayors to be elected in Brazil was Alceu Collares, of the PDT, who came to power in 1986 with the promise of instituting popular participation in the way the administration was to be run. UAMPA, which already in its 1985 congress had called for the democratization of municipal government, now called on the new administration for a participatory structure where the priorities of each region would be discussed with popular leaders of each region of the city.12 It also called for the creation of councils with proportional representation of the community movement to discuss, among other things, the municipal budget. UAMPA and some other segments of the neighborhood association movement in Porto Alegre participated in a seminar that conceived the project for the creation of these councils; though many activists were

Elizete Menegat. 1995. Fios Condutores da Participao Popular em Porto Alegre: Elementos para um debate. Proposta :34-40. 8 Carlos Cortes. 1974. Gaucho Politics in Brazil. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press; Michael Conniff. 1982. Urban Politics in Brazil. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh. 9 Pedrinho Guareschi. 1980. Squatter's Movements in Brazil. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis in Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison. 10 There is a very extensive literature on the social movements of the 1970s and 1980s in Brazil impossible to review here. See Sonia Alvarez. 1990. Engendering Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press; Ruth Cardoso. 1988. Os Movimentos Populares no Contexto da Consolidacao da Democracia in A Democracia no Brasil, edited by Fabio Wanderley dos Reis and Guillermo O'Donnel. Sao Paulo: Vertice. 11 A mayor not linked to either of the two legal parties (ARENA and MDB) in existence during the dictatorship. 12 UAMPA. 1986. O momento politico e o Movimento Comunitario. . Porto Alegre: Uniao das Associacoes de Moradores de Porto Alegre.

dissatisfied with the final version of the project, UAMPA endorsed it.13 The Collares administration did introduce a limited mechanism of popular consultancy, involving mostly city-hall assistance with self-help programs. The city was to be broken down into four districts, where citizens' councils headed by the directorate of neighborhood associations would direct the order of projects. A number of works were started, mostly near the Sarand district, a traditional area of support for the PDT, but many of them were not finished. By the end of Collares' administration, the neighborhood movement had grown dissatisfied with the lack of action by the administration. Partially as a result of the failure to meet campaign promises, the PDT was voted out of office in 1988 in a protest vote that placed the Popular Front (an electoral alliance headed by the PT) in power. THE WORKERS' PARTY AND ALTERNATIVES TO THE CITY At the eve of the inauguration of the PT administration, in late 1988, there was intense speculation on what the new administration would mean for the community movement. One of the principal platforms on which the PT had been elected was the empowerment the community movement; campaign materials promised to "create spaces of participation, monitoring, and popular control over the administration" while supporting popular struggles and inverting municipal budgetary priorities away from the citys privileged areas toward its more needy parts. Incumbent Mayor Collares made his presence felt in the local media defending the achievements of his administration. He declared PT plans for popular empowerment to be 'romantic' and unfeasible, arguing that participation in his administration had been among the 'best and most notable' experiences of popular participation in Brazil. Critics replied that the PDT proposals never empowered its councils to actually direct any aspect of municipal governance, nor did they ever have resources for councils to decide over. Vice-Mayor-to-be Tarso Genro, like other petistas, resisted any comparison between the PDT councils and the eventual PT proposals. The proposed PT councils, for one, would not be 'legally existing institutions' dependent on legislative approval. And they were to be empowered settings, where participants would decide over tangible outcomes. But among the main differences would be that in the PDT councils representatives came from organized associations, like unions and neighborhood associations, which often were previously sympathetic to the PDT. The PT proposal would involve representatives chosen from open assemblies, and regardless of party affiliation. As he put it then, "To us it won't matter if someone is from the PDS14 or the PT."15 The PT itself was a relatively weak party in Porto Alegre by the time it had won the election, having elected one vereador (member of the municipal legislative) in 1982, and having garnered between 9-14% of the city's votes in the various elections in 1986; in the first turn of the presidential elections of 1989, the PDT candidate, Porto Alegres own Leonel Brizola, captured almost 70% of the votes in Porto Alegre, which was ten times
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UAMPA. 1986. Conselhos municipais: como devem funcionar, o que devem deliberar. Porto Alegre: Uniao das Associacoes de Moradores de Porto Alegre. 14 Partido Democratico Social, a Right of Center party descended from the pro-dictatorship party ARENA. 15 Marcelo Rech. 1988. Movimento Comunitario: forca nova na politica. Pp. 2-3 in Zero Hora. Porto Alegre.

higher than the PT vote.16 Founded in 1980 in So Paulo around industrial trade unions, the PT had continued to expand its bases to other social movement sectors by the late 1980s. It had made headway into the urban rights movements in mid-1980s, and in the national movement for direct elections in 1984. More inspired by the European Social democratic parties than populist labor parties like the PDT, the PT is characterized by both internal democracy and marked ideological diversity within its ranks. The party's activist core is made up of a number of semi-autonomous tendencies defending different positions making up the activist core of the party.17 In Porto Alegre, some of its 'leftist' tendencies, such as Trotskyist Democracia Socialista, were particularly strong within the party. At the time of the victory, there had been intense discussions within the party, nationally, about how to prepare itself for governance, despite relatively disappointing electoral results in the Congress and Senate elections of 1986. Since the transition to democracy, leftist strategists had recognized that they must devise strategies for governance in the case of eventual electoral victories. But even a cursory reading of party platforms in the early 1980s shows that these were sometimes lofty concerns with few specific directives. The difficult learning experiences of the previous PT administrations in Diadema, So Paulo, and Fortaleza, Cear, showed that managing the demands of the partys own bases of support would be important.18 Significant debates on democratizing the city had also taken place in other quarters, particularly among urban social movements. The idea of 'Popular Councils' - permanent fora of discussion among popular movements - had some currency, partially as result of some successful examples of regular participation in these in some cities.19 There was, ultimately, little agreement about the PT way of governing for Porto Alegre or the thirty-five other municipalities where the PT had won in late 1988. Throughout 1989 there were meetings among the cohort of PT administrators in the various cities who discussed the relative merits of various platforms and programs; one of the points of convergence was that popular participation in municipal finances should be part of all PT administrations.20 The experience of an authoritarian regime and the legacy of clientelistic city politics provided examples of what not to do, but little in the way of how to democratize city government. Some of the campaign statements about the goals of the administration to restoring the historical legacy of the working classes21 were also vague.
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Maria Izabel Noll, and Helgio Trindade. 1994. Estatiscas Eleitorais Comparativas do Rio Grande do Sul. Porto Alegre: Editora da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. 17 See Keck, op cit. 18 Julio Assis Simoes. 1992. O Dilema da Participao Popular. Sao Paulo: Editora Marco Zero. 19 Some of the successful ones had been in Rio de Janeiro in the Baixada Fluminense, and in So Paulo's East side. Pedro Jacobi. 1987. Movimentos Sociais: Teoria e Pratica em Questao. in Uma Revolucao no Cotidiano? Os Novos Movimentos Sociais na America Latina, edited by Ilse Scherer-Warren and Paulo Krische. Sao Paulo: Brasiliense; Ana Amelia da Silva. 1990. A luta pelos direitos urbanos: novas representacoes de cidade e cidadania. Espaco e Debate :28-40. 20 Pedro Pontual. 1992. Oramento Parcipativo em Sao Paulo na Gestao Luiza Erundina. Sao Paulo: FASE. 21 Arno Agostin Filho. 1994. A Experiencia do Oramento Participativo na Administracao Popular da Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre. in Porto Alegre: O Desafio da Mudanca, edited by Carlos Henrique Horn. Porto Alegre: Editora Ortiz.

The PT administration in Porto Alegre opted for a strategy of increasing citizen participation in budgeting affairs, and by June of 1989, after a series of meetings between community activists and administrators, the basic outlines of the the Participatory Budget were defined. An early vision of organizing the process through existing neighborhood associations and unions gave way to organization through large, open, plenary meetings throughout the city, though the role of organized civil society in the process was unclear at this point and would be decided in practice over the next two years. Certain factions within the PT defended the position that unions and organized sectors of the popular movement linked to the party should have priority in decisionmaking. It was argued that organized sectors within the party ought to not only decide on who should make up the government, but also, "concrete points like: the price of public transportation, which area of the city should receive investments, if it would be downtown or the periphery."22 Others argued that administrators should make decisions autonomously from the party, and that the community movement was too unevenly unorganized to be reliable as a source of decision-making.23 Ultimately, the vision that administrators would have autonomy from the party, and that they would consult with all sectors of the populace, not only the organized sectors, won out.24 As Mayor Dutra discussed in an interview, the PT position was to not govern " for one sector, for one class, or for one social sector. We govern the city with a proposal that comes from the popular sector but can be discussed with other sectors."25 The administration from then on held to the position that emphasized the participation of individuals and not representatives of associations or of unions, as some had proposed. One of the early UAMPA proposals, for example, was to have the whole process mediated through UAMPA itself, and through its affiliate neighborhood associations. One reason for the insistence on individuals and not associations was probably strategic. The Workers' Party did not have a strong basis in popular movements and unions in Porto Alegre in the early 1990s. The PDT controlled several of the important unions, was in the directorate of the Union of Neighborhood associations, and controlled a significant number of neighborhood associations, and relying on those sectors may not have been wise. The format of the original Participatory Budget revolved around large open plenary meetings throughout the city. For that first year, the city was divided into five districts, with one meeting taking place in each of the five districts, followed by a second city-wide meeting to decide on overall priorities. NGOs that had been active with neighborhood
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Harnecker, op cit:12 Iria Sharo, one of the architects of the process recalled this in an interview with Mara Harnecker. Harnecker op cit:22. Another one of the early participants, Gildo Lima, recalled in an interview that: 24 For example, the Convergencia activist cited earlier, in the same interview, said he believed this early position was incorrect: "The Party does not know the day to day [] In a discussion in the municipal headquarters of the Party it was impossible to understand everything that was necessary to fix the the price of the bus fare." Marta Harnecker. 1993. Alcadia de Porto Alegre; Aprendiendo a Gobernar. La Habana, Cuba: MEPLA. 25 Cited in Marta Harnecker. 1993. Alcadia de Porto Alegre; Aprendiendo a Gobernar. La Habana, Cuba: MEPLA.)

associations played a significant role in helping structure some portions of the meeting: there were, for example, didactic materials distributed on municipal budgeting. UAMPA also produced instructional materials for the events.26 These called for participants to engage in more extensive discussion over budget matters, and not stay only with specific demands on 'pavement and sewage'.27 The five meetings centered on surveying local priorities, with each electing three councilors to form a committee to consolidate the overall municipal budget proposal for 1990. The expectations of participants in the 1989 rounds were of a much greater magnitude than the funds available, generated "many expectations and frustrations."28 Of the 42 km of road paving scheduled, for example, none took place in the next fiscal year. Some movement leaders, according to writings of the time, felt they had made a tactical mistake in prioritizing participation in city hall over other kinds of previous oppositional tactics. While neighborhood associations complained that works were not being accomplished, city hall was also being accused of a kind of paternalism that relegated only passive duties to the districts, while the technical staff of municipal government would make the more complicated decisions. Policy briefings from UAMPA and from other NGOs at the time also expressed a great deal of skepticism about the current arrangement, which did not allow for significant discussion, and limited the role of participants to merely 'listing demands', therefore "making discussion difficult."29 Late in 1989 a meeting of movement activists from around the city evaluated how the process had run, and participants voiced a general dissatisfaction with the lack of direction of the plenary meetings, and the uneven quality of the meetings in each of the districts. In some parts of the city, movement activists had come up with a list of demands they presented to the administration, while in others a last minute vote had appeared to determine district-level demands. Activists also criticized the lack of transparency of the meetings, as it had not been obvious to participants how, if at all, demands would translate into concrete projects. The lack of continuity in the discussion also meant that the meetings focused on immediate projects, and did not, activists felt, follow the broader objectives of the administration of "creating instances of popular participation and the creation of a critical consciousness."30 Rather, activists demanded that meetings assume a more deliberative character, with instances of discussion prior to the assessment of needs.31 Finally, the administration was also charged with not "providing information in accessible language."32 ROUTINIZING PARTICIPATION
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David Schmidtt. 1993. A Desidiotizao da Cidadania: A formao do Cidado para a coisa publica, atravs de sua participao no processo do oramento participativo de Porto Alegre, entre 1989 e 1992. Unpublished M.A. Thesis in Education. Porto Alegre: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. 27 FASE. 1989. Oramento Municipal: Por que e importante participar? . Porto Alegre: FASE. 28 FASE. 1990. Porto Alegre- Em discusso o Oramento Municipal. . Porto Alegre: FASE. 29 FASE. 1989. O processo de discusso do oramento municipal. . Porto Alegre: FASE. 30 FASE. 1989. Uma avaliao inicial do processo de discusso do oramento. . Porto Alegre: FASE. 31 FASE. 1990. (Re)pensando a discusso do oramento municipal. . Porto Alegre: FASE. 32 FASE. 1990. Porto Alegre- Em discusso o Oramento Municipal. . Porto Alegre: FASE.

In 1990, the administration faced a crisis of confidence among the early participants, especially those community activists who had brought people to the meetings but failed to see any results in their community:
We looked really bad in the community after that first year, especially because everyone here was with the PDT, they all said, 'don't call us for a meeting again because these meetings don't bring anything'.33

In 1990, as a result of the dissatisfaction with the proceedings of 1989, participation in meetings was lower than in 1989. A variety of demands had been 'collected' in the districts in 1989, but for participants of those rounds there was little continuity to the process, and it was not clear why some projects were approved and others not.34 City hall had come under serious criticism from activists as well as from the notoriously unsympathetic local press. Under the aegis of construct a Porto Alegre that is not on the map, an intensive campaign to bring in a broader spectrum of residents was started to attempt to salvage the process by the next year.35 As a response to criticisms, and as result of internal discussions within the administration, rules were also changed to break down discussions into sixteen district-level discussions. In addition, the process this year would have greater number of preparatory meetings to foster discussion, and greater emphasis was placed on the whole of the budgetary process. Another one of the innovations was the establishment of the Budget Council a forum of representatives from each the districts that would oversee the whole process. Again, as before, it was debated whether to set aside seats in this council for 'class associations', such as the militant labor union CUT (Central nica de Trabalhadores). The version of the Council ultimately approved of the was to have two representatives per district, to a total of 32, plus a representative from the Union of Neighborhood Associations and one from the municipal employees union. And in 1991, new municipal agencies designed specifically to address the functioning of the Participatory Budget, the CRC (Coordenao de Relaes com a Comunidade) the community relations group, and GAPLAN (Gabinete de Planejamento) a new planning agency, were created with the purpose of improving the quality of discussion with the community. One of the most important changes of the process at the time was also standardizing how meetings were run throughout the city, rather than relying on organized civil society to take care of those meetings, as had been the case. Organized civil society could help coordinate the meetings, but the settings would be institutional settings, and autonomous from civil society organizations, in order to foster participation from those from outside organized movements. City-hall facilitators were assigned to each of the districts to help run meetings. These District-Level Coordinators, CROPs (Coordenadores Regionais do Orcamento Participativo), were part of the new bureaucracy of Community Relations (the CRC) within the administration, and their function in each of the districts revolved around improving decision-making and participation in Participatory Budget meetings.
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(Mauro, interview) Representantes de Micro Regies de Porto Alegre. 1989. Sobre o Processo de Discusso do Oramento. . Porto Alegre: FASE. 35 Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre. 1991. Uma Proposta para Avanar na Participao Popular. . Porto Alegre: Comissao de Participao Popular na reforma administrativa.

They would be responsible for drawing new participants, helping run meetings, and helping along the discussions around hierarchies and priorities, but without directing them. An important function of CROPs would be didactic: 'increasing the discussion of concepts of budget policy,' 'challenging citizens to think of problems of their district as a whole,' and 'establishing relationships based on values of cooperation and solidarity.'36 In some districts, the organized neighborhood movement resisted these changes and unsuccessfully sought to control the district-level Participatory Budget and wrest it from the administration. The Budget Council, active already in 1991, took upon itself to revise the rules that decided on the proportion of resources per district. Two of the original criteria, 'districtlevel mobilization' and 'importance of the district for the development of the city' gave way to what councilors considered to be more "objective" criteria (a combination of the districts' own assessment of priorities and its population) for 1992.37 This overturned a formula for the 1990 meetings that dictated that 70% of all resources go to the five neediest districts. In 1991, participants started to see returns from 1990 on a much larger scale than had been visible for the year before. The amount of money available for investment and, therefore, popular decision-making, was roughly four times higher for 1990-91 than in 1989-90. As a result of these changes, in 1991 participation increased significantly, and according to reports from the time, participants were more satisfied with the meetings. In 1991, 3,700 participants were counted in the first plenary meeting, against a thousand in 1990. By 1992, the administration had regained its credibility with the population, and participation continued to grow. In 1992, participation continued to grow to 7,000, and again to 10,000 in 1993.38 Still, some observers from the time reported that some of the associations "used to solving problems through phone calls to their representatives" had attempted to block the process in some of the districts.39 By 1994, participation was high and routinized in all of the city's districts, with greater participation in the citys poorer areas, regardless of previously existing levels of organization.40 The profile of participants in the early years was relatively homogenous: the median participant was a person of low income and education from the city's periphery or from one of the vilas in one of the other districts of the city. Despite the fact that district-level associational density did not correlate with district-level participation, the evidence is that most participants in these early years were linked to neighborhood associations and had come to find out about the Participatory Budget through them. Even as the profile of participants extended outward from organized sectors as more participants came year after year without prior participation in neighborhood associations, the process still
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Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre. 1992. Processo de Avaliao da Gestao da Frente Popular. Porto Alegre: Gabinete do Prefeito: Coordenacao de Relacoes com a Comunidade. 37 Fedozzi, op cit: 140 38 Data on participation comes from the Prefeitura de Porto Alegre. 39 Interviews. 40 For a full discussion of this data, see Baiocchi, 2001, Militance op cit: chapter 3.

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remained essentially limited to working class and poor participants and to relatively specific urban infrastructure demands. One of the recurring critiques leveled at the process in its early years, even from within the party, was that it remained limited to very specific demands, and despite permitting participants to decide over many different types of municipal investments, still denied access to 'more comprehensive' or more long-term questions. Joo Couto, head of the Social Movements department of the PT for Rio Grande do Sul, charged in 1992 that social movements had become very "localized and living from dealing with local, current, problems," and that this had made it difficult to "organize around broader questions."41 This was also part of a pragmatic concern of the administration that sought to expand the basis of participation to middle classes, many of whom had supported the PT in its early years, but who did not necessarily feel compelled to participate in fora dedicated to urban needs. In addition, class-based associations in civil society had largely not been present. Although there were some isolated cases, such as the presence of a few participants from middle-class neighborhoods in the Centro district, as well as from the union of municipal employees there, and the election of a delegate from the Association of Entepreneurs in the Humait district in 1992, on the whole middle-class participants and associations were absent.42 As a response to these types of concerns, beginning in 1994, the participatory process expanded to include "thematic" meetings in 1994 and 1995. As then-vice Mayor Raul Pont suggested, the target public were the associations, such as NGOs, unions, and social movements whose "organizational features, demands, and concerns with the city did not coincide with the structure of the actual Participatory Budget"43 Thematic meetings mirrored the format of district-level meetings, but unlike district-level meetings, thematic meetings were not to decide on projects specific to a neighborhood or area, but on projects relevant to the whole city, and on broader 'sectoral policies.' These were in five areas, Transportation, Health and Social Services, Education and Culture, Economic Development and Urban Planning. The transportation meetings, for example, would cover the policies of the transportation department as well as city-wide road construction projects. The Education and Culture plenary was intended to "affect the day-to-day functioning" of the education and culture departments instead of purely "concentrating on investments in these areas" as was perceived to happen in the Participatory Budget.44 While thematic meetings have not drawn the same kinds of numbers of participants to the Participatory Budget as the district-level meetings, they have accounted for almost a fifth of overall participants, and they have brought, as intended, participants of a different profile. Thematic participants, as surveys have shown, are better educated, better-off, and, on the whole, are more likely to be linked to unions and political parties than District-based participants.
41 42

Harnecker, op cit: 29 Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre. 1992. Processo" op cit. 43 Raul Pont. 1994. Incorporando Novos Atores Sociais. Porto Alegre: Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre. 44 Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre. 1993. As Plenarias Tematicas: Uma Nova Dimenso do Oramento Participativo. . Porto Alegre: Secretaria do Governo Municipal.

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THE PARTICIPATORY BUDGET TODAY Despite small changes in the 1998 rounds, Participatory Budget meetings have essentially retained the same format since the introduction of thematic meetings in 1994. After a first plenary meeting for each district (or thematic area) early in the year, where city hall offers an accounting for the previous year's activities, each district or thematic area elects a number of delegates from among general participants, according to the number of participants from each 'group in civil society.' The process does not discriminate among 'actually established' neighborhood associations from ad-hoc street committees or any other spontaneous group of people who choose to attend the meeting. These delegates will then deliberate on a weekly or bi-monthly basis over specific projects and general priorities. In practice, these fora also function as a regular meeting place for activists of a region. The meetings are run by community members themselves in conjunction with the facilitator from city hall.45 District-level delegates can elect projects within any area of municipal investment- from schools to roads to social services and health; thematic delegates elect projects within their 'thematic area' that have city-wide importance. Much of the year's process involves complex negotiations among delegates who meet with each week with different city-hall agencies on the intricacies of demands. By the time the year's second plenary meeting takes place mid-year, a vote is taken on the district's priorities and specific projects, which are then turned over to the Budget Council. Delegates at the district-level may continue to participate in their forum in the monitoring and implementation of projects. At this second plenary meeting, two councilors and two substitutes are elected from each district and thematic forum to represent it at the Budget Council. The Budget Council is responsible for the overall budget: it reconciles the demands from each district and thematic forum with the projected resources for the year. Its members meet bi-weekly from July onwards with representatives of planning agencies and the municipal executive for several months in this process. Councilors also have the power to propose and approve changes to the rules of the whole process. For instance, in recent years, some of the changes have included increasing the scope of areas covered by the Participatory Budget, broadening the powers of the Municipal Budget Council to cover personnel expenditures of the administration, and changing the criteria for assessing how resources are to be allocated to each of the regions.46 Councilors are limited to a twoconsecutive term maximum and subject to instant recall from their forum, as well as to a mandatory substitution after a number of unexcused absences. The Participatory Budget has sustained increasing levels of attendance over the years, and especially in the city's poorer disticts. In 1999, over 16,000 participants attended district-level plenary meetings,47 drawing broad stratum of Porto Alegres citizens. As mentioned, Participatory Budget participants have tended to be from what could be
45

My research showed that the level of involvement by facilitators varied significantly per district and thematic forum. 46 Resources are allocated to each region based on a system of weights that considers population, need and district-level priorities.

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described as lower middle-class, working class, and working poor. According to a 1998 survey, over half of participants are from households that earn $280/month or below, and over half have an Eighth-grade education or less; 30% are from households with earnings up to $140 a month, against 15% of the city's residents with such a family income. Men and women are equally represented. There is some evidence that Councilors tend to be better off than Delegates, who in turn tend to be better off than general participants. Of course, when compared to traditional political institutions, such as the municipal legislative, the Participatory Budget is a much more inclusive institution. As part of a joint strategy of urban improvements in the lowest-income areas while cleaning up public finances, the Participatory Budget has been very effective in aiding municipal administration in achieving good governance. Participatory reforms have also been linked to fiscal reforms to the administrative apparatus of the administration and have increased its capacity to carry out investments. The increased legitimacy of public decisions of Participatory Budget has also made possible certain reforms to clean up public finances, such as the increase in property taxes.48 In addition, the default rate on property tax payments has decreased from 20% to 12% in the years in question. The continued ability of some PT municipal governments, like those of Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre to secure international financing for projects also has to do with the wellknown public scrutiny of several thousand citizens over public funds, and the fact that these are considered 'best practices' of municipal planning by international agencies. And observers agree that the broad oversight of the population over municipal governance has helped 'clean it up.' As the evidence shows, the proportion of municipal expenses in service provision to expenses in administration has also improved, as has the proportion of employees employed in service provision as opposed to administration. In 1998, there were 5 municipal employees in services to each in administration, while there were four in 1988. Seven Dollars were spent in services to each dollar in administration in 1998, against the three to one figure of 1988. 49 Of the hundreds of projects approved and executed through the Participatory Budget, investment in the poorer residential districts of the city has far exceeded investment in wealthier areas. The general priorities of Participatory Budget investments over the last eleven years have been in street paving, sanitation, and land regularization/housing50, though substantial investments have also been made in education, social services, and health. Of the yearly 25-30 Kilometers of road paved, almost all of it has been in the citys poor peripheries, which has transformed
47

This is a measure that combines numbers from first and second plenary meetings, which obviously has several of the same participants. On the other hand, this measure does not include participants in thematic fora, a third of whom also participate in district-level fora. It also does not count all of the 'latent' participants in neighborhood meetings who help decide on priorities. 48 Jose Utzig. 1999. Oramento Participativo e Performance Governamental. . Porto Alegre: Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre. 49 This is a measure of the overall efficiency of the administrative apparatus. Though national-level changes, as making municipal governments responsible for the provision of health services, complicates this comparison, all evidence points to increased efficiency. Utzig, op cit. 50 The 'regularization' of land refers to municipal expenditures aimed at making the situation of illegal/irregular settlements 'legal and regular' according to municipal codes. This sometimes involves the relocation of people from high-risk areas, the municipal purchase of private lands, as well as the widening of streets and the division of areas into individual plots of land.

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the living conditions in many of these areas. According to available data, sanitation investments have also been extensive, and today roughly 98 percent of all residences in the city had access to running water, up from 80 percent in 1988. Sewage coverage has also gone up to 82% from 60%.51 In the years between 1992-1995 the housing department (DEMHAB) offered housing assistance to 28,862 families, against 1,714 for the comparable period of 1986-1988. In the 1993-1996 period, 12,500 lots were 'made regular.' Another example is the number of functioning public municipal schools today of 86 against 29 in 1988.52 THE DYNAMISM OF THE UNORGANIZED Participatory Budget rules do not distinguish between existing groups and ad-hoc aggregations of people, and it is not uncommon at a plenary meeting for there to be three or four different groups from the same neighborhood. Because the only requisite to becoming a delegate is bringing a certain number of people to the plenary, and since much of the time in intermediary meetings is spent learning the process week after week, the barriers to becoming a participant are relatively low. As the process has continued to yield results throughout the city, a number of new participants have come every year and become delegates and councilors. This constant inflow of people from outside organized sectors to Participatory Budget meetings has meant at least four things: 1) that key participants and councilors have not been only people with extensive social movement and neighborhood association experience; 2) that this has brought new people to civic life more generally 3) that new participants have on occasion circumvented existing clientelistic associations that were blocking the process. One of the most important features of the Participatory Budget, and the way that it maintains its dynamism, comes from its continued ability to bring in people from outside of organized associations and social movements. Part of the way the Participatory Budget guarantees this is by limiting the terms of councilors, as discussed. But an important component has to do the fact that the institution does not discriminate against people outside organized groups, and does not privilege 'real and established' associations over ad-hoc committees of citizens. A typical story among participants is one of the group of concerned people who started to attend meetings despite not having formal representation through an association:
We had an association here before, but it charged expensive dues and did not care about our corner of the vila. They went to the Participatory Budget one year, but not for very long. We started to go to the Participatory Budget because of the [irregular] land situation of this side, and that was three years ago, and we have gone every year since.53

Relying on already organized groups, even popular groups, might favor citizens who are represented by formal and established organizations against citizens who do not have such representation. Someone in a corner of a neighborhood with an unresponsive
51

Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre. 1997. Anurio Estatstico. . Porto Alegre: GAPLAN. Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre. 1999. Regies do Oramento Participativo de Porto Alegre - Alguns Indicadores Sociais. . Porto Alegre: Fundacao de Educacao Social e Comunitaria. 52 See Pozzobon, op cit. 53 Interview, Magda

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neighborhood association might have little recourse to have her needs met. In addition, relying on already organized groups might also inadvertently "freeze" movement leaderships and prevent renewal by giving leaders of such organizations additional legitimacy. It might also co-opt these groups by tying them to the administration. And it would no doubt would open up the process to charges of patronage, for example, if two associations appeared to represent the same street. Surveys from 1993, 1995, and 1998 have shown that roughly 15% of plenary participants in each year had no previous Participatory Budget experience and had no ties to organized sectors like neighborhood associations. There is good evidence that many of these participants stay on and become active participants, delegates, and councilors. In 1993, roughly 3/4 of delegates were directors of neighborhood associations; in 1995 40% of delegates were from a directorate, and by 1998 this figure was down to 23%.54 A smaller survey of councilors and delegates in 1999 showed that, on the whole, while almost all delegates still participated in a regular neighborhood forum like a neighborhood association, half of them got their start in a neighborhood association via the Participatory Budget, and not the other way around. Roughly a third of councilors had no prior experience with associations before the Participatory Budget. Similar trends among neighborhood associations also match these results. Among neighborhood association presidents, approximately half had their start in associative life through the Participatory Budget. Of those with less than five years experience, the vast majority had their start with the Participatory Budget. It is widely recognized by community activists that the Participatory Budget has impacted civil society in Porto Alegre. One of the most obvious transformations of civil society55 has been the rapid rise of new associations throughout the city. Although precise figures are difficult to establish for a number of reasons, it is safe to say this number has at least doubled, and that this has especially taken place in poorer areas.56 A survey of three districts found that 80% of associations included in this count held meetings at least once a month, and that over half had meetings more than once a month. Despite the fact that Porto Alegre did have active neighborhood associations, evidence suggests that many of them were experiencing difficulties maintaining active participation by 1988 after all of the disappointments with the previous administration. UAMPA, for example, had 192 associations formally registered with it in 1988, but active participation in UAMPA conferences was precarious. A survey from an advisory
54

Data from 1993 come from Luciano Fedozzi and Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre, Participantes do OP, Porto Alegre: PMPA. Data from 1995 come from Rebeca Abers and CIDADE 1995, Pesquisa entre participantes do OP, Porto Alegre: CIDADE. Data from 1998 come from a survey carried out with CIDADE, reported in CIDADE, 1999. Orcamento Participativo - Quem e a populacao que participa e que pensa do processo, Porto Alegre: CIDADE. 55 Neighborhood associations are not, of course, the only type of organization in civil society. A number of other types of entities exist, but neighborhood associations provide what I believe to be a good proxy for the density of civil society. 56 The count here relied on whether the association was dues-paying to UAMPA, or was listed in one of the lists of 'active associations' of the time collected by the municipal administration. For the present count, I do not count all 'associations' listed in Participatory Budget proceedings. See Baiocchi 2001, Militants op cit.

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group in 1988 cited the difficulties involved in maintaining neighborhood associations: similar difficulties: 'lack of resources', 'lack of participation and discredit of association,' 'lack of training and organization of residents,' 'lack of access to public officials' and 'lack of training of leaders.'57. This Nordeste district provides one of the clearest examples of how the Participatory Budget brought in the unorganized to broader participation in civic life. This district of 25,000 residents is one of the poorest and most remote districts of the city; many of the eighteen 'popular settlements' here are re-settlements from other parts of the city, and a third of the adult population has education of up to 3 years, which is twice the concentration of adults in the lowest education bracket for the whole city. There were, only two functioning neighborhood associations in 1989, but the district has had some of the highest numbers of participants in the Participatory Budget in the whole city. Working around the Participatory Budget has created an important impetus for fostering other associations in the years following. In the second year of the Participatory Budget here participants rented a bus which drove around from settlement to settlement to decide on priorities and needs because it would impossible to know what was going on another settlement without seeing it.58 By 1999, twenty-seven different 'groupings' elected delegates in the proceedings. Of those, twelve are registered associations, and ten are regularly functioning associations. The Participatory Budget forum functions regularly, drawing between 30 and 50 activists per meeting; three allied committees function regularly. The regional activist network that has been formed as result of the participation has become the most important forum of the region, serving as intermediary between city hall and regions residents, or as a place to organize protests. Most neighborhood association leaders had their first political experience in these occupations and subsequently with the Participatory Budget. Throughout the city, activists have made use of the open format of the Participatory Budget to circumvent associations that had attempted to block the process. In some of the districts of the city, the Participatory Budget process was stalled or prevented from fully functioning by neighborhood associations with ties to the PDT or other political parties in the first years of the process. In the Centro-Sul district, for example, an old neighborhood association with clientelist ties had stalled the way the Participatory Budget was to work:
The district has ties to the PDT [] The association that tries to represent the movement in the district, []mirrors these ties, and has lost space to the Participatory Budget[] The discussion for 1993 had problems: despite how important it is to analyse demands through visits [to vilas], the leadership has opposed discussing the priorities until the second round of meetings. 59

In other districts, where community leaders had explicit ties to other political parties, such as the leadership of the community movement in the Eixo and Lomba districts, similar contestations took place. The Norte district, which had historically provided a
57

FASE 1988. Pesquisa entre os delegados do III Congresso da UAMPA. . Porto Alegre: FASE UAMPA. 58 Magda, interview. 59 Schmidtt, op cit:149

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voting block for PDT, was a place where the Participatory Budget process took a long time to become routinized. Activists with the PDT originally founded an 'oppositional forum' to attempt to foil the Participatory Budget process. These activists defended the position that delegates would be chosen from existing associations, with presidents of each neighborhood association automatically elected, a vision contrary to the directives of the administration. It was only in 1994 that the facilitator for the district managed to gather a quorum of delegates who voted against that procedure, thus opening up participation. Today, less than a third of delegates in that district are from one of the original neighborhood associations in the district, and the remaining two-thirds are from associations that 'seceded' from existing associations, or simply ad-hoc groups of participants who formed parallel networks to the existing associations. One of these became a work cooperative after concerned citizens from outside the association started to participate regularly:
Some of us had tried to run for the presidency of the association in 1992 because we wanted it to defend our interests in the Participatory Budget, but we were not able to win [] The old association was originally a social club and they were not really concerned with some of the problems we had, like the terrible problem with dust and the children in the unpaved road. We formed another association, and it was difficult for us to attend always because they would hold the meeting in the neighborhood at times we didnt know. We continued to participate and now we have a cooperative to deal with the unemployment. 60

The cooperative has continued to function regularly, and managed to elect one of the councilors for the district. With the support of other delegates in the Participatory Budget, the cooperative has continued to expand its activities with support from the Participatory Budget. Though originally from outside of an organized neighborhood participation, members of the cooperative were able to not only organize themselves and become active participants, but they were able to circumvent existing associations that were impeding the process. CONCLUSION: CLEVER TINKERING OR A CASE OF GACHO EXCEPTIONALISM? One of the political cartoons distributed around Olvio Dutra's campaign for Governor in late 1998 depicted a small Olvio with his large cowboy moustache and in armor fighting to defend Rio Grande do Sul from the Roman troops of the national government. The allusion to Asterix speaks well to the Gachos' (natives from Rio Grande do Sul) occasional obsession with their own alleged exceptionalism. Not only is the history of Rio Grande do Sul distinct from the rest of Brazil, but the city of Porto Alegre has a significant past as an 'oppositional' city. Not only was the city home to Joo Goulart, the Socialist president whose pronouncements triggered the US-backed military coup in 1964, but Porto Alegre was the capital of the opposition to the attempted military coup in August of 1961, when then-governor Brizola barricaded himself in the governor's palace and pledged Porto Alegre would defend democracy until the end.61

60 61

Nara, interview. See Corts, op cit.

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When considering the successes of the PT administration in Porto Alegre, such as the high numbers of participants in the Participatory Budget meetings, it is important not to overestimate the importance of this oppositional legacy by itself. Rather, it is probably more accurate to consider that Participatory Budget meetings managed to find a way to accommodate previously existing oppositional movements while bringing in the unorganized. While Porto Alegre does have a unique history of left-populism dating back to the 1930s, the PT came play a part in municipal politics in opposition to the powerful PDT, winning the 1988 municipal election in large part as a protest against the PDT's failures of governance.62 And it has been the presence of participants from outside of oppositional social movements that has accounted for the vibrancy and legitimacy of the Participatory Budget. The broad sectors of the unorganized population who have come into the OP have have continuously renewed leadership positions within the Participatory Budget, and within civil society organizations as a whole. This influx of people into new associations has brought organization to parts of the city without significant associative history as well as helping create alternative associations and networks in hostile contexts. Other cities in Brazil, like So Paulo and Santo Andr, where the PT did not manage to re-elect its 1989- 1992 administrations had stronger, and more sympathetic community movements and the backing of unions. One of the key problems with many of the early PT administrations was, in fact, an inability to find a way to give voice to organized social movements within the administration without succumbing to the charge of privileging special interests and without becoming embroiled in inter-faction disputes between social movements within the party.63 The presence of participants from outside of organized sectors has helped the PT administration in Porto Alegre shield itself from such charges, as well as helped prevent the demands of organized sectors from bearing down on the administration. This legitimacy, for example, has helped the budget composed through the Participatory Budget to pass in the municipal legislative despite the fact that the PT did not have a majority there for most of the years in question. At several points in the early years of the process, when the municipal executive normally turns over the proposed budget for the following year for approval by the legislative, PT administrators ran the risk of having the budget overturned. A number of the vereadores in the municipal legislative threatened to reject or substantially amend the budget, overturning the Participatory Budget. A number of community activists with ties to political parties other than the PT participated in this effort, and in similar efforts in subsequent years, to assure that the Budget be approved without major modifications. The 1992 Budget, for example, created throught the Participatory Budget of 1991, was threatened late in the year. The Municipal legislative held ad-hoc meetings to reverse the land-use tax that had been raised by the administration, which would have cut the budget available for investment by at least 30%. An ad-hoc mobilization by Participatory Budget participants brought hundreds of people to the legislative to monitor voting on this measure. A letter to the
62 63

Baierle, op cit. See Keck, op cit.

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legislators warned that to change taxation would in effect forbid new investments in the city's periphery and disrespect the popular will:
Meetings were held in all the neighborhoods and vilas of the city and all priorities were raised and after almost one year of discussion the most important ones were selected. [] WE WANT TO DENOUNCE: [] In the meetings and assemblies in all the community, what we decide by a vote is approved and becomes a commitment for all. Do our legislators not understand democracy?64

Similarly, the administration was able to avert a strike in its first years by municipal employees by bringing the leadership of the municipal employees' union to discuss their demands with the Budget Council and justify to the councilors their demands.65 Had the administration privileged organized sectors, such as urban movements sympathetic to the PT as the 'voice of popular sectors', pressure from within the Participatory Budget would not command the authority that it was able to, with the clear presence of people from outside organized sectors and from outside the PT. Certainly, a thorough comparative analysis of other PT successes and failures in governance would yield additional factors that are not apparent in the analysis of a single case, as I have done here. The fiscal capacity of various city governments no doubt also accounts for outcomes. But what the Porto Alegre case shows very clearly is that one of the lessons from its story is that those outside of social movements and neighborhood associations have provided as much of the dynamism and legitimacy of participatory governance as those inside them. The paradoxical lesson may be that for leftists to succeed in governance it may not matter so much as to whether there are sympathetic movements as much as it may matter to find ways to consider those not in those movements. At the time of the writing of this essay, (2001), the OP appears to have become fully consolidated, with the fourth term of the PT administration having concentrated on increasing the quality of the meetings rather than increasing the numbers of participants. Civil society activists have become concerned, in fact, with whether the OP has become too successful and whether civil society has become too oriented toward it.66 The OP has been extended to state-level government, and a number of experiments with variants of participatory Budgeting currently ongoing in over 100 PT-controlled cities in Brazil, most of which are quite distinct from Porto Alegre. And although the Porto Alegre model exerts significant influence on how various administrations carry out their reforms, in reality there is significant variation in the actual institutions. The outcome of this cohort of administrations will no doubt shed light on the outcomes of the many possible ways of considering, or not, organized and unorganized sectors in a variety of contexts.

64 65

Conselho Municipal do Oramento Participativo. 1991. Carta Denuncia. . Porto Alegre. Mauro, interview. See also Harnecker, op cit p135 66 Interviews.

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