Participative
budget: Its limits and potentialities
Valdemir Pires
Paper submitted to ASIP's (Public
Budget International Association) 1999 Annual Prize.
Valdemir Pires is a Brazilian economist, author of numerous articles and books
amongst of which includes: “Participative Budget: what it is, what it is for,
how to do it”. He is currently coordinator of the Economics Department of
UNIMEP and an economics professor at said institution and at the Business and
Management faculty. He is also Vice-president for South America of AFEIAL
(Association of Latin American Universities, Schools and Economic Institutes)
and a member of the Communitarian Board of the Methodist University of
Piracicaba
1. Introduction
This paper contemplates the
“Participative Budget”, considering it as an innovative practice in the
Brazilian local public management, with potential to renew the municipal
movement in the country and, hopefully, to shed some light on the theory of budgetary
decision, which is still plagued by serious difficulties. Having posed this
last possibility, with important questions still to be answered, the article
goes on to describe the panorama of the appearance and development of
Participative Budget in Brazil, discussing its most promising aspects and its
basic methodological elements. The conclusion shows the need to continue
experimenting and reflecting upon this kind of budget, in order to remove any
obstacles that still prevent this proposal from thriving.
“Participative Budget”, a term
which has become common within some Brazilian political groups since the 80’s,
means the adoption of differential practices for local budget management, in
which the innovative ingredient is the opening of channels and mechanisms for
the people’s participation in the allocation process of municipal public
resources. According to the prevalent discourse by those who conducted these
experiments, the new practices promote an improvement in the level of
allocation efficiency (by forcing planning and transparency into decisions on
expenditure) and, at the same time, make room for a new model of relationship
between the municipal public power and the citizens, which tends to enlarge and
consolidate democratic cohabitation. Following the central aspects of this
argument, the experiments are becoming more and more numerous in the country,
from the very first attempts at the beginning of the 80’s until the most recent
ones, including cities whose mayors belong to political parties quite different
from those governing pioneering municipalities, among which the Rio Grande del
Sur capital city deserves special notice, standing as the longest and most
successful experience, and chosen as one of the forty best practices in the
world at the II United Nations Conference for Human Settlements (Habitat II)
held in Istanbul in June 1996. Besides Porto Alegre, many other cities have
adopted Participative Budget, although with purposes and procedures quite
different between them. These cities include Cosmopolis SP, São Bernardo do
Campo SP, Diadema SP, Santo André SP, Jaboticaba SP, Santos SP, Piracicaba SP,
São José dos Campos SP, Santa Bárbara d’Oeste SP, Belo Horizonte MG, Ipatinga
MG, Betim MG, Timóteo MG, João Monlevade MG, Florianópolis SC, Blumenau SC,
Joinville C, Palmeira SC, Gravataí SC, Londrina PR, Vitória ES, Vila Velha ES,
Rio Branco AC, Brasilia DF, Recife PE.
More recently, the analysis of
some of these experiments has been the object of studies and publications (BAVA, 1990;
MOURA & PEREIRA, 1990;
DANIEL, 1991;
AZEVEDO, 1994;
FEDOZZI, 1994
and 1997;
UTZIG & GUIMARAES, 1996;
RIBEIRO & SIMON, no date
available; FIGUEIREDO & LAMOUNIER, 1996;
GOULART, 1996)
representing at the same time a reinforcement of the practice and the beginning
of a reflection which is necessary to identify limits and potentialities for
the opening of channels and the building of methodologies leading to the
citizens’ involvement in the definition of local public budgets. However, most
of the above texts have a notoriously narrative and descriptive nature, which
in some cases are almost apologies.
The experiments in course can be
considered from several points of view, in order to obtain a better theoretical
understanding and build up effective procedures and methodologies. One of the
aspects is of an historical and political nature: investigating in what
context, by means of which social and political-ideological forces, for what
purposes, adopting what speech and what strategies the Participative Budget
appears in Brazil. Another standpoint is of predominantly technical nature:
attempts are made to decide how the methodologies designed to achieve the
common citizen’s involvement in the definition of the municipal budget can
contribute to the sophistication and improvement of the known budgetary
planning and execution techniques. From the technical-political field, it is
possible to consider Participative Budget as an innovation in urban management,
stretching bridges between financial planning and the demands for
infrastructure and services in the cities (thus relating Budget/Financial
Policy and Master Plan/Development Policy).
Still another possibility is a
theoretical discussion on the experiments. It is necessary to analyze how the
practices and speeches which characterize Participative Budget can be inserted,
if they can be at all, in the theoretical background of Political Science and Economics.
In the case of Political Science, interesting questions for analysis are the
difficulty to make representative democracy compatible with decision-making
procedures which are more typical of direct democracy and, in the actual case
of the selected (municipal) experiences, the limits set by local power for any
changes occurring as a result of the new ways of managing public resources. In
the case of Economic Science, one of the possible situations for analysis would
be to consider Participative Budget in the light of the economic theory of
budgetary determination (a matter which is at present referred to as Public
Sector Economy, a field of knowledge where Public Finance stands).
One of the most elaborate and
widely accepted theories in Economic Science of determining the budget is the
acknowledgment that the market, in spite of being the best mechanism for
allocation of resources, fails in various situations, and turns out to be
incapable or inefficient to provide certain goods and services or to face given
situations (external affairs and monopolies, for instance). Under such
circumstances, the government appears as a supplier of public, social and
welfare goods, thus enhancing the system’s efficiency. With this acknowledgment
in mind, efficient procedures are striven for, not only to obtain resources to
finance the expenditure, but also to select the expenditure items to be covered
by these expenses.
Glorified by Economic books (SAMUELSON & NORDHAUS, 1992,
for instance), micro-economy books (VARIAN, 1987
and BYRNS & STONE, 1996,
for instance), and specially by textbooks on Public Finance and/or Public
Sector Economy (see, for instance, LONGO, 1984;
FILELINI, 1994;
MUSGRAVE, 1974;
MUSGRAVE & MUSGRAVE, 1980;
REZENDA DA SILVA, 1989;
STARRETT, 1988;
RIANI, 1986;
EKSTEIN, 1966),
the current vision on the decision-making mechanism for the supply of public,
social or welfare goods starts from an acceptance of the idea that similarly to
private expenses, decisions on public expenditure involve a rational selection
by individuals with a view to maximize that expenditure (as can be seen in DOWN, 1957,
P. 3-20; BUCHANAN & TULLOCK, 1962,
P. 17-39). In the second place, it is sought to find and explain concrete
social mechanisms through which that rational-maximizing selection is carried
out by individuals. It can be proven, together with MILLERON (1972),
that various attempts have been made by economists to arrive at this
explanation, from Pareto’s optimum theory1
up to Lindahl’s and Samuelson's2
models afterwards, going through the most diverse meanings of taxing, paying
capability and benefit principles. All these theories collide with a delicate
obstacle: the idea of voluntary exchange, by which the individual discloses his
preferences for public goods, not in the same manner, but with the same clear
mind as he regards private goods. Accepting the reverse as true – not disclosing
any preference in order not to participate in the public pro rata share of
public goods, which will be offered anyway—all attempts originated in that idea
have been an easy target to criticism.
As a result of the theoretical
contribution by ARROW (1951),
BUCHANAM (1973) 3,
BUCHANAM & TULLOCK (1962) 4,
DOWNS (1957)
et al., the theory of public selection was the one most contributed to from the
post WWII period until today, in the sense of considering budgetary
determination as a process guided by a rational-maximizing logic very close to
the process which characterizes the market’s typical allocation decisions. It
chooses the representative democracy electoral practices as the decision-taking
method which is closer to the quid pro quo practice led by the market and
applies it to decisions designed to define the set of goods to be secured by
government intervention. In this way, it is possible to say that the selection
made by the individual, through his vote, of the candidates running at the
electoral campaign (with their platforms and action plans) is similar to the
decision on a given basket of goods offered in the market, with the spending of
scarce resources.
In general, however, it is
admitted that the public mechanism for the supply of goods also has failures,
originated mainly in the following large groups of complicating factors (as per
WHYNES & BOWLES, 1981
and BYRNS & STONE, 1992):
elector’s apathetic behavior, electorate’s ignorance, election systems’
inefficiencies and inconsistencies, search for the average elector by
candidates (with promises which have no relation with real intentions), weak
competition amongst political parties, creation of pressure groups by electors,
political connivance between parties and candidates, inadequate operation of
governmental bureaucracies, etc. Thus, public elections through representative
democracy are a system that only roughly reflects the electors’ preferences,
leaving in some people the suspicion that “government failures” may be larger
than “market failures”.
Participative Budget is clearly a
new element (even though, as in the case under analysis, it may be restricted
to local government) in the scene of budgetary determination. After verifying
in detail what Participative Budget is, in the past or in-course experiments,
it is of theoretical and practical interest to answer such questions as: does
Participative Budget accomplish the selection mechanism sponsored by the most
accepted economic theories? If not, can be it be improved so as to offer that
contribution? If so, in what aspects and how?
1
Equilibrium is achieved when an individual cannot be further benefited without
damaging another individual.
2
These models are attempts to define budgetary determination, taking into
account both the income and the expenditure side, assuring that individual
losses represented by the payment of taxes would be accurately set off by
benefits arising out of government expenditure.
3
“Main character in this scientific movement” (SILVEIRA, 1996,
p.38)
4
Paradigmatic work in the theory of public selection, in accordance with SILVEIRA (1996).
2. Participative budget in
practice
Before commencing a discussion on
the limits and potentialities of Participative Budget, it is convenient to
offer a panorama of the history of the appearance and evolution thereof, to
characterize its actual existence, since only in that manner will it be
admissible to consider Participative Budget as a practical possibility,
featuring certain limits and potentialities, which will be analyzed immediately
afterwards.
Democratic winds began blowing in
Brazil by the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties, and brought
with them a quite extended trend of participating, arising out of mobilized
social sectors and political groups consolidated in the fight against the
military dictatorship. This clamor for a greater influence by common citizens
on State decisions was reproduced by the press, which was then free of the
constraints previously imposed upon it. In their struggle to fill in the wide
gap that the authoritative regime had dug between government and civil society,
the social sectors and political groups that worked for a democracy always placed
social and political rights as one of their claims, the solution of which could
be found in positions to be adopted and measures to be decided upon and put
into practice by various government levels. In that atmosphere, it took no time
at all for the proposal on people’s participation in public resource management
to become widely accepted, specially at times of political campaigns and when
political parties that traditionally were part of the opposition took up
governments. It was in this way that Participative Budget became a common
proposal in the Brazilian political scene in the eighties, as a sort of
restatement by some political groups of the municipal attempts in participative
planning which had been outlined since the mid-seventies until the end of the
next decade.
Once the euphoric phase of goals
achieved as a result of the days of struggle for democracy was over, a new
period for experiment was opened, under the leadership of a few municipalities
governed by the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores – PT) which placed
Participative Budget as one of the main items in its government plan. As after
the mid-eighties a contraction of the social movement took place, and a
relative political skepticism arose, such experiences were not broadly known. Then,
from the beginning to the middle of the nineties, the question of
decentralization and popular participation gained new life, at that moment
under a new situation, within a liberal perspective of economy. At the same
time that speakers in favor of “reinventing the government” and commanding
officers and technicians of international bodies on development and loans
“agreed” on the importance of the citizens’ growing participation in decisions
made by the public power, many national political leaders placed Participative
Budget into their electoral plans, for the 1996 municipal elections, as if it
was only then that constitutional provisions enacted in 1988 1
and sections of various municipal organic laws entered into force in the daily
political struggle.
In spite of the different aspects
which may have characterized the discussions and experiences on Participative
Budget, it is a fact that: in Brazil, over the last fifteen years, the people’s
participation in government has caught the researchers’ interest in different
areas of study, resulting in numerous lectures, books, articles, etc. Equally,
the matter has interested political parties, becoming part of electoral plans or
an outstanding element of government programs. (MENDES, 1994,
p. 44).
Due to the above, and to the fact
that quite recently, on occasion of the 2nd United Nations Conference on Human
Settlements – Habitat II (Istanbul, July 1996), where the subject acquired
international notice, having been elected as one of the forty best practices in
the world submitted to Habitat II, it is quite interesting to analyze Participative
Budget with due care, and to avoid the dangerous lightness of those who are
adept to last minute trends.
What have been the aims of the
discourse and practice on Participative Budget in the recent Brazilian
experience? What follows is, in great part, an attempt to answer these
questions, with the intent to shed some light on the usefulness of
participative practices which today seem to have acquired strong consensus
among partisans of the most varied political and ideological visions.
Under this denomination
–Participative Budget—the experience of drafting and discussion of the annual
budget gained space in the Brazilian municipal public administration in the
eighties, under the leadership of the Workers’ Party (PT), which defended and
spread the idea specially in the 1982 and 1988 electoral campaigns and in the
management of some municipalities in the 1989-92 period2.
But in those aspects which are essential to the proposal –decision-making with
participation of local inhabitants, doing away with the formalism of
representative democracy, where mayors and their teams, technicians and members
of the City Council are the only individuals responsible for the handling of
the budgetary process – the Workers’ Party was not a pioneer. Participative
planning, of which Participative Budget can be thought of as an offspring, was
previously defended by other political groups and party coalitions. The PT’s
innovation was to centralize participative planning in a short-term strategy
and to use this experience as a management tool both of material and power
resources. This assertion will appear clearer as a more panoramic vision, such
as the one which follows, is developed on the Brazilian participative planning
experience.
In accordance with OLIVEIRA, 1989:
the history of Brazilian municipal administration has more instances of
sporadic government plans, developed and followed in each mayor’s fashion, than
a tradition in systematic, continuous planning process with the people’s actual
participation. (…) Until the 70’s, many municipalities –especially those
considered large and medium-sized—developed master plans with the assistance of
technicians who were members of their political parties or from outside
consultants. Although these plans included studies on the local socio-economic
and administrative situation, they were oriented mainly to the city’s physical
problems, the control of its evolution and growth over a relatively extended
period of time. (…) It is admitted that such plans –applied with positive
results in countries which achieved a relatively high level of urban growth—in
general never proven to be efficient for Brazilian cities. The other Brazilian
experience on municipal planning is more recent and was sponsored mainly by the
Federal Service for Housing and Urbanism (SERFHAU – “Serviço Federal de
Habitação e Urbanismo) established in 1964 and eliminated in 1975. This
experience emphasized a type of integrated planning… From this viewpoint of
local planning (…), many Brazilian municipalities adopted long-term development
plans and programs on the basis of detailed studies and surveys conducted on
the problems of the municipality and on its relationship with the micro-region
where it was located, carried out by teams of administrators and specialists in
several areas. A great part of these plans was never put into practice, and few
had an expressive influence on the evolution of those municipalities for which
they had been designed. (…) By the mid-seventies, with the development of urban
social movements, frequent news stories ran of innovative and successful experiments
of municipal governments, based on the community’s participation in
decision-making and the solution to public problems. Ways of democratic
planning appeared, at municipal level, based on popular consultation, which
assumed the organization of the community and the political will to
decentralize the decision-making power.
At the time when participative
planning began to become known in Brazil, becoming reality in some
municipalities3
(which happened in the period stretching broadly from 1975 to 1986), a
fundamental ingredient of the situation was initially the struggle against the
military dictatorship, which had succeeded in the 1964 coup, and then the
reacquisition of power by successful democratic forces. In such a context, two
ingredients appeared as insurmountable obstacles to the people’s manifestation,
specially as regards to matters which involved financial and material
resources: first, the cutting off of individual political freedoms (strictly
banned during the fierce repression) and the excessive centralization of power
in the Union, making the City an entity of the Federation with almost no
expression. In the subsequent period, the problem of the Brazilian federalism
shortcomings continued, and the repression, as an obstacle, was substituted by
the relative lack of government experience by opposition political groups which
gained City Halls, forced to be main characters in a play which featured
utterly disastrous economic problems.
Faced with the difficulties of the
military regime and as the only political coalition in the opposition, the old
Movimento Democrático Brasileiro – MDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement) headed
the participative planning experiments during the first stage of the period
stretching from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties. Both in this area and in
the municipal area, where the Movement was also acting incisively, the party
sought to lead an opposition focused on the fight for the rescue of political
rights, for democracy. Thus, it considered participative planning as one tool,
amongst many others, to enhance this struggle. While the federal government in
the military’s hands worked for centralization and created a cast of
bureaucrats to make decisions, the progressive segment of the MDB proposed and
attempted to practice decentralization, and to make decisions together with
inhabitants of the cities it governed. Practiced from this point of view and
from this perspective, participative planning, in the hands of the old MDB,
afterwards PMDB, served as a weapon in the fight against the military regime.
As the MDB was a national party, with strong representation at the federal
level and governed a great number of municipalities, its fighting strategy was
designed taking into account the national scenario. The actions that were
developed on a municipal level were added to the others, based mainly at the
National Congress, and altogether had the purpose of cornering the military
regime.
The story was quite different with
the PT. This party began to heighten the struggle in 1982, when it ran for the
first time at municipal elections, being a party with scarce representation in
numerical terms (representation at the National Congress, members of City
Councils, mayors, etc.). It obtained some expression as a defender of
participative planning, after the governments that assumed power in 1989. Since
then, as a result of the experience gained from a structure of base nucleus and
the management of a few municipalities, it developed a proposal with features
that differentiated it from proposals from other political groups.
Being a party strongly rooted in
popular classes (unionists and leaders of base communities) and having been
born as a result of the articulation of marxist-leninist sectors, the PT
appeared as a group which, differently from the others, had proposals and a
discipline which turned it into a true party machine4:
operative and efficient in the defense and implementation of progressive
proposals originated (and thus backed) by social sectors which were politically
and economically marginated. With this history, PT’s motivation to defend the
people’s participation was different from the PMDB’s. For the PT, this
participation was not just another battle to be added to the list of fights
developed in the strictly institutional field. For the PT, participation was a
demand of origin, of genetic nature: the foundation of the party declares that
the party will be a fighting instrument for those who had no other opportunity
but to vote.
As already mentioned, the PMDB was
a national party when it included participative experiments in its programs.
The PT was not. From the institutional viewpoint, the PT was built on a
national level from its gradual insertion in municipal governments and
legislative assemblies. Therefore, its participative planning proposal was
aimed exactly at the municipal budget. It began its actual government practice
in some municipalities, in a context where it was no longer a matter of
fighting the dictatorship, but of building up government experiences oriented
at the people’s interest, with special emphasis on a redistributive perspective
typical of a markedly socialist party.
It is in this sense that the
experiences led by the old MDB, afterwards PMDB, are different from the
experiences implemented by the PT. In the first place, they occurred in
different situational settings, and in the second place they took place in the
pursuit of objectives inspired in different fighting strategies. Consequently,
they were also based on different methodologies.
What these experiments had in
common was that of creating a culture fluid for an innovative practice. As a
result, none of the two parties can claim to be the “father of the idea”, since
both the proposal and the parties who attempted to implement it were the result
of different stages in the correlation of forces which was established in the
Brazilian political scenario during the last 20-25 years. Besides, the idea of
the people’s participation, planning and Participative Budget was not conceived
here, and those who attempted to implement it benefited from its results and,
in many cases, also benefited the involved populations. Lastly, it is a
proposal still in its embryonic stage, both in regards to its conception and
its implementation. Therefore, an eventual public and declared fight between
presumptive parents will only cause problems in the “offspring’s” development.
The most convenient situation for everybody is to consider the proposal on
Participative Budget as a Brazilian civil society’s collective asset, built
from the lengthy struggle for democracy and through the recent experience in
municipal management to pay the country’s social debt and to bring the popular
and union movement inside the public and State-guided decision-making process.
Summing up, the practice of
participative planning and its more specific variant –the Participative Budget—has
served different strategies of political struggle in recent Brazilian history.
In the MDB/PMDB’s hands it was an instrument to fight centralization and
bureaucracy imposed by military governments. It was one of the ingredients of a
nationally-oriented political movement, focused on the attempt to overcome a
national problem – the military dictatorship. In the PT’s hands, it turned out
to be a weapon to fight the political dominance of local oligarchies. It was an
ingredient in the strategy to consolidate the party at national level, as from
the spaces it was able to conquer in the first elections. Very probably, it
must have served, besides, as an opportunity to exercise citizenship for many
people, who before that were completely alien to public affairs, due to a
typical omission in a period of silence and cutting off of participation and/or
due to the governing elite’s utter despise for the people’s opinion. Certainly,
it also served to set up a new type of populism, which instead of being
paternalistic, such as in the national tradition, was falsely participative,
taking advantage of co-optation, and justified the lack of answer to growing
claims in an economic context with ever reducing resources, in order to enhance
governability conditions. At present, it acts as a sacred modernizing word both
for progressive and conservative parties, for different reasons, the
understanding of which can be obtained through an acquaintance with the fight
which is being fought today, in the international scenario, between an
exacerbated, strong liberalism and a shy, weak resistance from the left.
2.1 Recent and Ongoing Experiences
Today, “Even the PFL adheres to Participative Budget”5.
In accordance with the news published by the national press, “At present about
70 municipalities have adopted the mechanism [of Participative Budget] in
accordance to which the people choose priority works to be included in the
budget bill. Ten years ago, when the Porto Alegre City Council decided to set
up the system, only 20 cities followed its example. With mayors elected in
1992, holding office until 1996, about 40 municipalities set up the experiment.
(…) In the 1998 electoral campaign, several candidates put forward the idea in
their lists of promises. (…) Municipalities governed by the PMDB also rely on
“Participative Budget”6,
as well as a group of governors, including even the PFL, as mentioned in the
title. Besides the cities already mentioned, the following can be added to the
list of experiences: Porto Alegre do Norte, Fortaleza CE, Rio Branco AC,
Timóteo MG, Angra dos Reis RJ, São José dos Campos SP, Londrina PR, Recife PE,
Penápolis SP, Camacari, Palmeira SC, Joinville SC.
The mechanism of the people’s
participation in the budgetary decision-making process has also been encouraged
on the civil society’s side. Institutions defending this system and taking
initiatives in this sense are beginning to grow in number. Worth noting are the
Regional Council on Economy (CORECON), both in São Paulo (which established a
special committee to take initiatives and further mobilization on this issue,
and will be delivering courses for economists in the area) and in Rio de
Janeiro, a city where a Popular Budget Forum already exists. FASE (Federation
of Bodies for Social and Educational Assistance) has organized events, studies
and publications on Participative Budget. The Instituto Polis has been
organizing lectures and debates with people interested in the issue over the
last years. Mention should also be made of ABOP (the Brazilian Public Budget
Association) and INESC (the Institute for Socio-Economic Studies). A search
through Internet may result in several pages on the subject, among which some
are maintained by Universities and Research Institutes.
2.2 International Experiences
During the last decades, several experiments all over
the world have been carried out, at local, city council level, with the aim of
achieving decentralization, a greater proximity between government and
community, participative planning, and to rescue a sense of appreciation for
the public space as an important aspect of social life. In many of those experiences,
the budget has been an object of concern, proposals and actions, and it can be
said that in some ways the idea of Participative Budget was present. Several of
these experiences became part of a way of governing. Among them, the following
can be mentioned: Bologna (Italy), Barcelona (Spain), Yokohama (Japan), Ontario
(Canada), Portland, Auburn and the State of Minnesota (USA).
More recently and more directly
related to Participative Budget proper, new experiences are appearing. In
Paraguay, for instance, the cities of Asuncion (since 1995) and Villa Elisa
(1997) have adopted the practice of Public Hearings on Budget, with support and
consultation by American bodies concerned with corruption in the public sector.
On January 20, 1999, French journalists visited Porto Alegre to produce texts
and videos on the city’s experience to be broadcast in Europe, thus enlarging
international awareness on a practice which received a UN prize in 1996.
It should
be noted that reading the description and analysis of international experiences
offers a large spectrum of viewpoints as compared to Brazilian (and maybe Latin
American) practices. In developed countries, with rich societies comprised of
citizens more used to democracy, with governments made up of professional
bureaucracies, this innovation is basically liberal-oriented, the purpose being
a better allocation of resources to avoid squandering and corruption. In
Brazil, a poor country, with a high concentration of income, just having broken
out of a military dictatorship and with development problems, the central topic
to defend new ways of managing public resources is the importance of
de-privatizing the State and restate the practices of public power, introducing
democracy and transparency in a relation which has been historically populist
and paternalistic.
1
The 1988 Federal Constitution, Article 29, runs as follows: “Article 29:
Municipalities are governed by organic law, voted in two rounds, with a minimum
interval of ten days between each voting, and approved by two thirds of the
members of the City Council, which shall enact it, complying with the
principles established in this Constitution and in the Constitution of the respective
State and with the following precepts: (…) X. Cooperation of representative
associations in municipal planning;”
2 Some
cities which went through the PT experience were: Piracicaba, SP, Porto Alegre
RS (see UTZIG & GUIMARAES, 1996;
NASSIF, 1994;
FEDOZZI, 1994;
MOURA & PEREIRA, 1990;
GENRO & SOUZA, 1997),
Santo André SP (see BAVA, 1990),
Diadema SP (see BAVA, 1990),
Jaboticabal SP (see RIBEIRO & SIMON, no date),
Santos SP (see RIBEIRO & SIMON, no date),
São Bernardo SP, São Paulo SP, Ipatinga MG, Betim MG (see PREFEITURA MUNICIPAL DE BETIM 1996;
AZEVEDO, 1994).
Porto Alegre was noticed most, not only due to the richness of the process
itself, but also due to its duration (it lasted more than one administration)
and due to the fact that the city is the capital of an expressive State in the
Federation. The São Paulo experience was not quite as successful, maybe due to
the complexity of a region which is a megalopolis.
3 It is customary to name as
experimentss in this stage: Piracicaba SP (see PESSOA,
1988), Lajes SC (see ALVES,
1980), Campinas SP (see PESSOA,
1988), Vila Velha ES (see BOSSOIS,
I.L., 1987), Boa Esperanca ES, Rio Branco AC (see RESTON
& ROCHA, 1985), Toledo PR, Prudente de Morais and Juiz de Fora MG,
Pelotas RS.
4
Which was even recognized by opposing parties.
5
Headline in Folha de São Paulo, in an interview by Patricia de Andrade, March
1999.
6 Idem
3. Participative budget:
Perfecting the collective choice
The government’s budgetary
practice is at the same time an instrument to increase efficiency/efficacy in
the use of public resources and a way to assure control on public income and
expenditure by the Legislative Power. A technique which is quite widespread at
present to manage public finances is the Program Budget. This is a way to
organize previsions and controls of budgetary execution capable of connecting
government plans to the resources which are necessary to implement those plans.
The passage from a traditional Budget (which allowed for accounting controls
only) to a Program Budget meant a victory of public powers towards the
technical improvement of the budgetary process. In its turn, the democratic
Budget (which allows for the Legislative Power’s greater participation)
represented a political improvement: planning now takes into account the hopes,
assessments and visions of a larger group of agents (members of the city
council, representatives, also those elected).
The Participative Budget means
still another step in the direction of political improvement. Not only
legislators participate in the decisions on public finance and policies: the
organized population, the civil society assumes an active role, becomes an
agent, not a mere patient. A radical democratization process occurs. In this
passage, democracy is seen not only as a means to achieve a better allocation
of resources, but also as an end in itself. In a scenario where the fight for
scarce public resources is fought, the citizens exercise their right and their
duty to participate in the definition of the direction of governmental action.
This continuous co-management practice results in the government slowly
abandoning the temptation to always enforce its own point of view, and in the
population acquiring a global vision of the scarcity of resources and the huge
number of demands submitted before a government. A new idea on the way of
governing begins to compete with the traditional vision of a government which
is legal only by vote and the use of sound techniques.
The Participative Budget does not
mean the desertion of methodologies typical of the Program or Democratic
Budgets. The Participative Budget is only incompatible with the traditional
Budget. In order to adopt a Participative Budget, it is necessary to use the
techniques inherent to the Program Budget, so that the ends together with the
means may build up feasible plans, which may serve as a basis for decisions and
assessments. There is no reason to abandon the contribution offered by the
Democratic Budget either, to allow greater participation of the Legislative
Power on the decisions involving a definition of sources and use of resources.
Representatives in the Legislative Power and the community and organized
sectors must interact in the process.
It is in this sense that hopefully
the Participative Budget may be an ingredient to improve the commonly held
vision of government intervention. A great part of imperfections in the
decision-making process which leads to the collective choice, already
mentioned, can be
reduced with the organized people's participation in this process.
4. Promising aspects of
the participative budget
There are many aspects of the
Participative Budget which can turn its methodology into a factor of change,
able to improve the process of collective choice and, maybe, the theory of
public choice. The most expressive aspects are commented upon below.
4.1 Participative Budget and Local
Power
The reasons why the leftists defend the people’s
participation have a predominantly political background, while the
neo-liberals’ reasons are mainly of economic nature. When the left proposes
that the civil society may exercise greater control on the State, it is
concerned with democracy, with the separation of powers (therefore with
politics). In the strategy of the leftist majority segment which abandoned the
thesis of taking over power by force and adopted the institutional via, out of
respect for the representative democracy, a confrontation takes place daily for
the hegemony of ideas occurring at the same time in social movements,
institutions and State bodies. The agents in this struggle, on the leftist
side, should develop actions in strict contact with social movements, with a
view to transform popular hopes into claims backed by a strong movement in the
streets and the formal spaces of power. The confrontation, both of ideas and of
methods which characterize the various groups in conflict, would generate an
atmosphere of healthy politicization of those agents, the mass being the
largest beneficiary, both of the resulting politicization (which lends it
better weapons) and of immediate benefits obtained with public money. It is not
difficult to perceive where the Participative Budget proposal fits within that
strategy. It is a unique opportunity to bring the contradictions of a class
society into the neuralgic centers of capitalist State, even when this has to
be done by means of the least empowered unit of federalist regimes: the
municipality.
The idea that the left attempts to
turn hegemonic through this proposal for civil society’s intervention is that
of a State which favors the majority, of a distributionist State, at the
expense of a State clearly biased towards the immediate interests sustained by
businessmen, real estate speculators, oligarchies, etc. Thus, the Participative
Budget is defined as a tool for “deprivatization of the public sector”, a much
respected idea with great appeal in a country where, like Brazil, “the
politician’s public life is mixed up with his private life”, as the saying
goes.
In a text which became quite
popular among party militants, DANIEL (1991),
one of PT’s ideologists, reveals the above mentioned strategy. In accordance
with DANIEL:
a proposal of action for democratic and popular administrations which will not
become exhausted in itself must point to a new model of society, allowing to
view the contours of a transforming strategy: a socialism which, denying at the
same time a capitalist option –the Brazilian status quo, the neo-liberalism or
social-democracy—and the statism of “real socialism” may assert the path for
the construction of a radically democratic society –where democracy can assume
a strategic value, a means and an end to be achieved. (…) In this dispute –which
as it is established presupposes a breakdown with economic power—the
fundamental issue is to assume the fight against the values which sustain the
conservative hegemony at local level, denying those values by asserting the
terms of a new political culture. (p. 5-6)
The space of local power appears
as the most appropriate to gradually set up this type of strategy. Therefore,
the municipal budget drawn up with the people’s participation is an instrument
adopted with great emphasis by the so-called popular administrations: it puts
under discussion the city’s financial resources, which are always insufficient
to face all demands. Doing this, not only the exercise of local power becomes
an asset of a larger conglomerate of individuals and groups, but it also becomes
more important to enlarge it (thus reducing the weight of state and federal
power on decisions affecting the local level).
The reasons why local power
enjoys, in many areas of action and intervention, higher qualities than those
inherent to the power at higher levels of government are many and duly
identified in extensive historical, sociological and even economic literature.
4.2 Participative Budget and
Citizenship
The rescue of citizenship, as a value in itself, and
the use of the condition of citizen, as an instrument to transform the
relations between State and society, are banners which are raised at present by
various social and political sectors throughout Latin America. Nations just
breaking away from military dictatorships, which established terror, squashed
any type of opposition and seeded myopic nationalisms (making use of, among
other means, educational systems which adulterated history and politics, and
conniving media) have become, with the recent democratization processes, the
scenery of a political fight which has on one side opposition leaderships
constructed in the struggle against dictatorship, and on the other side,
governing agents favorable to a slow, gradual opening, observed at a distance
by large dispossessed and discontented masses, pushed into cities and
vulnerable to the action of caudillos and all kind of opportunists. Is it
possible to think in terms of citizenship in such a context? In the best of
cases, citizenship must be rescued, reestablished. In the worst, it should be
built from scratch, since in its very beginning it was forcefully buried. The
polis should be constructed at the same time as its operators are built: nor
the citizens’ mind nor the institutions which lend life to citizenship are
ready. The manner to answer this challenge is to just do it, to learn by doing.
Participative Budget is an opportunity to practice, since it allows the
individual to rescue an idea that he is a subject, that he is dignified enough
to be respected by the public power, that he is part of a social whole governed
by rules and not by higher individual or group wills, that public space also
belongs to him, that there are no enlightened beings who are able to bestow
better days onto him, that his destiny is partially in his own hands and
partially in a “collective being’s” hands whose will cannot be entirely left to
interests which are alien to his. Participative Budget is, therefore, an
opportunity to become aware of the soaring wings of citizenship, and to
exorcise a populism which has injured and is injuring citizenship so badly.
4.3 Participative Budget and
Corruption
Corruption pervading the inner structure of public
bodies is an evil which seems to grow larger every day, everywhere. A Latin
American minister falls, a Japanese Prime Minister must apologize to the
Nation, Italy is shaken by the “clean hands” operation which carries with it a
great number of high ranking public officers. In Brazil, it is of recent and
sad memory the Collor/PC Farias affair, and new cases crop up every day (Mafia
of Regional Administrations in São Paulo, corruption at the Regional Labor
Courts). These are examples of large, big-sized corruption. Underneath, far
less visible, maybe of lesser financial dimension, but certainly as damaging as
the former, lies small corruption: food for school lunches deviated, invoicing
of medical services not rendered, bribes for the granting of official
documents, deviation of resources, collection of “tolls”, creation of
difficulties to sell facilities, etc. It is said that the lack of surveillance
and impunity are the factors which allow for such a large proliferation of
illegal procedures. But probably it is not as simple as that. Every corrupt
officer comes with a corrupter. In other words, corruption is part of a whole
with a strong cultural component. The search for taking advantage of everything
(“Gerson’s law”) is a fact of reality, which strongly pervades the relationship
of a great number of Brazilian citizens with public power: to become a public
officer is (still) an object of desire for many, since it means little work,
easy money and stability in employment; elective positions became a manner of
getting advantages from the management or vicinity of power; to be a mayor’s or
a member of the city council’s friend or relative usually favors the
achievement of certain claims … Public space is seen, finally, as nobody’s
land, awaiting to be taken, a plunder by the smarter. There is no notion of the
value of a public side of life, turned to the guarantee of equality of rights,
of public peace, of contracts, of the offer of public goods and the promotion
of the collective well-being.
Participative Budget is a space, a
moment, a channel, a political-institutional manner which offers one (certainly
not the only or sufficient) opportunity to reverse this damaging culture. A
debate on revenue (how much it should amount to and who must pay it) and on
expenditure (who should be benefited and by how much) in a scenery plagued with
scarcity and division of power, gives rise with time to a perception of the
limits and potentialities of the city government to promote the common
well-being. At the same time it is clear that the scarcity can get worse for
the majority if a privileged minority close to the traditional power is left to
decide the destination of resources, in less than transparent manners, without
any concern for the people’s surveillance, completely free to act as they
choose.
In a scenario such as the one
existing in the core of the Brazilian public bureaucracy, even the most
incorruptible of governments is unable to secure that its administration will
be immune to the attacks and fits of Gerson’s battalion. The people’s
surveillance, the request for transparency, the permanent rendering of
accounts, the dialogue between interested agents: these are the ingredients
which Participative Budget can contribute and which are better allies in the
fight against corruption than any group of auditors, any “city manager”, any
well-meaning mayor, any guardian of morality.
4.4 Participative Budget and
Planning
The Program Budget is (or at least it should be) a
short-term planning instrument which, coupled with other longer-term planning
instruments, such as the Master Plan, the Pluri-annual Plan, the Government
Plan, etc. helps to place the Municipality in the route of sustained
development and social welfare (as far as it is possible, in a wider context of
regional economy and politics, at state and national level). Planning, so much
talked about and so little practiced, is not a guarantee of economic success
and social peace, but the absence thereof almost certainly means loss of
opportunities, greater risks, higher costs and more uncertainties, with
psychological and psychosocial anxieties associated thereto.
In order that serious and
congruent planning practices may be actually carried out, it is necessary that
those benefited by this practice exert pressure to achieve this goal. As it is
evident that governmental decisions are taken through a series of filters
(including the interests of politicians, technicians, public officers pressure
groups and the population at large), it becomes clear that agents which are
organized in defense of their interests and of the adoption of the means they
consider more efficient to achieve them will have an advantage. From the point
of view of the population at large, Participative Budget is an extremely
adequate means to enforce their wills in municipal planning. Besides, it is
also:
-
a pressure instrument for the implementation of long-term planning
- the entrance gate to participative planning at municipal level (and this is
important, because planning itself is not enough; it is better when it is
participative).
4.5 Participative Budget and
“Reinventing Government”
Since the middle to the end of the seventies,
developed countries began to face serious difficulties to sustain the model,
until then dominant, of expenditure with social policies. There began the
outset of the welfare state. In a situation where the fiscal crisis was added to
a growing unemployment, the initial answer at the practical level was to cut
off social policies, under the banner of neoliberalism1,
which reached its peak with Reagan’s administrations in the States and
Thatcher’s in England. In the theoretical field, the answer was given through
an avalanche of questioning to the interventionist theory of Keynesian origin,
practiced by the majority of countries since the post WWII period.
The entire decade of the 80’s was
marked by intense debate on the government’s role on economy, with clear
advantage for anti-interventionist theories, favored not only by the welfare
state crisis, but also by the collapse of socialist experiences and by the
strengthening of supply side economics or Reaganomics. Once the euphoria of the
apparent “end of history” (Francis Fukuyama) was over, in the 90’s there
reappears the discussion of the role of government in economy and society, now
under the impact of not-so-positive assessments in respect of the performance
of the American and English social policy reduction experiences. It is in this
context that a discussion on reinventing government appears, with a well
systematized meaning in the “world best seller” Reinventing Government, by David Osborne & Ted Gaebler,
American authors who simply compiled in a sole volume a series of concepts on
what public opinion considers good government in a good society, but did so
summing up this vision correctly.
According to them, the reinvented
government is ready to provide answers to a world undergoing quick
transformation2,
quickly turned into an experimentation bench as regards the act of governing.
Rules became imprecise over the last 20 years; a crisis of paradigms in the art
of governing was established. This crisis traces its origins to the rapid
obsolescence of traditional, bureaucratic governments, as a consequence of the
rapid development of new technologies which are permitting, all over the world
and in all activities, an unusual increase in productivity, changing the
business world and institutions in general, as well as the very way that
institutions act.
The reinvented government is, to
sum up, that which changes its manner of working, doing away with faults which
made it inefficient (the inefficiency being focused on its means and not on its
ends). It is the entrepreneur, innovative government, a maximizer of
productivity and efficiency, a creator of opportunities, setting boundaries to
risks, promoting competition (internal and external). It is the government
which uses the following principles in an integrated manner, in all its working
areas:
- reduces the efforts placed on
service rendering activities (in general it turns to outsourcing or
non-traditional management techniques) and focuses on regulatory and catalytic
activities;
-
it faces problems jointly with the community, and not by the creation of
professional assistance structures;
- it introduces competition in service rendering, fighting monopolistic
practices in all areas, including public bodies;
- it operates in search of its missions, and is not limited to obey rigid
standards and rules;
- it assesses the results of policies, awarding prizes to results instead of
providing resources randomly;
- it is oriented to the client’s needs, and not to the bureaucracy’s;
- it undertakes, in many cases turning expenditure sources into income sources
and thus escaping the traditional dilemma presented by fiscal crisis: to
increase taxing or not to do so;
- it plans and acts in order to avoid or to be prepared to control the appearance
of problems, thus taking preventive and not remedial actions;
- it decentralizes, does not operate with rigid hierarchies, and encourages
participation and the setting up of teams;
- it practices regulation by structuring the market, instead of adopting
programs which suspend the market.
In such a government, the
usefulness of Participative Budget is evident: it helps increase pressure
through efficiency, forcing transparency into administrative acts (and reducing
the risk of resource deviation), imposing a logic to governing officers,
placing public officers under stricter controls, forcing a planning which is
more oriented to the population’s immediate interests, etc.
The participating citizen appears
in this view as a public sector client, aware of the destination of resources
which the public treasure gets from its own pockets, in the same way as he is
conscious of expenses on goods which are offered by companies, through the
market mechanism. The government, supposedly, is not only pressed to spend
better (applying better judgment) but also its size, reduced by pressures
imposed by market efficiency (which better carries out many of the activities
which the non-inspected government still carries out) and by collaboration of
community and non-governmental entities in the fight against social evils. The
client’s reasons, here, have nothing to do with questions of power, but with
the various aspects of allocation efficiency, the optimum reference of which is
the exchange system practiced through the market, with prices mainly regulated
by supply and demand.
4.6 Participative Budget and New
Municipal Power
Combining the reasons of those who believe in
“reinventing the government” and the fundamentals of defenders of local power
enlargement, and taking into account the history of federalism in Brazil (which
even today poses the need for political articulations and social movements in
defense of autonomy and greater scope of municipal power) and the history of
Brazilian public administration (still in a professionalization stage at
federal level, and quite poor at all other levels in most cases), it is
possible to consider the Participative Budget proposal as an extremely
promising occurrence, since it is a methodology to handle one of the most important
questions in any government (the financial management), with strong potential
to:
-
relay the benefits of the people’s pressure and surveillance to the government
in order to encourage an improvement in rationality and democratization of the
government machinery;
- strengthen, as from the local power, the eternal hope for the construction of
a fairer and more efficient federalism, able to improve the public sector
performance all over the country;
- raise the quality of public management through innovation in the working
methods adopted by government teams and by public officers.
In this perspective, Participative
Budget appears as a central element (both as a means and as an end in itself)
for a renewed municipal power, of the kind the country needs at this time: not
an occasion municipal power, pushed by leaders who see it as a mere tool for
their projects and which is not made part of populist projects which are
restricted to co-opt popular leaderships to achieve their ends. It should be a
municipal power oriented to the building of a local power which is politically
democratic and micro-economically efficient, where these characteristics are
closely related, producing a potential for local administrations with political
will and technical proficiency to promote social and economic development.
1
Defined here as “… a body of coherent, self-conscious, militant doctrine
purposely decided to transform the world into its own image, in its structural
ambition and its international scope.” (ANDERSON,
Perry. Balanco do neoliberalismo. In: SADER, E. & GENTILI, P. (org.).
Pós-neoliberalismo – As políticas sociais e o Estado democrático. Rio de
Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1996, p. 22).
2 Osborne & Gaebler
state (1993):
“We live in an era of rapid change; in a global market which imposes enormous
competitive pressure on our economic institutions. We live in an information
society, in which people have access to information almost as rapidly as their
leaders. We live in an economy based on knowledge, where well educated workers
resist orders and call for autonomy. We live in an era of market niches, with
consumers who are accustomed to high quality and plenty of offer.” (p. 16)
“Our parents stood in line for hours to obtain the license plates for their car
and did not complain. Today, we would become furious if we had to queue in a
similar line. Our parents accepted public schools as something given, not
subject to change. Today, we organize committees, demand new curricula, obtain
resources and even volunteer to give lessons at experimental educational units.
And if all that is not enough, we send our children to private schools.” (p.
183)
“In an era when changes occur with frightening velocity, blindness as regards
the future is a mortal failure.” (p. 242)
“In the contemporaneous global village, events in Kuwait or in Japan can
suddenly turn our world upside down.” (p. 243)
“Fifty years ago, centralized institutions were a must. Information
technologies were primitive, communications between localities were difficult,
and available workmanship was not very educated. There was no alternative but
to put together all health professionals at the same hospital, all public officers
in the same organization… There was plenty of time for information to slowly go
up through all the hierarchical chain and, then, go down through the same steps
under the form of decisions.” (p. 274)
5. Participative budget
basic methodological elements
In order that it may be classified
as something with actual potentiality to improve public management and to,
eventually, contribute to the enhancement of the public budgetary decision
theory, Participative Budget should have its own characteristics, which are
able to distinguish it from other techniques.
5.1 Methodological Assumptions
The drafting of a budget with the people’s
participation can be based on the most diverse methodologies. There is not a
fixed model that can fit all realities. Besides, the same municipality can
adopt different methodologies over the years, in accordance with the experience
acquired and changing local needs. Before commencing this practice, it is
always necessary to make a diagnosis of reality. Some assumptions (which are
summarized below) must serve as a reference for the selection of participation
structures and mechanisms.
5.1.1
Geography and Occupation Pattern
The city’s geography and the pattern in which areas
are occupied greatly affect the manner in which citizens become involved in the
process and the decision-making mechanism to be observed. In a municipality
with an extensive rural area and a small urban core, with predominantly rural
population, the discussions must be held in the people’s housing and working
centers. With a predominantly urban population, the city can be divided into
areas by demographic density and choose common reference centers for
discussions. A metropolis has its own features, and maybe for such situations
the best solution would be to draft regional budgets and then combine them. On
the other hand, a city which is made up of a small urban center and a rural
area with scarce population can hold discussions in the city hall, thus
simplifying procedures and saving meetings.
5.1.2
Nature of the Main Problems
The volume, nature and scope of problems may favor or
impair the people’s involvement. When housing is the main problem to be solved
by the city hall, the way is paved for mobilization: all applicants for a house
will appear at any call for registration, discussion, application, etc. If the
problem is waste disposal, for instance, except for the areas affected by the
traditional waste dumps, the others will remain quite indifferent. The same
applies to rural highways: the people residing in the areas to be benefited
become organized, but all the rest do not get involved.
There
are also situations in which the solution for a problem means the creation of
another, which sometimes affects a different group. In these cases, the debates
and confrontations end up by producing a mobilizing visibility. For instance,
slum removal and the concurrent erection of projects to shelter the affected
families. Quite frequently, this transfer means prohibitive distances between
dwelling and working areas, and the removed people resist the change even when
better housing conditions are offered to them. Another example: the building of
special areas for street vendors, which enhances infrastructure and frees
public spaces, but generally makes commercializing conditions more difficult.
5.1.3
Political and Economic History
The predominant economic activity exerts great
influence on the people’s daily lives, partially determining their social and
political behavior. An industrial metropolis is a union-mobilized pole; a small
farming town generates working relations with such a proximity between employer
and employee that a union is seen as a foreign entity. The interaction between
economic and political activity generates specific historical conditions which
result in different “culture fluids” for the adoption of participative
mechanisms of public management. The degree of political awareness and the
involvement will in extra-family activities vary as political practices
develop. Some Brazilian cities which were the object of progressive political
projects in recent years have a more politicized population than others, and
have the comparative advantage to begin with public resources co-management
practices. Others, victimized by years on end of populism and co-opting, have
serious difficulties achieving the same practices. Others still, being “bedroom
cities”, have a population which does not have roots and leads a “double life”.
5.1.4
Purpose, Political Will and Preparation of Government
The aim of people’s involvement set by a government
(or accepted by a government, in case the process is forced by the population,
as it sometimes happens) usually has enormous influence on the manner and
results. If the purpose is the mere attempt to co-opt leaderships to strengthen
the Executive Power vis-a-vis an opposing Legislative Power, the accepted
procedures and results will have certain features; but they will have others if
the purpose is to build up a new type of relations between the municipality and
the population, in order to break the power circle which characterizes mainly
the governments of small and medium-sized cities.
Besides
this aim, the government’s political will exerts great influence. There are
governments which place the people’s participation at the center of their
planning and operating manner, making it pervade all activities. Other
governments spend relatively little energy on that, and see popular
participation as an additional task, in dispute with others for energy.
Purpose
and political will are useless, or of little help, if the preparation of
government to enforce its aims is non-existent. Even the best-meaning and
fighting progressive government will not go far in terms of people’s
participation if it is incapable of adequate and timely implementation.
Although it may not seem so to many, to promote the people’s participation with
positive results is not an amateur task. Lack of preparation may even be the
cause of frustration which destroys opportunities, which well-implemented would
mean spectacular quality leaps.
5.1.5
Available Material Resources
In a small local government, of a small city with low
population density, very little additional resources are required to change the
decision-making process as regards public revenue and expenditure. In
medium-sized and larger cities, however, changing the budget drafting procedure
in order to consider the citizens’ opinions requires a considerable volume of
resources, allocated to personnel hiring, disclosure of information through the
media, acquisition of printed and computing material, etc. Thus, the volume of
available resources is a strong conditioning factor in the process and its
results.
5.1.6
Present Situation
The general economic, social and political situation
presents favorable moments mixed with others which are unfavorable to the
people’s mobilization. The same happens with internal variables in the local
situation. At the beginning of Brazilian political opening period (end of the
seventies to mid-eighties) even small towns dominated by “coroneles” made
attempts into social involvement; at the beginning of the nineties, a
predominantly neo-liberal decade, marked by little economic growth, unsuspected
large progressive cities with plenty of unionist activity were the scene of a political
freezing stage. Not to mention the case of small towns with scarce employment
opportunities.
The list of conditioning factors,
of aspects to be taken into account as assumptions for the successful
fulfillment of pre-established purposes in the participative experience in a
city’s public resources management would have little value if it were not clear
what it is possible to learn from the above mentioned elements, i.e., that each
city should build its own manner of participation, respecting the features of
its own reality. This does not mean to disregard the opportunity to partially
take advantage of successful experiences implemented by other cities. In those
cases where there are methodologies which were applied in a place under similar
conditions as those existing in another, it is not necessary to reinvent the
whole process.
5.2 Guiding Methodological
Principles
Whatever methodology is chosen for implementation, the
participative process should observe some basic principles, if the purpose to be
achieved is related to the enhancement of the quality of democracy which is
practiced by local governments. The most important principles are summarized
below.
5.2.1
Principle of the Pedagogic Nature of the Process
The established culture, as regards to the public
administration, is the citizens’ “natural” absence in the decision-making
process, given their lack of preparation and the scarce time available for
public activities. The Participative Budget should fight against this notion,
making evident the fundamentally political (and not technical) nature of the
decisions that are made on the levying and allocation of public money. It is
common knowledge that this change in political culture cannot be made
overnight. Thus, the methodology to be adopted should consider the need for a
gradual continuous learning and abandon any hope of full success after the very
first experience.
5.2.2
Principle of Autonomy of Social Movements
The aim of this principle is to avoid that movements
may be co-opted and passively integrated to the government’s will. Once the
rules for the drafting of the budget bill are clearly established, by common
consent between the government and the movements, the latter should carry out
their activities with absolute autonomy: meetings, assemblies and discussion
groups should be coordinated and directed by their own popular leaders; the
place and time for debates should be agreed upon between the groups and their
coordinators, who should also take into account the community’s mobilization
(disclosure, contact, etc.) The government can and must help by offering
leaders’ training courses, offering information, granting subsidies for the
production of information material, etc. It should never take the initiative or
adopt any behavior which may imply a direction of discussions and/or
initiatives.
5.2.3
Principle of Co-Management
The purpose of this principle is to avoid the
appearance of false expectations as regards the limits of the people’s
participation in decision-making processes, within the institutional framework
of representative democracy. At present, it is not possible to speak of
self-management. Popular assemblies and meetings cannot have deliberative power
in its strict sense. Neither civil society nor the public machinery are
prepared or open to such a radical change. But a democratic government can,
obviously, submit itself to the game of popular pressure, accepting as
deliberative those decisions made by organized groups under certain rules,
which do not collide directly with the legal system. Thus, as long as civil
society gets organized and moving, and the government learns to handle that
organization and mobilization, the progress of co-management will take place,
enlarging the degree and quality of democracy as actually practiced. But the
path will always run between two extremes: authoritative and centralized
government (which decides everything by itself) and self-management (the
population deciding by themselves). Which extreme the government is closest to
will depend on the success of the participative process, which will certainly
take steps forward and backward from time to time.
5.2.4
Principle of the Substitution of Claims by Priorities
The purpose of this principle is to politicize
movements, in the sense of becoming aware that public resources are extremely
scarce and should be expended on the basis of priority criteria defined in
political struggle. The groups taking part in debates should not only enumerate
the items they claim for their neighborhood and their city, but also be able to
choose among all those claims the ones which must have a priority.
A
claim is defined as a simple request (put forward with or without the use of
force). A priority is a claim that stands out from a group of claims, being
considered as more important and/or urgent. A priority may or may not coincide
with a claim. For instance, a government may consider paving the streets in a
neighborhood a priority, which was claimed by the population. In that case,
there is a priority which, at the same time is a claim.
5.2.5
Principle of Organization and Mobilization as a Method for Resource Dispute
It should remain clear during the whole process that
communities that become organized and mobilized in defense of their interests
have a better chance of attaining their goals, partly because the organization
of those purposes itself will clarify those purposes and because mobilization
tends to exert more pressure on the public power and therefore have a greater
effect.
5.2.6
Principle of Transparency and Limits of Decision
It is impossible for a city’s inhabitants to debate
the whole budget from scratch. In a first stage, the people may be asked to
participate in the definition of investment plans. Later, they can go further
and handle other kinds of expenses. Later still, they can analyze past year’s
expenditure, in order to discover whether spending can be reduced without
damaging offered goods and services. And so on and so forth. It is fundamental
to note clearly the steps that are being taken, without concealing or
distorting the information. And obviously without going back after new steps
are taken: if in a given year the investment and other kinds of expenditure
were discussed, there is no political logic in accepting only a discussion on investment
plans in the following year, save for clear justification and wide popular
acceptance.
It is
vital that these principles be explained and democratically agreed upon, so
that the intent and the “spirit” of actions and decisions stands out clearly,
creating an atmosphere of reciprocal trust between government and the people,
which is an essential ingredient at critical moments, generated by
misunderstandings and divergences brought about by the newness of this
procedure.
6. Conclusion
There are still a lot of stumbling
blocks to be overcome before the Participative Budget can become a universal
methodology for allocation and distribution in municipal governments. Only time
and experience will bring about a definitive answer to this possibility, as
well as on its extension to higher levels of government. The continuous
experiments will depend on political agents’ ability to disseminate the idea,
and to gain hegemony vis-a-vis other techniques and visions on collective
choice. The transformation of this experience into elements for a new theory on
the governmental decision-making process on revenue and expenditure will depend
on the diligence of those who are in charge of reflecting upon the issue. From
well-conducted and successful experiences and reflections, a group of elements
may appear and grow for an innovative viewpoint on the role of government
intervention in a democratic context, which will go beyond the framework of a
representative democracy.
In the
specific case of Brazil, if the Participative Budget could contribute to the
conception and birth of a new municipal power, rethought and renewed, of the
kind previously mentioned, it will have made a great contribution to the
deepening of democracy and the reduction of the serious social problems which
plague the country.
Bibliography
(Apresentado oralmente no Congresso da ASIP de 2000, em Madrid, Espanha e publicado em espanhol na Revista Internacional de Presupuesto Público n. 42, mai-jun 2000)