Transcript Diapositivo 1

CENTRO DE ESTUDOS SOCIAIS
Laboratório associado
"Participatory Budgeting as a standpoint to read new
dialogic styles of local governance: a series of
comparative analyses“
.
Giovanni Allegretti
www.ces.uc.pt
THE FRAMEWORK
The present world financial crisis raises
issues related to the distribution of
resources, especially in a country as
Portugal whose GINI index (42)
photographs a growing social inequality.
Innovative strategies are especially
needed in local administrative institutions,
affected by diminishing transfers and selffunding opportunities.
This challenge has been addressed
worldwide by participatory mechanisms
allowing citizens to share responsibilities
in decision making.
In the last 7 years, Participatory Budgeting (which
entrust citizens on prioritisation and decision over
public expenditures) has expanded faster than
other tools becoming worldwide a BUZZWORD…
Taking the form of an “ideoscape”
(Appadurai 1991), signifying a political
model which travels globally
but only exists
through local
appropriation, and
differentiation…
Since 2002, CES started to analyse this
phenomenon, through several
comparative researches.
•BETWEEN OLD AND NEW WORLD
•The first of them – directed by Prof. Boaventura de Sousa
Santos - was “Reinventing social emancipation”, which produced
the first Portuguese book on PB “Democratizar a democracia”
which became a landmark in the literature on participation, and
source of inspiration for the first experience in Portugal (Palmela,
2003)
COMPARING CITIES IN EUROPE
• Another was "Participatory
Budgets in an European
Comparative Approach” (20092009), funded by the Marc Bloch
Centre and the Boeckler Stiftung
(coordinated by Prof. Yves
Sintomer, while I coordinated the
Italian and Portuguese units)
At the same CES tried to contribute to
deepen and expand the experiments trough
providing TRAINING, CONSULTATICIES
and ACTION-RESEARCH
•The EQUAL-funded project
“Orçamento Participativo
Portugal” (cocoordinated
with the Ngo IN-LOCO from
Algarve) was a rewarded
example between 2008/2009,
which trained more than 50
Portuguese municipalities
and contributed to the
setting of PB in Lisbon, São
Brãs de Alportel, Odivelas
and Santa Leocadia (Viana).
www.op-portugal.org
But also produced the first national inquiry
on 22 Portuguese PBs, and a SOFTWARE
(INFO-OP) to help municipalities to conceive,
manage and monitor a PB.
Braga (PS)
Batalha (PSD)
Tomar (PSD)
Avis (CDU)
Castelo de Vide (PSD)
Lisboa (PS)
Marvão (PSD)
Carnide (Lisboa) (CDU)
Alvito (Independente)
Agualva (Sintra) (PSD)
Alcochete (CDU)
Castro Verde (CDU)
Aljustrel (CDU)
Palmela (CDU)
Serpa (CDU)
Sesimbra (CDU)
São Brás de Alportel (PS)
Castelo (Sesim.) (CDU)
Vila Real Sto. Antº (PSD)
S Sebastião (Set.) (CDU)
Faro (PS)
Santiago Cacém (CDU)
Fonte: Nelson Dias / Out.07
The core idea is that a research needs
empiric data to investigate – at the same
time – two complementary fields of
analysis
• What happens inside
the political institutions
when participatory
practices are
experimented?
Political-institutional sphere
• What happens inside
the social fabric when
participatory practices
are experimented?
Sphere of social interactions
PB, in fact, was born to challenge contemporarily the two spheres, and not just to
“democratise democracy” and compensate the fading legitimacy of elected institutions…
That’s why we started last
April the 3 years FCT-funded
project called:
“Participatory Budgeting as innovative tool for reinventing
local institutions in Portugal and Cape Verde? A critical
analysis of performance and transfers”.
THIS IS A PARADIGMATIC
PROJECT FOR CES,
because:
1) It is a project of actionresearch, which
continuously uses its
empiric data and its
(partial and final) results
as a tool to “incise” in the
changes of political
experimentations…
…but also because:
2) It stabilizes the relationships with
several traditional partners
2) It joins together the interests of different CES Working Groups
and two CES Observatories, that on Participatory Practices and
that on Local Powers.
It is a “generated”, not a “created”
project. In fact, the comparison with
African PB is enrooted in previous
international projects…
It was born inside a previous project of “world mapping” of PB, and
aims to have a “mirror” to reflect on Portuguese/European
specificities of PB models, and on mutual TRANSFERS…
Source:: World Report on PB (Inwent/CES, 2010)
The new project is
interested in creating
indicators to measure
a) the interdependence between the participatory processes and
the configuration of administrative systems (electoral laws,
political culture, financial structure, organizational autonomy)
or
but also criteria to
analyse and measure
b) the concrete outputs of PB in terms of territorial redistribution of
resources and social justice, increase of public works sustainability,
and new “perceptions” on institutional legitimacy.
…and also in
understanding
c) the changing configuration of participation due to the new
technologies (new audiences and exclusions, digital divides,
traceability of expenses, new tools for control on implementation)
…and also
photographing
d) the “marginalisation” and “sectorialisation” of participatory tools,
in order to create a MAPPING of relationship between different
instruments (Plans, Agendas XXI, PBs, thematic councils)
The final aim is to contribute to
understand the National panorama
of participatory practices
Electoral years
1) the “volatility” and
“fragility” of PB in the
last years;
2) why the Portuguese
EXPERIMENTS which
survived are only the
“decisional” ones, which
can change the political
culture more in depth;
3) If the “dead PBs” left
permanent changes in
the administration or in
other participatory
tools…
…and also how in the financial and
administrative transformation
PB was “squeezed” by
different external forces
which led to a general
RECONFIGURATION OF THE
MODEL within the original
principles…
with these ambitions
…we set a multidisciplinary internal TEAM working between the two
contexts (counting on sociologists, planners, anthropologists, political
scientists, psychologists…) and several renown international consultants…
and relationships with
different WORKING
GROUPS at CES, as those
on “Participation and
Multicultural Citizenship”
or “Knowledge and
Governance”.
All this required to the comparative project
on PB in Portugal and Cape Verde to
became an “engine” for giving order and
coherence to other parallel projects
“Library of participatory
policies of social
inclusion” (coordinated
by Prof. Boaventura de
Sousa Santos) with
funding of UCLG/CISDP Barcelona
“« La participation publique et le
droit - approche comparative »,”
(coordinated by the Institute for
Constitutional Studies, Beijing).
PB in Portugal &
Cape Verde
both in the field of
academic international
collaboration…
“Espacio Politico y Presupuesto
Participativo” (coordinated by
IESA, Spain) with comparisons in
France, Germany, Brazil and
Canada.
“PARLOCAL”
(coordinated
by the
Province of
MALAGA,
Spain) with
comparisons
in Dominican
Republic,
Spain and
Uruguay.
… and also in terms of cooperation with
local/international institutions (or civil
society) in order to follow, monitor or
conceive new experimentations
DEMO-Fest
Imagenes y democracia
en movimento
TRAINING
ON PB for
LISBON
PERSONNEL
PB in Portugal &
Cape Verde
Pilot-projects of
PB in Sweden
UN-HABITA/CES
HANDBOOK on PB
(72 FAQs)
This series of
interconnected researches
looks to Participatory Budgeting as a “perspective” (or a prism) from
which is possible to read the broader ongoing transformation of
societal/political relations, but also the challenging of the evolution of
administrative local bodies.
It has the multiple goals of:
1) contributing to the enrichment of theory through empiric data and
participative/qualitative observation
2) assessing public policies on which energies and resources are
invested, in order to enrich them through statistical data and reflection
3) proposing advanced training for different actors
4) dissemination of information to vast audiences
5) placing Portugal at the “core” of an interconnection between
international political/academic networks
A reformatted “core” space
for interconnection
In this respect, the Observatory of Participatory Practice is being
completely reformulate, through a tight link with the Ph.D.
structure, so to become a new central tool for coordinating all
these different opportunities…
Thanks you very
much!
www.ces.uc.pt/opp
[email protected]