Who participates? Civil society and the new democratic politics in Sao Paulo, Brazil
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Date
2003-09Author
Houtzager, Peter P
Lavalle, Adrian Gurza
Acharya, Arnab
Type
Working PaperLanguage
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper explores the participation of collective civil society actors in institutional spaces for direct
citizen participation in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The data was produced by a unique survey of civil
society actors who work for, or with, sectors of the lower-middle class, the working class, and the urban
r
poor. The paper identifies factors that influence the propensity of civil society actors to participate in three
types of institutions: the participatory budget, the constitutionally mandated policy councils, and other
local participatory councils and programmes. Many political leaders, policy-makers and researchers believe
that such forms of direct citizen participation can help democratise and rationalise the state, as well as
provide politically marginalised populations with a say in policy. Whether these hopes materialise depends
in part on the answer(s) to a question the literatures on civil society, citizen participation and empowered
participation have not addressed - Who Participates? Contrary to the focus on autonomy in much of the work
on civil society, the statistical findings support the claim that collective actors with relations to institutional
actors, and the Workers' Party and State actors in particular, have the highest propensity to participate.
The findings also support the idea that the institutional design of participatory policy-making spaces has a
significant impact on who participates, and that this impact varies by type of civil society actor. Unlike
what has been found in research on individual citizen participation, there is no evidence that the "wealth"
of collective actors influences participation.
Publisher
University of Nairobi Institute of Development Studies
Description
IDS Working Paper 210