The rise, spread and decline of Brazil’s participatory budgeting: the arc of a democratic innovation

Abstract

Critical review of the book "The rise, spread and decline of Brazil's participatory budgeting: the arc of a democratic innovation", written by Brian Wampler and Benjamin Goldfrank and published by Springer Nature in January 2022. In the work, the authors outline a overview and history of participatory budgeting in Brazil, raising analyzes and interpretations of why the urban management instrument had a prestige peak and then an enormous decline over the more than 30 years of its existence in the country. Conclusively, the authors point to a moment when the PB reached a policy bubble, that is, when the slow degree of innovation and the little political capital resulting from its implementation led to a loss of prestige. Furthermore, changes in the Brazilian institutional framework and elements of the PB's own institutional design brought limitations on the State's ability to maintain the tool in most Brazilian cities. The present author considers that the book is of great value and contribution to urban geography and related studies, bringing relevant elements in the scientific and political fields, providing foundations for a broader discussion of PB as one of the many possible paths to spatial justice.