Participative budgetary practices: a case study of three municipalities in the state of São Paulo

Abstract

Budget preparation through citizen participation is a novelty in Brazil. This article analyses three cities that first attempted to implement citizen participation in Brazil namely São Paulo, Santos and Jaboticabal. Those cities differ as to several parameters such as population, revenue, per capita income and 50 on, which makes the implementation process specific for each one. Sections 2 and 3 characterize the cities and their way of implementing citizen participation in budget preparation. Nevertheless, the lack of concern with effectiveness of the measures taken and with the creation of institutional ways of involving citizens in budget preparation makes evaluation of the experiences problematic. In section 4 criteria to evaluate citizen participation are developed. A discussion on how to use these criteria in Brazilian cities follows. Section 5 presents the experience of a few American cities, the state of Minne50ta (USA) and Yokohama (Japan). These experiences are quite different from what is currently being done in Brazil and offer new options of citizen participation. The conclusion points out the needs for institutionalizing the process of citizen participation and assessing it in a formal and periodic manner, as means of making the process more effective.