ABSTRACT

In the months preceding the 1968 Olympic Games, Mexico City was wracked by student-led mobilizations that protested the authoritarian, PRI-dominated national government, demanded greater economic equality and democratic civil liberties, and called for government accountability and transparency. Since its concretization in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989, participatory budgeting has traveled the world as a policy best practice ostensibly designed to give city residents greater autonomy over municipal budget allocations. For the Brazilian case in particular, one prominent perspective explains the emergence of participatory budgeting by highlighting how social movements mobilized for greater autonomy at the local level in a post-dictatorship political landscape. Although participatory budgeting was prominently discussed during these meetings, it was not the only policy prescription for which citizens regularly advocated. Fortunately, a growing body of scholarship is doing just this, putting policy analysts in dialogue with critical theories of the state and discourse analysis.