Nylen 2002 Empowerment Thesis

Testing the Empowerment Thesis: The Participatory Budget in Belo Horizonte and Betim,BrazilAuthor(s): William R. NylenSource: Comparative Politics, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Jan., 2002), pp. 127-145Published by: Ph.D. Program in Political Science of the City University of New YorkStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4146934Accessed: 29/08/2010 17:50

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Testing the Empowerment Thesis

The Participatory Budget in Belo Horizonte and Betim, Brazil

William R. Nylen

Numerous political theorists and practitioners suggest participatory or deliberative

democracy as a remedy to the ills of contemporary representative democracy: declining voter turnouts, increasing distrust in democratic politicians and processes, and declining levels of participation in organized civil society.1 They argue that these

problems diminish when citizens become directly involved in public policymaking processes, especially at the local or grass-roots level where such processes seem more relevant to people's day-to-day lives. Empowerment is said to occur as initial involvement in one arena of democracy spills over into further participation in other arenas.2

Can institutional innovations designed to increase citizen participation in public policymaking generate increased participation in organized civil society and/or in democratic party politics? Can participatory institutional reform revitalize representative democracy by empowering the disengaged?

The empowerment thesis can be tested in two case studies of local participatory policymaking in Brazil: the participatory budget (orCamento participativo, OP) in Belo Horizonte and Betim, Minas Gerais. The OP is a participatory process of bud-

getary planning promoted by Brazil's largest Leftist party, the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT), in the cities and states it governs. Citizens are

encouraged to attend neighborhood meetings to propose, discuss, and vote on bud-

getary priorities in the areas of public works and social services and to elect dele-

gates to subsequent municipal forums where the sum of neighborhood priorities is debated and put to a final vote. The results are incorporated into the administration's

budget proposal and submitted to the city council. An elected council of OP dele-

gates follows subsequent deliberations, as well as the implementation of approved OP projects. An analysis of surveys of 1,998 OP delegates in Belo Horizonte and Betim suggest that the OP, and by implication comparable participatory reforms, may be more efficacious in sustaining and developing existing nonelite political activism than in empowering disengaged or alienated citizens.

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Comparative Politics January 2002

The Problem: Civic Disengagement

According to Putnam's description of contemporary civic disengagement in the United States, Americans vote less, trust their government less, and are less involved in community affairs and community-affirming organized group activities than in the past.3 The U.S. shares these traits with many more countries: Canada, Germany, Switzerland, the emerging democracies in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe, and many of the reemerging democracies of Latin America, especially Venezuela (since 1973), Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Brazil.4

Brazil is a representative case. Its index of voter alienation (the sum of absten- tions and blank and invalid votes) rose from 17.6 percent of eligible voters in 1989 to 33.39 percent in 1994 and 40.19 percent in 1998.5 While voting is mandatory in Brazil, 49 percent of respondents in a 1998 poll said they would not vote if they had the choice. In the same year 75 percent of respondents could not remember for whom they had voted in the previous congressional elections less than four years earlier.6 In another poll from 1998 respondents were asked which institutions contributed most and least to the good of the country; congressmen and senators scored last, far behind bankers, businessmen, and even the armed forces.7 In a 1999 poll of voting age residents of the state of Sdo Paulo, 60 percent of respondents said they did not trust the national congress; another 36 percent said they trusted it only a little; 43 percent said they could not trust the president; and another 49 percent said they trusted him only a little.8 Meanwhile, union membership and participation in the grass-roots organizations and social movements that had played a significant part in democratization processes in the mid to late 1970s and early 1980s declined in the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, civic disengagement in Brazil is reinforced by common practices of vote buying, and much of the participation of political campaigns is bought and paid for by the candidates or parties themselves.

Civic disengagement is a problem because, in Jelin's words, "representative democracies quickly stop being democracies when they do not concern themselves from the outset with creating institutions through which citizen participation and control can function."9 Formal democratic institutions, such as political parties and elections, may foster supposedly stability-enhancing intraelite bargaining.10 But when they coexist with widespread nonelite insecurity and disillusionment, they are in fact weak and unstable. In Latin America they are particularly vulnerable to political and economic elites' historically instrumental commitment to democracy, to volatile international economic dynamics, and to the contemporary "social polariza- tion" generated by neoliberal economics, growing poverty, and increasingly violent crime."I To the extent that certain groups (for example, the poor and ethnic minorities) are overrepresented among the insecure and disengaged, then democracy becomes correspondingly unrepresentative and undemocratic. Thus, Dominguez and Kinney Giraldo spoke of a "crisis of representation" among Latin America's democ-

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William R. Nylen

ratic regimes in the 1990s due in no small part to "the inattention to the troubles of the unempowered" and "the failure to improve the quality of democratic governance."12

The crisis of representation in Latin America and elsewhere can be seen in the rise of virulent and sometimes violent neopopulist politicians (for example, Pat Buchanan, Jean Marie Le Pen, Alberto Fujimori, and Hugo Chavez), "uncivil movements," and other militant antidemocratic organizations.13 They often invoke a benevolent dictatorial savior of the people to clean up dirty democratic politics, similar to arguments historically associated with military interventions and totalitarian regimes. Such appeals are often accompanied by a crusade to exclude or eradicate impure scapegoats, such as foreigners, ethnic minorities, and economic elites. In their desire to avoid politics, the disengaged provide space for neopopulists to gain a foothold in the political arena.

Some analysts reject the problematic nature of civic disengagement. They argue that it actually represents contentment with the status quo or that it is functional to effective governance.14 Such arguments apply an overly static legal-procedural defini- tion of democracy that emphasizes electoral rules and institutions and the competition of elites for elected office within those rules and institutions.15 This understanding of democracy, however, destroys the true core of its meaning as a dynamic process of continuous political activism on behalf of greater freedom and equity for nonelite individuals and groups vis-a-vis the state and the already incorporated. In Dryzek's words, "a democratic polity that ceases its search for further democratization is likely to witness the gradual entrenchment of 'new classes' of various sorts that profit from their stable occupancy of key points in the system, and an impoverishment of political life through its focus on relatively mundane issues of public administration."16 Indeed, nonelite political activism could be seen as a necessary check against inevitable ten- dencies towards exclusionary elitism in representative democracies.

Democratic reformists throughout the world have shown that they can not accept the antidemocratic and citizen-demobilizing implications of neoliberalism, neopop- ulism, and academic apologists of civic disengagement. Like neopopulists, they attribute civic disengagement to exploitative and demobilizing traditional power structures, well characterized in the Brazilian case by Hagopian as "closed circles of power holders that dominate a range of state institutions and political processes, and that concentrate political as well as economic power within a limited number of fam- ilies."l7 Unlike neopopulists, however, they conclude that democratic politics, no matter how flawed in practice, allow for the possibility of exposing these power structures to the electorate and of implementing policies aimed at diminishing elites' power and privileges in favor of the poor and politically excluded majority. At the core of such policies are participatory institutional innovations such as the OP in Brazil. In Latin America, comparable cases can be found elsewhere in Brazil and in Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, and Colombia.18

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The Participatory Democratic Prescription

Alexis de Tocqueville's well-known arguments for political decentralization and democratic civic consciousness raising through local participation have traditionally appealed to liberal and neoliberal thinkers unhappy with big government.19 Today, however, New Left and communitarian thinkers echo his basic insight: citizens feel most connected with the political system in local secondary institutions, and this sense of connectedness can combat civic disengagement.20 Unlike most of their liberal and neoliberal counterparts, however, new Tocquevillians recognize that political and administrative decentralization is insufficient in itself to foster solidarity and empowerment among disengaged citizens. In such contexts as rural Latin America and much of the developing world, decentralization can lead to demobilizing forms of local tyranny by local elites and their political machines.21 It is especially problematic in the political cultures of subservience inculcated among Latin America's poor by five centuries of patrimonial dominance.22 Decentralization can also generate an insidious form of modern local tyranny: an exclusionary technocracy of bureaucrats and neoliberal politicians unified under such banners as "total quality" and "best practices."

Some new Tocquevillians argue that nongovernmental organizations, social movements, and citizens' lobbies-what Habermas called "public spheres" and Avritzer calls "participatory publics"-can bring about empowering institutional restructuring from the bottom up by consolidating community identities and interests, by raising the social and political consciousness of their members by making the connection between those identities and interests and the larger social and political system, and by exercising this consciousness vis-a-vis elected officials through grass-roots activism.23 Others argue that leadership from political parties and even sympathetic government leaders (that is, from the top down) is essential if grass- roots-based consciousness raising and activism are to move beyond their typically issue-specific origins.24 In this latter argument (essentially that of the PT in Brazil and most of the New Left in Latin America), representative democracy is essential because only through political parties and elections can people committed to such ideals come together, gain public office, and attempt to implement an empowering participatory model of democracy.25 Rather than attempt to replace representative democracy or to ignore its contemporary failings, the PT's participatory democratic model proposes a gradualistic democratization of democracy through decentralization and the expansion of opportunities for meaningful citizen participation.

All versions of the participatory democratic model, however, assume that participation empowers nonelites, that it strengthens civil society. But while citizens may be led to the waters of political consciousness and activism by way of participatory democratic practices, will they drink?

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Brazilian Democratization, the Workers' Party, and the Orqamento Participativo

The Workers' Party was founded in 1982 towards the end of the twenty-one year bureaucratic-authoritarian regime that had come to power in 1964 in a coup against the populist Left government of Joao Goulart. In the mid 1970s the military initiated a gradual liberalization/democratization in the context of economic problems, gradual withdrawal of elite support, and dissension within its ranks. In 1988 a popularly elected congress promulgated a new constitution. Direct elections for president were held in 1989. Vibrant popular organizing and activism contributed greatly to these events and ultimately to the formation and growth of the PT.26 But while Brazil's democratic regime was consolidated in legal-procedural terms by the end of the 1990s, it continued to have problematic elements, including a weakly institutional- ized party system, fragmented social structures and institutions, and the continued dominance of clientelistic and paternalistic political elites.27

The PT emerged from these events as the largest opposition party in Brazil and the largest party of the Left in Latin America.28 Early on, party leaders embraced participatory democracy, first, as a mobilizational strategy to attain and hold on to

power and, later, for its potential in building democratic citizenship and changing Brazil's clientelistic political culture.29 Municipal and state PT administrations created issue-specific participatory popular councils so that citizens could meet in famil- iar local settings (for example, neighborhood meeting halls and school buildings), express opinions on issues they deemed important, and channel their opinions into the formal decision-making processes.30

Arguing in 1989 that nothing was more important to Brazil's average citizens than infrastructural development and neighborhood improvement projects, the PT-administered city of Porto Alegre in Rio Grande do Sul created a popular council called the

participatory budget.31 Tavares describes the way Porto Alegre's OP functioned in its first years.

Popular assemblies in 16 city zones bring together 10,000 people and 600 grassroots organizations to debate and vote on municipal expenditure priorities [sent by the administration to the city council for approval and revisions]. From a general budget of approximately $465 million, about 31% is divided up in an open, public process involving large numbers of people and interests. As a result of this process, the city's residents decided the city should concentrate its resources on legalizing land titles, providing water and sewage to poor communities..., transportation, and environmental

clean-up.32

The success of Porto Alegre's OP in terms of growing levels of citizen participation, reelection of the PT in Porto Alegre in 1992 and 1996, and ascension of the PT to the state governorship of Rio Grande do Sul in 1998 generated great interest within the party. Porto Alegre's PT seemed to have discovered a means of balancing ideo-

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logical concerns for promoting empowerment with pragmatic demands that voters perceive government programs to be in their vital interests. While other experiments with the OP were not always so successful, it became a cornerstone policy in virtual- ly every PT-run city and state by the early 1990s.

The PT is the only party in Brazil that has systematically embraced the participatory democratic model. Porto Alegre's model has been extensively researched and discussed within the party.33 While differing in the details, most if not all PT-administered cities and states, including Betim and Belo Horizonte, have followed the general guidelines of Porto Alegre's model.34

Testing the Empowerment Thesis

The thesis that local popular participation empowers traditionally excluded sectors of the population and thereby democratizes representative democracy can be tested using data from a survey distributed to OP delegates in Belo Horizonte and Betim, Minas Gerais, during their 1998 OP proceedings. The analysis is based on the

responses of 54.77 percent of Belo Horizonte's OP delegates (1,068 of 1,950) and 44.85 percent of Betim's (222 of 495).35

Basic characteristics of the respondents-sex, level of education, and employment-illustrate the OP's popular composition. Women constituted 44.2 percent of Belo Horizonte's and 39.6 percent of Betim's delegates; 69 percent of Belo Horizonte's and 81.1 percent of Betim's delegates had less than a high school education; salaried workers, housewives, the retired, and the unemployed constituted 59.9 percent of Belo Horizonte's and 64 percent of Betim's delegates.36

In a country where 75 percent of the population lives in cities, Belo Horizonte and Betim represent two common types: a large capital and a medium size interior city. Both are located in Minas Gerais, Brazil's second most populous state, with a geographic area (588,384 square kilometers) slightly smaller than Alaska.37 Belo Horizonte is Brazil's third largest city, with close to three million residents. Only thirty kilometers away, Betim is a medium size city of 300,000; it mushroomed from its small town origins when industry began to locate there in the early 1970s.38 Both cities were notable in the 1980s and 1990s for their relatively vibrant economies (first and second in the state measured by tax revenues), but also for their alarming social problems rooted since the 1950s in a sustained rapid influx of poor rural

immigrants and a series of income-concentrating economic development models initiated by the federal government.

Traditional patron-client relations have long dominated politics in Minas Gerais.39 Belo Horizonte and Betim are, therefore, excellent challenging examples of the effects of participatory reforms within antidemocratic institutions and cul-

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William R. Nylen

tures. They are perhaps better than the much heralded example of Porto Alegre because of the latter's mix of positivist, European immigrant, and Left-populist tradi- tions.40

Belo Horizonte was governed by the PT from 1992 until 1996, when it disagreed with its own mayor's choice for successor, Vice Mayor C6lio de Castro of the Brazilian Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Brasileiro). Castro won the election, but the PT retained important posts in his government, including the Secretaria de Planejamento, the agency responsible for the OP. In 1998 Belo Horizonte carried out its sixth Orgamento Participativo. Administration officials claimed that 160,667 citizens had participated in the first five OPs, though this figure no doubt counts those who participated in more than one OP meeting more than once.41 In 1996 $36.5 million, 7 percent of Belo Horizonte's budget, was decided under the OP process.

By 1998 Betim had been governed by the PT for seven years and was also under- taking its sixth OP process. Official figures indicate that 36,000 Betinense participated in the first three OP processes, although, again, multiple counting was likely.42 In 1996 the OP's portion of Betim's budget was $23.26 million, or 15.15 percent of the total.43

To operationalize the concept of delegates' empowerment as stimulated by participation in the OP process, delegates indicated their participation in civil society and political society both at the time of the survey (September 1998) and prior to their election as OP delegates. While causation can not be proven, a significant increase in participation indicates a correlation between participants' experience as OP delegates and subsequent or concomitant spillover participation in other social and political organizations (that is, empowerment). This correlation at least suggests a causal relationship between OP involvement and empowerment. Similarly, a significant decline in the number of delegates not participating in organized civil society and/or a decline in those declaring no interest in party politics suggest a movement from political passivity to activism.44

Table 1 illustrates the participation of Belo Horizonte's and Betim's delegates in civil society.45 Many Belo Horizonte delegates participated, both prior to their OP experience and at the time of the survey, in neighborhood organizations (52.2 and 64.5 percent), in religious groups (40 and 40.1 percent), and to a more limited degree in philanthropic and charity organizations (12.4 and 13.8 percent). Among Belo Horizonte delegates 19.7 percent prior to their OP involvement and 12.2 percent at the time of the survey indicated no participation in organized civil society. The direction of change in Belo Horizonte delegates' levels of participation in civil society fits the hypothesis in almost all categories, with the exception of labor union activities. The hypothesis was confirmed by significant increases in other participatory municipal councils in the areas of health, education, and culture (25.3 percent) and in neighborhood associations (23.6 percent) and by a decrease in the "none" category (37.9 percent).46

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Table 1 Civil Society Participation

BELO Neighborhood Labor Religious Cultural Philanthropic Municipal Other None HORIZONTE Organizations Unions OrganizationEntities & Charity Councils

Pre-OP 504 (52.17%) 98 (10.14%) 386 (39.96%) j97(10.04%) 120 (12.42%) 95(9.83%) 101(10.46%) 190 (19.67%) Time of Survey 623 (64.49%) 8418.70%.) 387(40,06%) 103 (10.66%) 133 (13 77%) 119(12,32%) 108(6.93%) 118 (12.22%) % Change 23.6%

-14.3% 0.3% 6.2% 10.8% 25.3% 6 9% -37.9%

n = 966 (% = of total)

BETIM Neighborhood Labor Religious Cultural Philanthropic Municipal Other None

Organizations Unions Organizations Entities & Charity Councils

Pre-OP 90(48.39%) 28 (15.05%) 75 (40.32%) 20 (10.75%) 19 (10.22%) 14 (7.53%) 19(10.22%) 35 (18,82%) Time of Survey 113 (60.75%) 15 (8.06%) 72(38.71%) 23 (12.37%) 21 (11.29%) 32 (17.20%) 19(10.22%) 17 (9.14%) % Change 25.6% -46.4% -4.0% 15.0% 10.5% 128.6% .0.0% .-51.4% n = 186 (% = of total)

The data for Betim also show that a large percentage of delegates participated, both prior to their OP experience and at the time of the survey, in neighborhood organizations (48.4 and 60.8 percent) and in religious groups (40.3 and 38.7 percent). Smaller but still significant rates of participation are shown in philanthropic/charitable organizations (10.2 and 11.3 percent) and in municipal councils (7.5 and 17.2 percent). Indices of "none" among Betim's delegates (18.8 and 9.1 percent) are slightly lower compared with Belo Horizonte. As in Belo Horizonte, the direction of change in levels of participation in Betim fits the hypothesis in most, but not all, categories. Most notable are significant increases in neighborhood associations (25.6 percent) and in municipal councils (128.6 percent). Similarly, delegates claiming no participation in civil society organizations fell 51.4 percent. A significant drop in union participation (46.4 percent) likely reflects a nationwide decline in union membership in the 1980s and 1990s resulting from economic crises and adjustment problems that plagued Brazil from the late 1970s.47

The data in Table 1, however, basically support the hypothesized spillover between OP participation and greater participation in organized civil society. Most of this spillover occurred in neighborhood organizations and other local, government-sponsored, participatory processes.

The majority of delegates in both cases were already active in civil society before becoming OP delegates (80.3 percent Belo Horizonte and 81.2 percent in Betim). Relatively few delegates were disengaged from civil society prior to their involvement in the OP. These data challenge claims made by proponents of the OP and the empowerment thesis that participatory processes like the OP address the problems of civic disengagement. Indeed, it would appear that the OP to a great extent preaches to the choir, to the already empowered, and fosters comparatively little new empowerment.

This hypothesis-challenging conclusion is bolstered by the fact that the majority of delegates who were inactive in civil society prior to their involvement in the OP were first-time participants in the OP: 82.3 percent in Belo Horizonte and 73.3 per-

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cent in Betim. Only 17.7 percent in Belo Horizonte and 26.7 percent in Betim became veterans by participating for two or more years. If it is assumed that longer participation in the OP resulted in more exposure to democratic political learning, disproportionately fewer pre-OP nonactivist delegates exposed themselves to longer- term political learning. Those most in need of empowerment were the least likely to pursue it.

In spite of the relatively small number of delegates who were inactive in civil society prior to their involvement in the OP, and despite their tendency not to remain active in the OP beyond the first year, might not their involvement in the OP still

generate higher levels of participation in at least some arenas of organized civil soci-

ety, as seen in the general population? Did empowerment, defined as a spillover from the OP into civil society activism, in this case, first-time activism, increase? Table 2 reformulates the data from Table 1 by controlling for previous civil society activism. The results do not strengthen the empowerment thesis. First, many delegates inactive in civil society before they participated in the OP remained inactive: 53.7 percent in Belo Horizonte and 40 percent in Betim. There are only two significant increases in participation: sixty-two Belo Horizonte delegates (32.6 percent of those previously inactive in civil society) and fifteen Betim delegates (42.9 percent) became active in neighborhood organizations upon joining the OP, and fourteen Belo Horizonte delegates (7.4 percent) and three Betim delegates (8.6 percent) became active in religious organizations.

The data show that the lion's share of the spillover effect from OP participation to participation in organized civil society took place among individuals previously active in civil society. This same group is also the most likely to continue to partici-

Table 2 Civil Society Participation by pre-OP Civil Society Activism

BELIO Neighborhood Organiations Labor Unions Religi ous Organizations Cultural Entities HORIZONTE Active inactive Active Inactive Active Inactive Active inacutive P e-OP 5(64. 9) 98(1.2.6%) 0 386(49.7%) 0 97(12.5%) 0 Time of Survey 561(72.3%) 62 (326%) 83 (10.7%) 1 (05%) 373 (48.1%) 114(7.4%) 101 (13.0%) 2 (1.1%)

Philanthirop ' & Charity MuniciE Councils Other1 None Active Inactive Active I hactive AVye Iactive Active Inactive

Pre-OP 120 (15.5%) 95(1 2%) 111

(13.) 0 0 190 (10%) Time of Survey 131 (16.9%) 12(11 18 (15.2% (5%)

1(t0 3 001 2. 9%) 84.22 ) 11 l(2.1%) 102(53.7%)

N = 966 (% is of Active or lXactive)

BETIM NeighborhoA Organizaions Labor Unions tus anatis Culral Entities

Pre-OP 90(59. 6%) 128(18 .5.) 0 (75(49 7%) 0 20(13.2%) 0 Time of Survey 8t(64 9%) 15 (429. 5 14 (939 11(2 95) 6(45,7%)1 3(8g.6) 23(15.2%)

Philant c & Chalit Muiipal Counc'is Other None _______jActv nci Ate Itv Acty ivAye I Ae i ti ve Inactinve

Pre-OP 19(12 6%) 0 114 (9,3) 10 t19(12,6%) 10 35 (tOO%) Time ofSurvey 119 (12. 6%) 2 (57%) 3019 9) , 7(5 .7 17 (11, 3 ';,1,) 7) I 2. .) %14 401. 0%)

n = 18 (% is Aof ,Anive or inwfve)

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pate in the OP beyond the first year. Roughly half of the delegates who were inactive in civil society prior to their involvement in the OP remained inactive in civil society despite their OP activism. The data generally do not show much empowerment of previously disengaged citizens, although this conclusion is qualified by significant increases in their participation in neighborhood associations. The implications of these findings will be discussed following analysis of the data on participation in political society (party politics).

Is participation in the OP associated with an increase in delegates' participation in political society?48 Table 3 presents the data for both Belo Horizonte and Betim. Belo Horizonte delegates both prior to the OP and at the time of the survey showed relatively low party membership (18.9 and 23.5 percent), party militancy (9.2 and 10.2 percent), and candidate militancy (5.9 and 8.6 percent) and only moderate party sympathy (25.8 and 27.9 percent). Disinterested voting was relatively high (38.8 and 34.5 percent), and there were even a few isolated cases of disinterested nonvoting (3.8 and 2.9 percent).49 Despite these data, the direction of change in all categories indicates support for the empowerment thesis. Increases of 24 percent in party membership, 11 percent in party militancy, 44.7 percent in candidate militancy, 8.3 percent in party sympathy, and 15.1 percent in interested nonpartisanship all indicate increases in political participation or, in the latter two, increased political consciousness in the arena of political society. These results are reflected in the 11.1 percent decrease in disinterested voting and the 23.3 percent decrease in disinterested nonvoting among Belo Horizonte delegates.

Betim's delegates indicate a higher degree of activism and greater increases in participation/consciousness in political society. Membership in political parties increased 36.2 percent, from 28.8 percent before the OP to 39.3 percent at the time of the survey. Party militancy increased 52 percent, from 15.3 to 23.3 percent. Candidate militancy increased 26.7 percent, from 9.2 to 11.7 percent. Sympathy for one or another political party and interested nonpartisanship were steady. These results are reflected in the 36.1 percent decline in disinterested voters (22.1 to 14.1

Table 3 Political Party Participation

BELO Member Party Candidate Party Interested Disinterested HORIZONTE Militant Militant Sympathizer Non-Partisan Voter Non-Voter

Pre-OP 1150(18.9% 73(9.2%) 47(5.9%1) 204(25.8%) 119(15%) 307(38.8%) 30(3.8%) Time of Survey 186 (23.5% 81 (10.2%) 68(8.6%) 221 (27.9%) 137 (17.3%) 273(34.5%) 23 (2.9%) % Change 24.0m 11.0% 44.7%d 8.3% = 15.1% -11.1% -23.3% n = 792 (% = of total)

BETIM Member Party Candidate Party Interested Disinterested Disinterested Militant Militant Sympathizer Non-Partisan Voter Non-Voter

Pre-OP 47 (28.8%) 25 (15.3%) 15 (9.2%) 78 (47,9%)

18 (11%) 36 (22.1%) 0 Time of Survey (393%) 38 (23.3%) 19 (11.7%) 78 (479%) 18 (11%) 23 (14.1%) 0 % Change 36.2% 52.0% 26.7% 0.0% 0.0% -36.1% 0.0% n = 163 (% = of total)

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percent) and in the complete lack of delegates who claimed to be disinterested in party politics to the point of never voting.

Given attitudes in the general population, it is not surprising that a majority of delegates in both cases were disengaged from party politics. Nonetheless, for a significant minority in both cities the data support the hypothesized relationship of the empowerment thesis between OP participation and greater participation in political society.

Once again, however, are these observations the result, not of OP-induced political learning and empowerment, but rather of prior political activism, in this case in the arena of party politics? Slightly more than half of the delegates in Belo Horizonte (57.4 percent) and an overwhelming 77.9 percent of Betim's delegates were active in political society prior to their OP experience.50 As with the data on civil society, the prevalence of previously active participants challenges the claim of the empowerment thesis that participatory processes like the OP address the problems of civic disengagement. In Betim few delegates were disengaged from political society prior to becoming involved in the OP. In Belo Horizonte, however, 337 delegates were previously inactive in political society. Does Belo Horizonte provide a more suitable test for the empowerment thesis? Did its delegates become empowered with their OP participation?

The association between veteran delegates and previous activism that was found with respect to civil society activism also pertains to political society. The majority of delegates who were inactive in political society prior to their involvement in the OP (71.9 percent in Belo Horizonte and 79.4 percent in Betim) were first-time participants in the OP. Only 28.1 percent in Belo Horizonte and 20.6 percent in Betim were veteran participants. Pre-OP political society activists were not only more likely than nonactivists to take advantage of the opportunity to participate in the OP, but they were also more likely to participate beyond the first year. As in civil society participation, those most in need of empowerment, the politically disengaged, were the least likely to pursue it in government-sponsored participatory processes like the OP.

In spite of their relatively smaller numbers, and despite their tendency not to remain active in the OP beyond the first year, might not the OP involvement of delegates previously inactive in political society still generate higher levels of participation in political society (as observed for the general population)? Was there still empowerment for this group? Table 4 reformulates the data from Table 3 by controlling for previous political society activism. In Belo Horizonte 72.4 percent of delegates previously inactive in political society still considered themselves disinterested voters at the time of the survey, while 5.9% placed themselves in the disinterested nonvoter category. In Betim, 58.3 percent called themselves disinterested voters (there were no disinterested nonvoters). In the mild activism category of party sympathy were 11.3 percent of Belo Horizonte's and 38.9 percent of Betim's delegates,

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and 9.2 percent of Belo Horizonte's delegates came to identify themselves as interested nonpartisans. In general, however, Table 4 supports the results seen for civil society: the lion's share of the hypothesized spillover effect from participation in the OP to participation in organized political society came primarily from individuals who were previously active in political society. This same group was also the most likely to continue to participate in the OP beyond the first year. At the same time, between 60 and 80 percent of the delegates who were inactive in political society prior to their involvement in the OP remained inactive in political society despite their OP activism. They were also the most likely not to participate in the OP beyond one year. Once again, the data do not show much empowerment of previously disengaged citizens.

Assessing the Evidence

The empowerment thesis implies that new arenas of popular participation such as the

Orgamento Participativo can engage historically excluded sectors of the population, thereby encouraging greater participation and pluralism in other arenas of democratic politics. Evidence that the OP in Belo Horizonte and Betim tended not to engage previously disengaged citizens clearly challenges this thesis. Instead, most OP delegates were already engaged civil and/or political society activists. These same pre- OP activists also accounted for a disproportionate share of the spillover effects of new participation in civil and political society, and they tended to participate longer

Table 4 Political Society Participation by Pre-OP Political Society Activism

BELO Member Party Militant Candidate Militant Party Sympathizer HORIZONTE Active Inactive Active Inactive Active ctive active Pre-OP 150(33%) 0 73 (16%) 0 ] 47 (10.3%) 0 192 (42.2% 12 (316%) Time of Survey7175 (38.5% 11(3.3%) 79(17.4%) 12(0.6%) 56(12.3%) 12 (3.6%) 183 (40.2% 38 (11.3%)

Interested Non-Partisan Disinterested Voter Disinterested Non-Voter Active Inactive Active Inactive Active Inactive

Pre-OP 119 (26.2% 0 0 307 (91.1%)j 0 30(8.9%) Time of Survey 106(23.3% 31 (9.2%) P29 (6.4%) 244 (72.4%) 3(0.7%) 20(5.9%)

n = 792 (% = of Active or Inactive delegates)

BETIM Member Party Militant Candidate Militant Part Sympatbizer Active Inactiiv e Inactive lActive Inactive Active iactive

Pre-OP 47 (37%) 0 [25(19.7%) 15(1i.8%) 73(57.5%) (13.9%) Time of Survey 63 (49.6%) 1 (2.8%) 37 (29.1%) 1 (2.8%) 117 (13.4%) 12(5.6%) 64 (50.4% 4 (38.9%)j

Interested Non-Partisan Disinterested Voter Disinterested Non-Voter Active tive Active active Active Inactive Pre-OP 18(14.2%)0 36(100%)

Time of Survey 16 (12.6%) 2 (5,6%%) 21(58.3%)0 n = 163 (% = of Active or inactive delegates)

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in the OP, thereby gaining disproportionately from the democratic learning assumed to accrue to veteran participants.

Nevertheless, the OP and by implication similar experiments in participatory democracy have not been failures. First, sustaining popular political activism is itself an important challenge to countries undergoing democratic consolidation.51 The tendency of previously active delegates to become even more active during their OP experience, although it does not conform precisely to the prediction (and hope) of the empowerment thesis, should not be dismissed. The Brazilian women's movement can serve as an example.

The restoration of Brazilian democracy removed some of the motivation for unity among disparate wings of the women's movement and presented them with new challenges. As middle-class women activists became more involved with political parties in the new democratic order, they tended to lose their contacts with community groups representing the urban poor. Indeed, in many Latin American nations the restoration of democracy had the ironic effect of demobilizing women.52

In the context of diminishing space for grass-roots political activism in Brazil's new democracy, the OP provided an important space for sustaining nonelite grass-roots activism. It kept community activists from either moving up or being coopted into party politics and public administration or succumbing to political disillusionment and apathy. The OP constituted a meeting ground for popular sector activists from different geographical areas and causes and provided them an opportunity to build and maintain horizontal solidarities and networks and to learn how to compete and negotiate democratically for scarce public resources.

Second, the OP stimulated a revitalizing democratization of local nonelite community groups and organizations, thereby fostering the civic consciousness (or social capital) so central to recent analyses of democratic disengagement. Many community organizations in Brazil and Latin America are far from being popular, and many more are characterized by an actively clientelistic engagement in political machine politics that demobilizes and disempowers the membership.53 However, Gay's work on Rio de Janeiro favela organizations, Abers's work on the OP-induced renovation of neighborhood organizations in Porto Alegre, Somarriba's work on neighborhood organizations in Belo Horizonte in the 1980s, and the works of Cardoso and Hochstetler on Brazilian social movements in general emphasize that such results are not necessary.54 In Belo Horizonte one regional administrator described how the OP had stimulated democratic changes in many of his region's neighborhood associations.

The OP has changed the way neighborhood associations perceive their role....People participate in the OP to benefit the community and they work to get the neighborhood association to do the same. Many exist that are still of the traditional type. But many more have been renovated, with new active members and a new leadership.55

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In repeated visits to neighborhoods in Belo Horizonte and Betim that had actively participated in the OP, I observed such processes of renovation and contestation between mobilized OP delegates and long-time leaders of the more traditional neighborhood associations. Although previously inactive OP delegates in Belo Horizonte and Betim tended to remain inactive outside of their brief foray into participatory decision making in the OP, they were much less likely to remain inactive in neighborhood associations. In line with Abers's similar conclusion about Porto Alegre, well-designed institutional innovations providing meaningful opportunities for politically active nonelites to participate at the level of the neighborhoods in which they live can be effective in transforming former instruments of neighborhood clientelism and citizen demobilization into instruments of grass-roots participation and representation.56

Finally, OP delegates were overwhelmingly popular or nonelite and thus had the potential to enhance and pluralize democratic representation. Clearly, OP activism coincided with neighborhood representation; in being elected by their neighbors and in setting collective budgetary priorities and distributing collective resources, delegates' efficacious activism translated into efficacious representation. To the extent that their neighbors perceived delegates to be defending and promoting collective interests (made more likely by the open nature of OP deliberations), they may have come to feel better represented in the political process as a whole even if they did not desire to participate themselves.

Conclusion

Has the OP empowered? Does participation beget even more participation? The data on Belo Horizonte and Betim focus on the already disengaged and are mostly nega- tive. Nevertheless, the OP sustained and even developed democratic activism among nonelite activists and those who had been active in the past. It is just as important to make more effective use of existing supplies of a precious resource, such as nonelite democratic activism, as it is to find new supplies of the resource. Moreover, the essentially nonelite composition of the OP's participants contrasted with the normal- ly elite membership of the formal institutions of representative democracy.

Belo Horizonte and Betim clearly demonstrate that participatory institutional innovations like the OP can effect this qualified form of empowerment among nonelite activists and former activists. Theoretically, this qualified empowerment by means of (re)constructing secondary institutional, representative linkages to the state can be beneficial in the process of democratic development.57 Whether participatory institutional innovations like the OP will effect this qualified form of empowerment depends, above all, on the motivations of OP designers and administrators. Analysis of this point falls outside the purview of this article. However, it seems safe to say

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that, to the extent that participatory institutional innovations are designed and administered by government leaders and administrative personnel with a commitment to democracy and social justice, as opposed to clientelistic mobilization and rhetorical showcasing, then the qualified form of empowerment seen in Belo Horizonte and Betim shows how participatory democracy can resurrect the promise (and maybe even the appeal) of representative democracy.

NOTES

The author wishes to thank respondents and administrative personnel from Betim and Belo Horizonte, as well as members of the faculty, administration, and staff of the Escola de Governo of the Fundagdo Jodo Pinheiro in Belo Horizonte. I would also like to thank Anne Hallum, Phil Mauceri, Robert Gay, Donna Vann Cott, and two anonymous readers for Comparative Politics for comments on earlier drafts and to John Schorr for help in the statistical analysis.

1. For participatory and deliberative democracy, see Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic

Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Don Eberly, Building a Community of Citizens: Civil Society in the 21st Century (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994); Michael Kaufman and Haraldo Dilla Alfonso, eds., Community Power and Grassroots

Democracy: The Transformation of Social Life (London: Zed Books, 1997); Jon Elster, ed., Deliberative

Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Richard A. Couto, Making Democracy Work Better: Mediating Structures, Social Capital, and the Democratic Prospect (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Brian O'Connell, Civil Society: The Underpinnings ofAmerican Democracy (Medford: Tufts University Press, 1999); Barbara Cruikshank, The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); and Rebecca Abers, Inventing Local

Democracy: Grassroots Politics in Brazil (Bolder: Lynne Rienner, 2000). For the adoption of participatory practices within the international development community, see Matthias Stiefel and Marshall Wolfe, A Voice for the Excluded: Popular Participation in Development: Utopia or Necessity? (London: Zed Books, 1994); and Mike Douglass and John Friedmann, eds., Cities for Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil Society in a GlobalAge (New York: John Wiley, 1998). For the post-cold-war Left's adoption of participatory democracy, see Marcelo Cavarozzi, "The Left in Latin America: The Decline of Socialism and the Rise of Political Democracy," in Augusto Varas, Lars G. Schoultz, and Jonathyn Hartlyn, eds., The United States and Latin America in the 1990s: Beyond the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), pp. 101-27; and Jorge G. Castafieda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993).

2. The concept of empowerment as a process of democratic learning by doing with spillover effects into further democratic participation is similar to the concept of civil society "thickening." See Jonathan Fox, "How Does Civil Society Thicken? The Political Construction of Social Capital in Rural Mexico," World Development, 24 (1996), 1089-1103.

3. Robert D. Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Journal ofDemocracy, 6

(January 1995), 66-70. 4. Voter Turnout from 1945 to 1997: A Global Report on Political Participation (Stockholm:

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 1997). 5. Folha de Sdo Paulo, Sept. 13, 1998; also, Ler 1998, Sept. 10, 1998. 6. Estado de Minas, July 28, 1998; Andre Petry, "AtenQio Com Eles," Veja, 566 (September 30,

1998), 38.

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7. Ibid. 8. Folha de Sdo Paulo, Apr. 9, 1999. 9. Elizabeth Jelin, "Building Citizenship: A Balance between Solidarity and Responsibility," in

Joseph S. Tulchin and Bernice Romero, eds., The Consolidation of Democracy in Latin America (Boulder: Lynne Rienner/Woodrow Wilson Center, 1995), p. 87.

10. John Higley and Richard Gunther, eds., Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

11. See Douglas A. Chalmers, "The Politicized State in Latin America," in James M. Malloy, ed., Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), pp. 23-45; Frances Hagopian, "Traditional Power Structures and Democratic Governance in Latin America," in Jorge I. Dominguez and Abraham E Lowenthal, eds., Constructing Democratic Governance: Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1990s-Themes and Issues (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 64-86; Carlos M. Vilas, "Participation, Inequality, and the Whereabouts of

Democracy," in Douglas A. Chalmers, Carlos M. Vilas, Katherine Hite, Scott B. Martin, Kerianne Piester, and Monique Segarra, eds., The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America: Rethinking Participation and

Representation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 15-17, 20-26. 12. Jorge I. Dominguez and Jeanne Kinney Giraldo, "Conclusion: Parties, Institutions, and Market

Reforms in Constructing Democracies," in Dominguez and Lowenthal, eds., pp. 5, 18, and 21. 13. See Leigh A. Payne, Uncivil Movements: The Armed Right Wing and Democracy in Latin America

(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Aldo Panfichi, "The Authoritarian Alternative: 'Anti-Politics' in the Popular Sectors in Lima," in Chalmers, Vilas, Hite, Martin, Piester, and Segarra, eds., pp. 225-32.

14. On Brazil, see B61livar Lamounier, A Democracia Brasileira no Limiar do Siculo 21 (Sao Paulo: Fundadio Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung/Pesquisas No 5, 1996), pp. 34-35; Kurt Weyland, Democracy with- out Equity: Failures of Reform in Brazil (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996).

15. See Jelin, pp. 83-87; John Markoff, Waves of Democracy: Social Movements and Political Change (Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, 1996); and John S. Dryzek, Democracy in Capitalist Times: Ideals, Limits, and Struggles (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

16. Dryzek, p. 4. 17. Hagopian, p. 68; also, Amanda Sives, "Elite Behaviour and Corruption in the Consolidation of

Democracy in Brazil," Parliamentary Affairs, 46 (1993), 549-62; Eliza Reis and Ziro Cheibub, "Elites' Political Values and Democratic Consolidation in Brazil," in Eva Etzioni-Halevy, ed., Classes and Elites in Democracy and Democratization (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. 222-29.

18. See Abers; Margaret Hollis Peirce, "Bolivia's Popular Participation Law: A Case of Decentralized Decision Making," (Ph.D. diss., University of Miami, 1998), pp. 14-16. Peter Winn and Lilia Ferro- Clerico, "Can a Leftist Government Make a Difference? The Frente Amplio Administration of Montevideo, 1990-1994," in Chalmers, Vilas, Hite, Martin, Piester, and Segarra, eds., pp. 447-68.

19. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Garden City: Doubleday, 1969). 20. New Tocquevillians include Amitai Etzioni, ed., Rights and the Common Good: The

Communitarian Perspective (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995); Putnam; Couto; Cruikshank; and

Eberly. 21. See Alfred P. Montero, "Devolving Democracy? Political Decentralization and the New Brazilian

Federalism," in Peter R. Kingstone and Timothy J. Power, eds., Democratic Brazil: Actors, Institutions, and Processes (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), pp. 58-76.

22. See Tereza Sales, "Raizes da Desigualdade Social na Cultura Politica Brasileira," in Revista Brasileira das Ciencias Sociais, 25 (June 1994), 26-37. 23. Jiirgen Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of

Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989); Leonardo Avritzer, cited in Brian Wampler, "Participatory Publics and the Executive: Participatory Budgeting Programs in Recife and Porto Alegre,"

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paper prepared for the 2000 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Miami, March 16-18, 2000. Such arguments can be found in Albert Hirschman, "The Principle of Conservation and Mutation of Social Energy," in Sheldon Annis and Peter Hakim, eds., Direct to the Poor: Grassroots Development in Latin America (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1988), pp. 7-14; and Michael Walzer, "The Civil Society Argument," in Ronald Beiner, ed., Theorizing Citizenship (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), pp. 153-74.

24. Proponents include Hagopian; Dominguez and Kinney Giraldo; and Bryan R. Roberts, "A Dimensdo Social da Cidadania," Revista Brasileira das Cidncias Sociais, 33 (February 1997), 5-22. 25. See William R. Nylen, "Reconstructing the Workers' Party (PT): Lessons from North-Eastern

Brazil," in Chalmers, Vilas, Hite, Martin, Piester, and Segarra, eds., 421-46. 26. See Pedro Jacobi and fEdison Nunes, "Movimentos sociais urbanos na decada de 80: Mudanqas na

teoria e na pritica," Espago and Debates, 10 (1983), 61-77; Kathryn Hochstetler, "Democratizing Pressures from Below? Social Movements in the New Brazilian Democracy," in Kingstone and Power, eds., pp. 167-82.

27. See Kingstone and Power, eds. 28. The definitive work on the early years of the PT is Margaret Keck, The Workers' Party and

Democratization in Brazil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). 29. See Keck; Marta Harnecker, O Sonho Era Possivel: A hist6ria do Partido dos Trabalhadores nar-

rada por seus protagonistas (Havana: MEPLA/Casa America Livre, 1994); Ladislau Dowbor, "Decentralization and Governance," Latin American Perspectives, 25 (January 1998), 51-52; Rebecca Abers, "From Ideas to Practice: The Partido dos Trabalhadores and Participatory Governance in Brazil," Latin American Perspectives, 23 (1996), 35-53; and William R. Nylen, "The Making of a Loyal Opposition: The Workers' Party (PT) and the Consolidation of Democracy in Brazil," in Kingstone and Power, eds., pp. 126-43.

30. Maria Helena Moreira Alves, "Something Old, Something New: Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores," in Barry Carr and Steve Ellner, eds., The Latin American Left: From the Fall ofAllende to Perestroika (Boulder: Westview, 1993), pp. 225-42.

31. Vilas, p. 24, identifies public works spending as one of four "basic public institutions" through which the always tenuious social contract between the state and popular classes in Latin America has historically been expressed. The others are the school, the hospital, and employment. He argues that neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s inflicted heavy damage on these institutions.

32. Ricardo Tavares, "The PT Experience in Porto Alegre," NACLA Report on the Americas, 29 (July- August 1995), 29. For the Porto Alegre experience, see Abers; Tarso Genro and Ubiratan de Souza,

Orgamento Participativo: A experiencia de Porto Alegre, 2nd ed. (Sdo Paulo: Editora Fundaqio Perseu Abramo, 1997). A crucial contextual variable is the relative financial security and autonomy of Brazilian municipalities following the 1988 constitution (and preceding ongoing recentralizing reforms that began in 1997): 36 percent of total tax revenues went to the federal government, 42 percent to the states, and 21 percent to municipalities. Meanwhile, in 1991 63.44 percent of all taxes were collected by the federal government, 31.15 percent by the states, and 5.41 percent by municipalities. See Gil Shidlo, "Local Urban Elections in Democratic Brazil," in Henry A. Dietz and Gil Shidlo, eds., Urban Elections in Democratic Latin America (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1998), pp. 63-90; and Pedro Luiz Barros Silva, "A Natureza do Conflito Federativo no Brasil," in Eli Diniz and Sergio de Azevedo, eds., Reforma do Estado e Democracia no Brasil (Brasilia: Editora Universidade de Brasilia, 1997), p. 357; also, David Samuels, "Reinventing Local Government? Municipalities and Intergovernmental Relations in Democratic Brazil," in Kingstone and Power, eds., pp. 77-98. 33. See Jorge Bittar, ed., O Modo Petista de Governar (Sdo Paulo: Teoria and Debate, 1992); Ines

Magalhdes, Luiz Barreto, and Vicente Trevas, eds., Governo e Cidadania: Balango e Reflex5es Sobre o Modo Petista de Governar (Sdo Paulo: Fundagqo Perseu Abramo, 2000); Cidadania e Democracia-O que acontece nas cidades em que o PT Governo (Sdo Paulo: Fundaqgo Florestan Fernandes, 2000).

34. For a more detailed discussion of Betim's OP, see William R. Nylen, "Popular Participation in

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Brazil's Workers' Party: 'Democratizing Democracy' in Municipal Politics," Political Chronicle, Journal

of the Florida Political Science Association, 8 (1996), 1-9. 35. This sample of OP delegates was not randomly selected from a randomly selected sample of PT-

administered OP processes. Sampling errors such as self-selection and literacy (only partially offset by the use of paid assistants to help illiterate delegates fill out the questionnaire) must be taken into consider- ation. As with any exploratory analysis, results should be taken as suggestive. They do not necessarily reflect all participants in PT-administered OP processes.

36. While men constituted the majority in both cases, women are far more underrepresented in Brazil's formal political institutions. For example, only two of Betim's twenty city council members in 1997 (10 percent) were women; six of Belo Horizonte's thirty-seven council members in 1998 (16 percent) were women; five of the seventy-seven state deputies in the legislative assembly of Minas Gerais elected in 1998 (6 percent) were women.

37. CBMM/FJP, Perfil de Minas Gerais/Guide to the Economy of Minas Gerais (Cia. Brasileira de

Metalurgia e Mineraqdo/Fundagqo Jodo Pinheiro, 1998), p. 150. 38. Estado de Minas, Mar. 13, 1998; Diario da Tarde, Dec. 12, 1997. 39. See Frances Hagopian, Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1996). 40. See Joseph L. Love, "Federalismo y Regionalismo en Brasil, 1889-1937" in Marcello

Carmagnani, ed., Federalismos latinoamericanos: MVxico/Brasil/Argentina (Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico), pp. 196-98, 204-13; Aspisia Camargo, "La Federaci6n Sometida: Nacionalismo Desarrollista y Inestabilidad Democritica," in Carmagnani, eds., pp. 300-57. 41. Secretaria Municipal de Planejamento/PBH, "Numeros de ParticipaCdo nos OP 94, 95, 96, 97 e

98" (mimeo, 1987). 42. Projetos do PTpara o Habitat II (Sdo Paulo: Diret6rio Nacional do PT, 1996), p. 18. 43. For both Belo Horizonte and Betim these OP figures represented increases from previous years. In

1998 both Betim and Belo Horizonte began to incorporate more of their budgets within the 1999-2000 OP processes. 44. The lack of a before and after comparison is a problem with Merces Somarriba and Otavio Dulci,

"Primeiro Relat6rio de Atividades da Pesquisa 'Avalicaqdo da Experiencia de Implantagqo e Atuaqdo de Foruns de Participaqgo Popular na Administragqo Municipal de Belo Horizonte-Periodo 1993-1996"' (mimeo, July 1995). 45. I included only the responses of delegates who indicated both current and pre-OP civil society par-

ticipation. In Belo Horizonte valid responses numbered 966 of 1,086 respondents (89 percent). In Betim valid responses numbered 186 among 222 respondents (85 percent). 46. Significance is measured by a two-tailed comparison of means, with scores less than .05 deter-

mined to be practically significant. 47. The index of unionization throughout Brazil fell from 27.2 percent in 1989 to 16.2 percent by

1995. 48. If "no responses" are excluded from the data, the number of valid responses in this section is 792

delegates for Belo Horizonte and 163 delegates for Betim. The large percentage of delegates in both cases (25.8 percent of Belo Horizonte's respondents and 26.6 percent of Betim's) who either did not answer the

questions on political society activism or who answered only the pre-OP or time-of-survey portion or who

registered contradictory answers is likely to include more nonactivists than activists, thereby skewing these results to some extent.

49. Party militancy refers to active membership in a political party. Many Brazilians state that they vote for or arc active on behalf of individuals, not parties. Candidate militancy tries to capture this antiparty but not

antipolitical sentiment. Party sympathy is commonly used in Brazil to express a less committed measure of party identification. Disinterested voters are those claiming to have no interest in party politics but who still vote in elections. Disinterested nonvoters represent the extreme of disengagement from party politics.

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50. Inactive refers to delegates who indicated they were either disinterested voters or disinterested nonvoters. All others are regarded as active in political society, ranging from interested nonpartisan voters to party activists. A few disinterested voters indicated sympathy for a political party. Rather than score this response as a contradiction, I considered it a reasonable response.

51. See Philip Oxhorn, Organizing Civil Society: The Popular Sectors and the Struggle for Democracy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); also Kenneth M. Roberts, Deepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).

52. Howard Handelman, The Challenge of Third World Development, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000), p. 92. For critical analysis of Brazil, see Hochstetler. 53. Ibid., p. 175. 54. Robert Gay, Popular Organizations and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: A Tale of Two Favelas

(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994); Abers; Merces Somarriba, "Movimento Reivindicat6rio Urbano e Politica em Belo Horizonte: Balango de uma Decada," Textos: Sociologia e Antropologia, 43

(July-September 1993), 1-25; Ruth Cardoso, "Os Movimentos Populares no Contexto da Consolidagio Democritica," in Guillermo O'Donnell and Fabio W. Reis, eds., A Democracia no Brasil: Dilemas e

Perspectivas (Rio de Janeiro: VWrtice, 1988), pp. 368-82; and Hochstetler. 55. Interview with Adonis Pereira, Regional Administrator for the Northern Zone of Belo Horizonte,

November 11, 1998. 56. Abers. 57. In the words of one anonymous reader of an earlier draft of this article, "the central logic of the

participation/empowerment thesis is one about the quality of democracy that results, and so a summary argument that turns on the quality of the participation of some is at least as relevant as one that turns on the quantity of people mobilized and the number of ways they participate."

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