The Diffusion of Brazil’s Participatory Budgeting: Should “Best Practices” be Promoted?
The “third wave” of democratization has been accompanied by the spread of
new institutions that allow citizens to deliberate and decide policy outcomes. Leading
international organizations, such as the World Bank and the United Nations, have
disseminated “best practice” programs identified with “good government” policy reform
efforts. One of the most well-known programs, Participatory Budgeting (PB), was first
adopted by Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT) in 1989 as a means to promote social justice,
accountability, and transparency. There has been widespread adoption of PB in Brazil,
led by the PT. Yet, by 2001, nearly half of PB programs had been adopted by non-PT
governments. What explains why municipal governments in Brazil, especially non-PT
governments, would adopt PB programs? This article estimates the probability that a
municipality would adopt PB using logistic regression analysis to test a model that
included electoral, economic, regional, and policy network variables. This article
concludes by briefly analyzing whether governments that adopt PB are able to produce
policy outcomes similar to the initial results that inspired the “best practice” label. This
introduces the question: When should best practice programs be promoted for possible
adoption?