Resumen de Participatory Budgeting in Brazil: The global circulation of a local practice
The Participatory Budget (PP) was implemented for the first time in 1989 in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre as a local policy to meet the demands of a more equitable distribution of municipal resources. The PP was conceived as a new way of dealing with both urban inequalities and governance. In the following decades, the PP spread among other important cities in Brazil such as Belo Horizonte, Recife and São Paulo. The local democratic innovations linked to the Brazilian experience soon crossed national borders and reached different cities around the world. Today, there are thousands of PPs around the world. From the relevant literature, this document addresses the long journey of PP from its beginnings as an innovative local practice to its current global condition. It shows that, although several factors explain the global diffusion of the PP, such as the World Social Forum and its legitimacy as a good practice by international organizations such as the World Bank, the PP underwent substantial modifications while globalizing.
