Popular participation and investments policies in the participative budget of Araraquara and Porto Alegre

Abstract

The purpose of the present article is to investigate local experiences of investments policies elaboration by popular participation. We have as empirical object the Participative Budget project (OP) developed in the city of Araraquara (SP), compared to the pioneer experience developed in the city of Porto Alegre (RS). Our aim is to verify how much the adoption of Participative Budget and the changing in the elaboration process and execution of the investment policy made possible a qualitative change in the features of the public investments made by local governments. Yet if those experiences made a higher social control of public expenses possible by the civil society representatives. The present study qualifies as experiences of Participative Budget based on the following elements: a) the increase of participants throughout the development of the project; b) the dimension of civil society intervention over the definition of the investments and c) accomplishment of investment plans defined at the OP.