Integrating policy instruments in a Federal System: From Participatory Budgeting to a Participatory Policy System at State Level

Multi-level governments, such as Federal systems, offer a unique opportunity for politicians and bureaucrats to learn from policy experiments at local level, learning from its success and failures, as policy laboratories for state and federal level policies (Volden, 2016). Nonetheless, transposing a local policy to another government level is not so easy, and not always possible. It requires re-considering several key policy elements, from its the spatial dimension, to the stakeholders involved. In this article, we examine two attempts, one failed and one successful, to transpose a participatory local policy to the State level. Rio Grande do Sul State (RS), in the extreme South of Brazil, has been on the vanguard of the democratic innovation for citizen engagement in public policies since 1989, when the Worker’s Party (PT) launched a program called Participatory Budgeting (PB) in the city of Porto Alegre. It soon became the Party’s showcase policy. In 1999, PT took State Office for the first time. There was an attempt to implement PB at the State level, which had been, until then, exclusively a local level policy. Its implementation faced harsh resistance from opposition parties, who tried all sorts of political actions, until finally judicially interrupting it. Mayors and State Assembly members argued that the Program overlapped their competencies to define the State Budget. This crisis eventually led to PT’s defeat in the following elections. Only a decade after, the Workers’ Party were able to win back the State office. It had as challenge to implement the party participatory program, overcoming the past failures of its administrations. For that, the proposal of a “State System of Popular and Citizen Participation” was thought as an innovative governance arrangement of participatory instruments, elaborated after an intense debate among politicians, academics, civil society and bureaucrats of the RS State Government and the Federal Government. It was lauched in 2012 and had a good reception both by the citizens and by the opposition parties, who held no public contestation for the system institution. For its innovative design and performance, it received an UN Public Service award in 2013. In this paper, through interviews and document analysis, I trace back the process of this multi-level governance system design. I argue that such system was successfully implemented for bringing together four key elements: the historical party program; the State institutional heritage; technological innovation, through online citizen participation; and, finally, an empowered coordination body, directly linked to Budgetary decisions and the Governors’ Cabinet.

Carla de Paiva Bezerra /Universidade de São Paulo