Participatory Budgeting in Brazil: Contestation, Cooperation, and Accountability (review)
At the time of this writing there are probably over a thousand cities and towns across the world experimenting with some version of participatory budgeting (PB). A Brazilian invention dating to the early 1990s, it is at its core a blueprint for citizen involvement in decision-making about municipal budgets. This basic idea has also captured the imagination of researchers who have by now written a great deal about the advantages of implementing this system. Brian Wampler's excellent new book moves this vast debate forward by taking the discussion in a comparative direction, examining eight cities in Brazil that experimented with this system in the 1990s and 2000s. The book's main conclusion— that contextual factors matter in the eventual success of participation—is an unpretentious one, but it is also an important one, anchored as it is in carefully documented evidence and detail. It is also a conclusion to which policy makers should attend in their enthusiastic implementation of best practices.