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In Latin America, and particularly Brazil, inequality and social exclusion continue to plague the quality of democracy despite two decades of transition and consolidation. Still, in Brazil, the Workers’ Party has been remarkably successful over the past decade, explicitly addressing the problem of social exclusion and ‘incomplete citizenship‘. This paper provides an analysis of the case of Porto Alegre covering the four Workers’ Party municipal administrations from 1989 to the present in order to assess the significance of social incorporation and citizenship for the quality of democracy in Brazil. The paper discusses some conceptual notions that are relevant for the question of democracy in Brazil, particularly the role of citizenship and civil society in ‘deepening’ democracy. Then the paper goes into the evolution and dynamics of Porto Alegre's system of ‘participatory budgeting’. The paper's assessment of this experience with respect to its performance, depth and robustness shows that ‘participatory budgeting’ has had positive effects with respect to the provision of public goods services, the quality of governance, and citizens’ participation in what is seen as a new ‘public space’ shared by the local state and grass roots organisations. The paper concludes by relating the case experience to the question of citizenship, civil society and democracy and by reflecting upon its wider implications for the current and future quality of democracy in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Latin American Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Politics & Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines how new modes of governance and policies intended to expand Internet access unfold in the marginalized communities of Rio de Janeiro. In April 2014, Brazil enacted the Marco Civil da Internet (Civil Rights Framework of the Internet; MCI), an "Internet Bill of Rights" that promotes collaborative, democratic digital governance and regards Internet access as a requisite for civil rights. Rio's favelas (informal, historically low‐income communities) are territories where many of the intended beneficiaries of the access policies live. However, drug gangs often control favela neighborhoods and censor the digital access of residents; this is just one example of how Internet access in disadvantaged communities is tied to a number of broader sociopolitical realities and risks. Because these risks index larger disjunctions in contemporary Brazilian democracy, I propose that violence and informal governance in urban favelas creates a corresponding disjunction in the MCI's pledge of Internet access as a civil right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between business, state, and civil society in Latin America are conventionally discussed in antagonistic or hierarchical terms. This article challenges this position, developing a qualitative case study tracing the activities of an informal network of Brazilian businesspersons that, over the last three decades, promoted an agenda of sustainability, transparency, and civil society participation. Drawing from concepts in social movement theory, it is argued that a dynamic movement‐like behaviour combining civil activism, organisational entrepreneurship, and fluid political alignment, allowed the group to establish lasting collaborative alliances with core actors in Brazilian democratic politics, and access relevant elite and policy‐making circles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes three key contributions to debates surrounding the effectiveness of democratic innovation, deliberation and participation in representative political systems. In the first instance, it argues that more attention should be paid to the role that participation actually plays in governance. The literature on democratic institutional design often neglects concern about the effects of innovative institutional designs on more traditional representative fora, at the expense of concerns about their internal procedures. Second, the article argues that despite limitations, replicable systematic comparison of the effects of institutional design is both necessary and possible even at the level of national governance. A comparative analysis of 31 cases of National Public Policy Conferences (NPPCs) in Brazil is presented. Finally, the article shows that popular deliberative assemblies that vary in their familiarity and their policy area of interest, and that organise their structure and sequence deliberation in different ways can be associated with differential effects on both option analysis and option selection stages of the policy process, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Latin American Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Canoas, a city in southern Brazil, is innovating radical forms of democratic government in order to involve all residents in decision-making for the city. Their achievements are so unprecedented that the United Nations awarded them a first prize for citizenship engagement. Tackling decades of exclusion, poverty, and pollution, the Mayor Jairo Jorge of the Workers' Party has led a restructuring of city government to facilitate a redistribution of wealth and power. This article examines this 'new system of government,' highlighting programs, initiatives, and priorities for a sustainable economic development based on democratic participation and decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In the democratic cosmology of Brazil's MST landless movement, a meeting must occur before a decision can be reached-even if the decision was set before the meeting. I examine MST speech habits in an effort to understand the meeting as a symptomatically modern method for producing authoritative discourse. I identify four properties of MST meeting speech: (1) a lexicon that highlights verbs of speech, (2) the enforcement of tight semantic linkages between utterances, (3) the equal availability of one speech act to all participants, and (4) the generation of a distinctive species of collective voicing. By virtue of these properties, the meeting becomes a crucial site for the construction of equality and participation as political values. It is these values that are ultimately in play when a speaker mobilizes other people's words to make-or prevent-a decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Why is local environmental governance in Brazil shaped through the collective action of many, frequently interacting actors in some municipalities, whilst in others it does not take the form of deliberative and inclusive decision-making? I address this question by zooming in on Brazil's Conselhos Municipais de Meio Ambiente (participatory municipal environmental councils). Through multivariate logistical regression ( n = 5202), I show that a large business community, combined with 'small local government', adds significantly to the likelihood of finding participatory forms of solving environmental problems in a municipality, especially when communities have learned from prior experience with participatory policy-making in other areas. Through multivariate linear regression ( n = 1365), I establish that depth and breadth of participatory environmental governance processes is more likely to increase when, amongst other things, people have previous experience with other types of participatory council, and when there are fewer local government officials per capita. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Agricultural cooperatives increasingly operate in strictly coordinated supply chains. It is important that members of a cooperative are committed to a customer-oriented strategy, otherwise vertical coordination can be costly and the loss of autonomy at the farm level might negatively affect the members' commitment to collective action. In this context, how can both types of commitment be strengthened? This study decomposes the member-cooperative relationship into four organizational mechanisms-market, hierarchy, community and democracy, which all play a role in generating commitment. Data originate from 148 farmers, all members of the same agricultural cooperative in Brazil. The results suggest first, that it is possible to disentangle commitment to collective action from commitment to a customer-oriented strategy. Second, although members' commitment to a customer-oriented strategy might be affected by market and hierarchy mechanisms only, commitment to collective action might depend on the four organizational mechanisms. [ L200; M100; Q130]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of the Argentine and Brazilian parliaments during the formative years of Mercosur with the aim of assessing how the specific model of ‘limited democracy’ may have had an impact on the course and shape of Mercosur. Although that integration process was essentially a governmental exercise, with only a marginal role for congresses, this article argues that this does not constitute in itself either a violation of constitutional provisions in the member states or a geographical anomaly compared to other constitutional traditions or to incipient integration processes elsewhere. Yet, perhaps ironically, the conclusion suggests that democratic limitations have fostered, rather than hampered, integration in the Southern Cone of Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘transfer’ of participatory budgeting from Brazil to Europe has been a highly differentiated process. In Porto Alegre, this innovative methodology enabled democratization and social justice to be articulated. In Europe, participatory budgeting relies on multiple procedures, and it is therefore necessary to give a clear methodological definition of it so that cases can be coherently compared and ideal-types constructed to understand the variety of concrete experiments. The six ideal-types we propose (Porto Alegre adapted for Europe; representation of organized interests; community funds at the local and city level; the public/private negotiating table; consultation on public finances; proximity participation) show striking differences that are highly influenced by existing participatory traditions. It is, above all, with the models Porto Alegre adapted for Europe and community funds that an ‘empowered participatory governance’ can develop and that a fourth power, beyond the three classical ones, is developing — that of the citizenry when it directly (or through delegates) assumes a decision-making power. However, other models have their strengths, too, for example with regard to the reform of public administration which is a critical aspect in the search for ‘another possible world’. Résumé Le ‘transfert’ du budget participatif du Brésil à l'Europe s'est révélé un processus très différencié. A Porto Alegre, cette méthodologie novatrice a permis d'intégrer démocratisation et justice sociale. En Europe, comme le budget participatif s'appuie sur de nombreuses procédures, il faut lui donner une définition méthodologique claire afin de pouvoir comparer correctement les cas et élaborer des idéaltypes pour comprendre la variété des expériences concrètes. Cet article propose six idéaltypes : Porto Alegre adaptéà l'Europe, Représentation des intérêts organisés, Fonds communautaires au niveau local et municipal, Table de négociations public-privé, Consultation sur les finances publiques, Participation de proximité. Tous présentent des divergences frappantes, fortement influencées par les traditions participatives en place. C'est surtout avec les modèles Porto Alegre adaptéà l'Europe et Fonds communautaires que peut se déployer une ‘gouvernance participative dotée de pouvoirs’ et que se développe un quatrième pouvoir, au-delà des trois autres classiques : celui de l'ensemble des citoyens exerçant directement (ou via des délégués) un pouvoir décisionnel. Toutefois, d'autres modèles ont leurs atouts également, par exemple vis-à-vis de la réforme de l'administration publique donc d'un aspect crucial dans la quête d'un ‘autre monde possible’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade scholars of urban governance and deliberative democracy have produced large literatures. Theorists of deliberative democracy have conceptualized the normative implications of ‘deliberation’ and explored real-world decision-making arrangements that approximate those ideals. Scholars of urban governance have theorized and explored the outcomes of different institutional arrangements for the governance of cities and regions. Whereas empirical democratic theory has increasingly been interested in local contexts, researchers of urban governance have been progressively more concerned about the implications of emerging patterns of urban governance for democratic accountability. However, despite the recent mutual interest among researchers in both fields, debates within these literatures frequently ignore each other and are not systematic. This introductory article reviews recent contributions that have fruitfully investigated the tension between deliberation and governance in a more systematic fashion, and concludes that our understanding of those issues is significantly improved by a research agenda that pursues an integrated approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the transition to democracy in Brazil and the churches' role in what is generally called democratic consolidation, in and after this transition. The key term is "cidadania" (Citizenship), which is the real participation of citizens in democracy, in which they are conscious of their citizenship and strive to exercise their rights and duties. Today, this participation is being complicated by continuously strong social and economic disparities, as well as by an ambiguous cultural model that runs contrary to the equality of all and a positive notion of law. During the military regime (1964-85), the Roman Catholic Church took a very critical stance over against the state and provided, especially through the famous Base Eccelesial Communities (CEBs), the most important space for opposition. The Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB) made a significant move towards a more critical accompaniment of the state's policies following the transfer of the 5th general assembly of the Lutheran World Federation from Porto Alegre to Evian, France, in 1970. After the transition to democracy, the impact of CEBs declined and the Roman Catholic hierarchy tended to return to more spiritual tasks. Even so, the National Bishops' Conference continues to be an important organ commenting frequently on public issues, as does the IECLB leadership. The IECLB is especially strong in providing an ecclesial model that fosters democracy and approximates ecclesial and secular citizenship. The biggest Pentecostal church in Brazil the Assemblies of God, contributes more indirectly to citizenship by restoring the lives of marginalized people who become "decent and honourable". The final part of the article reflects on theological challenges, the concretisation of liberation, a vision for the whole of society, congruence between ecclesial and secular citizenship and the relationship between society and the image... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines how and why human rights conditions have not only failed to improve, but have at times deteriorated since Brazil's attempt at redemocratization. Political and social order; Doctrine of liberalism; Absence of guarantee for the protection of rights of the poor.