● practice● Discontinued
Participatory Budgeting (Porto Alegre)
Scale
local
subnational
national
systemic
Description
Residents directly decide how part of the municipal budget is spent via assemblies and delegate votes.
Lessons learned
Flourished under the PT (1989–2004); declined when the government changed and was suspended in 2017 (officially for 2 years) by the PSDB citing lack of resources. Lesson: without legal safeguards and sustained political will it is vulnerable, and it only allocated ~15% of the budget.