Synergizing Civil Society: State Civil Society Regimes in Porto Alegre, Brazil

PART I.
FORMS OF STATE EMBEDDEDNESS
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SYNERGIZING CIVIL SOCIETY:

STATE-CIVIL SOCIETY REGIMES
IN PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL
Gianpaolo Baiocchi
ABSTRACT
In this paper I discuss the impact of participatory reforms to municipal
governance on local civil society in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Carried out by
administrators of the Workers Party (PT), these reforms have created a
variety of empowered participatory fora on municipal policy. In contrast
to a previous period of tutelage in which neighborhood associations
vacillated between acquiescence and conflict with municipal government,
these reforms have fostered new institutions in civil society, a greater interconnectedness between local organizations, and a scaling up of activism
away from solely neighborhood to city-wide concerns. To properly consider
this impact I propose a relational framework that considers the role of
state-civil society relationships in creating an environment more or less
conducive to civic involvement.
1. INTRODUCTION
The revival of interest in civil society and allied concepts, like social capital,
has taken place in the context of the rollback of the affirmative state and a
general decline in interest in state-led solutions to social problems. One of the
Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 15, pages 352.
Copyright 2002 by Elsevier Science Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
ISBN: 0-7623-0883-4
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GIANPAOLO BAIOCCHI
master narratives running through several discussions on social capital and civil
society, such as Putnams Bowling Alone, is that societal democratization
(through the deepening of social capital) precedes and precipitates effective
governance and the democratization of the state. In this paper I challenge the
theoretical assumption of the necessary separateness of the state from civil
society, and momentarily reverse the causal arrow (Skocpol, 1999) by highlighting the role of the state, and more specifically, of state-side democratization,
in creating a context for the functioning of civil society. This paper takes one
recent case, from the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil. Porto Alegre serves as a
point of departure for an analytic exploration of the conditions under which
municipal state-side democratization can transform the context for the functioning of civil society in a way that fosters significant new civic networks and
novel forms of civic activism.
The Porto Alegre reforms to municipal governance are by now well-known
in the literature (Abers, 2001; Avritzer, 2000; Baiocchi, 2001a, c; Fedozzi, 1997;
Genro & Souza, 1997; Pozzobon, 1998; Santos, 1998; Utzig, 1999). They
revolve around a successful participatory schema that has drawn several
thousands of citizens to meetings to decide upon municipal matters. This has
been carried out by the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores PT), and
has evolved into a complex system of participatory settings centered around a
central institution, the Participatory Budget (Oramento Participativo OP). In
meetings of the OP, participants deliberate at local levels on the citys basic
capital investment priorities and monitor the progress of approved projects. As
commentators have pointed out, the experiment has also been successful in
enacting a significant redistribution of municipal resources to poorer districts
in the city alongside an increasing effectiveness of municipal government
(Marquetti, 2000). Although the experiment has become well-known for its
form of governance, here I discuss the impact that these reforms have had on
civil society.
My argument has to do with central role these reforms have played in creating
an associative environment more conducive to certain types of practices,
institutions, and networks in civil society. In order to develop this argument, I
compare state-civil society regimes in the city from an earlier period
(19861988), where the municipal government established a relationship of
tutelage vis--vis civil society, with the later period of democratic reforms.
While the city emerged out of the dictatorship (19641984) with a relatively
well-organized civil society, the tutelage regime had a de-mobilizing effect.
However, the new relationship between civil society and the state since 1989
created an associative environment conducive to civic involvement through: (1)
making participation in civic life at large easier; (2) training of activists;
Synergizing Civil Society

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(3) creating settings where activists meet; and (4) creating a language of accountability and transparency.
This argument follows the insights of several other scholars who point to the
ways in which the state side of the state-civil society relationship structures
the context in which civil society functions. Notably, based on the experiences
of the U.S., scholars such as Skocpol and Clemmens have examined the ways
in which the institutions and activities of the U.S. government have influenced
the identities, organizational forms, and strategies of voluntary organizations
(Skocpol & Fiorina, 1999, p. 18). Similarly, studying Mexico, Fox (1996, 1999)
has argued for a political construction approach that shows social capital has
in some instances, been politically constructed. Fox thus argues for an analysis
of the interdependent democratization of civil society and the state. Drawing
from Central American examples, Booth and Richard (1998) argue that governments create incentives and disincentives for participation in civil society by
making community arenas more accessible. Other scholars, such as Tarrow
(1996) and Foley and Edwards (1996) have pointed to state institutions are
perhaps the missing culprit in social capital discussions. This essay follows
up on these insights and contributes to the discussion by specifically proposing
that a state-civil society regime, that is, the overall pattern of state openness to
societal demands and constraints upon civil society, creates a context for civic
life. Here I offer a comparison of two different types of state-civil society
regimes in the same city one de-mobilizing civil society, and one fostering
new civic involvement.
I treat this case as an extended case study in order to isolate the features of
each state-civil society regime, and the ways in which they have impacted civil
society. I draw on primary research, carried out between 1997 and 2001, when
I conducted over a hundred interviews with participants in civil society and
collected a vast array of primary and secondary materials. I also rely on three
different surveys: a survey of participants of participatory institutions in 1998
carried out in conjunction with a local NGO (CIDADE, 1999), and a smaller
survey of participants and associations in three districts in 1999.1 Before getting
to the case itself, I first discuss recent insights on civil society, most explicitly
borrowing from the relational approaches of Somers, Bourdieu, Emirbayer, and
others. In the third section I provide background information on Porto Alegre
and describe the tutelage regime in place in Porto Alegre from 19861988, and
describe its impact on civic life. Then, in the fourth and fifth sections, I describe
the democratic reforms in Porto Alegre, while in the sixth section I account for
the way they have impacted civil society. By way of conclusion, I discuss some
of the implications of this case study for further, comparative work, on statecivil society regimes.
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GIANPAOLO BAIOCCHI
2. INTERFACING CIVIL SOCIETY: TOWARD A

RELATIONAL FRAMEWORK
The concept of civil society, has experienced a revival in recent years, after a
first revival in the late 1980s driven by the waves of democratization in Eastern
Europe and Latin America (Berezin, 1997; Calhoun, 1992; Somers, 1995).
Social scientific conceptualizations of civil society often falls short of providing
either a framework for understanding how it is that civil society changes or the
tools to unpack the relationships between civil society and the state. While
the concern of studies of democracy and democratization have generally taken
civil society as the source and origin of democratizing impulses in society, there
is little consideration of how it is that civil society itself may become more
or less democratic as a result of its interaction with institutions of the state.
In this section, I develop a framework that takes into account the complex of
relationships between state and civil society as structuring the functioning
of civil society itself.
There is agreement that, at its basic level, the concept of civil society refers
to the space of uncoerced human association and the relational networks
formed for the sake of family, faith, interest, ideology that fill that space
(Walzer, 1998, p. 117). Many authors, however, disagree on what constitutes
boundaries and what counts as civil society, and on the relative importance
of orienting values.2 Most recently some scholars have also begun to investigate
the porousness of the boundaries between state and civil society in a number
of contexts (Gonzales-Hernandez, 2001; He, 1999; Thomas-Flores, 1998). Social
scientists associated with relational approaches to questions of politics and
citizenship, such as Somers, Emirbayer, and Scheller, have suggested a potential
solution for investigating the vastly different historical experiences in question.
They have argued for the need to disaggregate the concept of civil society
as an unitary entity defined by its exteriority to the state and have called for
the unpacking of the sometimes contradictory, relationships between state and
voluntary associations and the way in which these shifting relationships reflect
societal power.3 Rather than thinking of civil society as a an entity separate
from the state (or the economy), they have suggested that we instead reframe civil society as crisscrossing groups of people engaged in voluntary
activities. This allows a much greater scope of what counts as civil society.4
A relational approach finds inspiration in the work of scholars like Bourdieu,
who insists that we think of the practice of governance or policy formulation
and implementation, as an on-going process of competition between various
bureaucratic bodies and groups who compete over specific outcomes (Bourdieu,
1998). Understanding how these shifting relationships constrain and enable

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voluntarism action follows the call for research on publics (Emirbayer &
Sheller, 1999) and has the potential of exploring the artifactuality of voluntary
associations (Cohen & Rogers, 1992) how voluntary associations reflect a
broader social context. This relational approach offers a corrective to the way
in which it is assumed to impact the state but not the other way around (Skocpol
& Fiorina, 1999).
This approach is not dissimilar to the long tradition of structures of opportunity studies that have led to our understanding of collective action as
responsive to opportunities in the polity. (Amenta & Zylan, 1991; Tarrow, 1996;
Tilly, 1978) It also has its origins in the neo-institutionalist approaches presented
by those who would bring the state back in as having relatively autonomous
explanatory power (Evans, Reuschemeyer, & Skocpol, 1985; Skocpol, 1982).
Both approaches, in some way, point to structured rounds of state-society
interactions in which, at each turn, the balance of power and institutional
legacies of previous turn limit some possibilities but also open other ones
(Migdal, 2001). Tilly and Shorter (1974) have looked to the ways in which the
centralization and nationalization of political power in nineteenth century in
France fostered the emergence of national, mass-based working class political
parties. A relational approach to civil society proper, as opposed to an emphasis
on contention alone, focuses on all of the ways in which the various parts of
civil society interact with the state (formal, informal settings, meetings, protests,
etc.) and attempts to understand how it is that these interactions affect the
functioning of civil society at large.
The broad pattern of state-civil society relationships might be characterized
as a specific type of state-civil society regime. A relational approach would
characterize a state-civil society regime according to at least three criteria:
(1) the degree of openness of the state to societal demands; (2) the types of
constraints the state places on civil society; and (3) the institutional form of statesociety interfaces. A specific regime would include all of the ways in which
citizens may impact the state as well as all of the ways in which the state might
limit or enable the activities in civil society. A state-civil society regime that is
relatively open to citizen influence might have several channels through which
citizens may impact the state. In this regime, organized groups in the polity might
have the power to exert pressure through members of the legislature; citizens may
be able to exert direct informal pressure through networks of influence; social
movements may directly impact state policy through pressure tactics, not to
mention all of the democratic mechanisms of voting, representation, and so on. In
addition, the regime of state-society relationships includes number of constraints
that the state may place on civil society, ranging from censorship of the independent press to outright repression. A state-society interface is any interaction
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GIANPAOLO BAIOCCHI
where citizens interact with agents of the state over societal demands. An office of
a legislator that attends to the complaints of citizens is an interface, such as is a
town-hall meeting that aggregates local demands. Interfaces may also be informal,
as when a neighborhood association president calls on favors from a legislator, or
when someone uses a family contact to access the state.
State-civil society regimes are inherently political arrangements, often contingent on fragile alliances or constellations of actors pursuing different goals
within an institutional setting. In this way institutional to openings to societal
demands are part of a recursive set of relationships in which actors themselves
may be seeking to change the rules of the game. Institutional openings create
incentives for certain kinds of collective action from below that aim to expand
institutional openings, which then may have the effect of encouraging elite
collective action to close off these openings (Markoff, 1997). States could also
be embedded in the spheres of influence of the economically powerful in society
or be constrained by foreign actors. In the case of local governments, this also
includes the constraining relationship to central and supra-local units. Without
forgetting that state-civil society regime refers to the totality of relationships
between civil society and the various levels and branches of the state, it is
possible to imagine regimes that are quite contradictory, as suggested by Migdal
(2001). It is possible to conceive of settings in which the national level state
creates certain constraints (such as a policy of censorship) for certain activities,
while the local level state creates incentives for the same activity.
With these caveats in mind, one can delineate several types of state-civil
society regimes based on the criteria of openness to societal demands,
constraints on societal activity, and forms of interfaces. These vary from starkly
authoritarian regimes, such as the Tsarist regime described by Laclau (2000)
that placed high constraints on societal activity while being open to few societal
demands, to affirmative democratic regimes that place relatively few constraints
while being highly open to societal demands, such as Scandinavian Welfare
states that have been described by Esping-Anderson (1985).
Tutelage and Empowered Participatory Regimes Compared
Many discussions about participation in government foreground institutional
features of interfaces without considering overall state-civil society regimes.
Inattention to the impact of the overall regime has led some to the conclusion
that participation in itself is harmful to civil society. There are indeed many
examples of participation in government that are part of strategies of cooptation
of social movement activity in civil society. This is the scenario that Piven and
Cloward (Piven & Cloward, 1979) and others sketch out, when considering the

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impact of Great Society programs (and their maximum feasible participation

strategies) on community activism in the U.S. (Castells, 1983). There are many
historical examples of regimes in which the state is open to societal demands,
though it may place significant constraints on civil society by demanding
political allegiance, through censorship or even outright repression. Zhou (1993)
describes the way in which the state monopoly of the public sphere in China
structured a certain kind of collective action based on unorganized individual
interests aggregated through state-controlled settings. Similarly, there are many
historical examples of the ways in which populist dictatorships in Latin America
attended to some societal demands while exercising control over civil society.
There are examples from the period of the leftist military dictatorship in Peru
(Dietz, 1998), of the populist arrangements in urban Mexico (Eckstein, 1977;
Hamilton, 1984), and of class-based councils in different periods of the populist
period in Brazil (Bak, 1985; Conniff, 1982).
A regime of tutelage might then be characterized not by whether citizens
hold meetings with state officials or not. Rather, its principal characteristic is
the fact that the state places significant constraints on civil society in terms of
demanding political allegiance in exchange for the recognition of societal
demands. The institutional form of the interface between state and civil society
may vary, and one of the ways in which the state places constraints may indeed
by its selective recognition of certain actors according to political allegiance.5
The concept of a tutelage regime I develop is similar to clientelism, developed
by political scientists.6 However, the concept of clientelism refers specifically
to a practice involving a patron-client dyad, and tutelage refers to the overall
pattern of state openness to societal demands.
In contrast to tutelage regimes are affirmative democratic regimes in which the
state is responsive to societal demands, but does not place significant political
constraints on claimants. The typically cited example is the one in various
Scandinavian welfare states, in which the state is open to demands, usually by
organized sectors, and may in fact seek out such demands (Esping-Anderson,
1985). A specific type of the affirmative democratic regime, and the one that will
figure centrally in my discussion below, is the empowered participatory regime.
What distinguishes the empowered participatory regime is the institutional form
of interfacing with civil society. The state is highly open to societal demands, but
without the constraints characteristic of tutelage regimes. But what makes an
empowered participatory regime a special case of the democratic affirmative
regime are the mechanisms of selection and processing of societal demands
implicit in its participatory interfaces. It is characterized by significant forms of
democratic citizen participation and input and a bottom-up set of mechanisms
where claimants themselves are responsible for processing demands in terms of
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GIANPAOLO BAIOCCHI
hierarchies and priorities, and in which participants must come to terms with
trade-offs, including reconciling the demands of other claimants (Fung & Wright,
2001). This distinction between tutelage regimes, affirmative democratic regimes,
and the empowered participatory regime is illustrated in Table 1, below.
In the set of distinctions made here, what distinguishes tutelage regimes from
affirmative democratic regimes is not whether they are open to societal demands,
but whether these demands are tied to political allegiance. As Table 1 shows,
both types of affirmative democratic regimes do not place constraints of this
sort, while the tutelage regime does. The distinction made here between centralized affirmative democratic regimes and ones in which empowered participation
has to do with the processing of societal demands. An empowered participatory
regime is one in which there is participation that is tied to actual decisionmaking, and it is through this participation that demands are processed. An
affirmative democratic regime that is highly open to societal demands and which
holds meetings to gather societal demands is not considered here an empowered
participatory regime unless those meetings involve empowered participation that
devolves to participants the processing of demands. This distinction sets apart
affirmative democratic regimes from the empowered participatory regime
discussed for the state of Kerala, in India, for example (Heller, 2001; Isaac,
2000). There, village-level claimants process local demands, while in affirmative
democratic regimes the processing of demands is accomplished through centralized bureaucratic determination, as has been traditionally the case in many
instances command-and-control government schemes in the U.S. (Fung, 1998).
My argument will compare the impact of both types of regimes in Porto
Alegre and explore the ways in which an empowered participatory regime can
make participation by collectives or individuals without organizational capacity
in civil society more likely, while fostering certain kinds of coordination in
civil society.
Table 1.
Comparison of Tutelage and Democratic Affirmative Regimes.

State-Civil Society Regime
Tutelage
Democratic Affirmative Regimes

Centrtalized
Openness to
Societal Demands
Societal Constraints
Processing of
Societal Demands
Empowered
Participatory
Yes
Yes
Yes
High
Top-Down
Screening
Low
Top-Down
Screening
Low
Bottom-Up
Participation
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3. PORTO ALEGRE AND PREVIOUS REGIMES

OF TUTELAGE
The city of Porto Alegre is the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul and
stands at the center of a metropolitan area of almost three million persons
(PMPA, 1999). As the major industrial and financial center in the state, it is a
city relatively well-served by municipal services, with relatively high social
indicators. Porto Alegre, like most Brazilian capitals, is also a visibly socially
segregated city. Almost one third of its population lives in irregular housing,
such as slums or invaded areas that fan outward from the city center, with the
poorest districts generally the farthest from downtown. Negotiating the demands
of different urban groups has been a hallmark of Porto Alegre municipal politics
since the 1950s, much of it under the aegis of tutelage regimes. As a powerbase of a succession of politicians associated with Brazils left-populist party,
Porto Alegres civil society bears the mark of a distinctive urban history. Porto
Alegre is a city that emerged out the authoritarian period with a relatively wellorganized civil society, partially as a result of the tradition and influence of the
PDT. Although precise data are not available, Porto Alegre was probably one
of the large state capitol cities with the most dense civil society networks by
the time of the transition to democracy (19841988).7 This mobilized civil
society helped elect the PDT to municipal government in the 1985 elections.
But the paradoxical outcome of that election result was the demobilization of
civil society in this period.
Civil Society in Brazil and the Transition to Democracy
In the years before the transition to democracy in the 1970s, Brazil experienced
the appearance of a new associational life and new urban social movements.
New unionism around So Paulo, Ecclesiastic Base Communities (CEBs),
and the struggles for urban rights were all part of a diffuse democratic movement that has been well described in the literature (Cardoso, 1988; Diniz, 1983;
Durham, 1984; Evers, 1985; Moises, Lima, Evers, Souza, & Bazzarra, 1982;
Telles, 1987). These social movements were apparent in many of Brazils larger
cities, where a new associationalism was also making appearance from the
1970s onward (Arvritzer, 1997; Boschi, 1987; Boschi & Valladares, 1983;
Santos, 1993). Santos (1993) notes that associational groups have experienced
growth in numbers, particularly in cities and certain types of urban groups, such
as neighborhood associations and unions.
Santos argues the result of the growth in associationalism is a hybrid success
(1993) given that there remains low civic engagement, a predatory political
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culture, and a minimal state that is not responsive to the majority of the
population. Boschi (1987), who traces the growth of associationalism in Rio de
Janeiro in the 1970s, finds similar contradictions. While there is a rapid growth
of associations during the 1970s, Boschi finds a cyclical character of interruptions, and a preference for direct contact (p. 48), mediated through a
neighborhood association president. Particularly relevant for the study here,
Boschi finds that the PDT state government, in power in Rio de Janeiro in the
1980s, attempted to establish tutelage relationships with neighborhood associations, and that this, ultimately, tended to force neighborhood association leaders
into difficulty choices as to attempt to offer collective pressure on authorities
or to make direct deals with them. Similarly, Gay (1990) finds that, in Rio de
Janeiro, populist leaders exert significant sway over some neighborhood
association leaders, though he also finds that these association leaders play a
number of strategic games within these clientelistic arrangements (Gay, 1990).
The evidence about associational patterns in cities in Brazil throughout the
1980s and 1990s is contradictory. Ferreira (2000) finds that there was no significant growth in associational density in metropolitan regions between 1988 and
1996, with the percentage of those belonging to neighborhood associations
remaining the same, while the percentage of persons participating in any group
declined slightly between the years in question.8 Similarly, Pickvance (1999)
notes that Brazil has experienced a decline in social movement activity since
the transition to democracy. This raises the question that Ferreira (2000) poses,
of whether the rise in associationalism noted by other scholars in the period
around the transition to democracy was temporary. It has also been discussed
that many of the social movements of the period of the transition to democracy
have lost steam in the years following the transition to democracy, but some
have sought out more permanent forms of institutionalization (Alvarez, 1993).
The rest of the article explores the impact of this institutionalization in Porto
Alegre in the period following the transition to democracy. In order to do so,
however, it is necessary to explore the specificity of the citys urban history.
Populist Politicians and Neighborhood Associations in Porto Alegre
The PTB (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro), since renamed the PDT (Partido
Democrtico Trabalhista), is Brazils traditionally populist party. The PDT is
a political party most often associated with left-populism, with a history of
significant ties to the neighborhood association movement and unions in a few
urban centers, notably Rio de Janeiro and some cities in the state of Rio Grande
do Sul, in addition to Porto Alegre itself (Cortes, 1974; Conniff, 1982). This
style of populism is marked by a contradictory mix of progressive elements,
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family and country discourses, votes-for-works, a strong personal identification

with its leaders, the hiring of neighborhood association presidents as consultants,
but also a nationalist discourse of empowering the poor.
In Porto Alegre, the party controlled an urban political machine from the
1930s until the military coup of 1964, and neighborhood associations grew in
a context of tutelage to a succession of populist politicians. The first registered
neighborhood associations, for example, date to 1945 in some of the citys
working class neighborhoods. In exchange for political allegiance, municipal
government offered urban improvements and social events, at one point
sponsoring a municipal Olympics and a municipal congress for neighborhood
associations, where a diploma in neighborhood leadership was handed out.
In the mid 1950s, the administration created municipal councils where
representatives of neighborhood associations would be permitted to participate
in decisions on the provision of social services. In 1959, the PTB sponsored
the founding of FRACAB (Federao Rio Grandense de Associaes de Bairro)
a statewide organization of neighborhood associations (Menegat, 1995). There
is also evidence, however, that the pact between neighborhood associations
and municipal government sometimes fostered discontentment, as a number
of neighborhood associations founded an anti-paternalist league in the
early 1960s in order to demand greater autonomy from municipal government
(Fase, n/d).
The tutelage regime at the municipal level was interrupted with the military
coup of 1964 that outlawed political parties and sent several of the PTBs
traditional leaders into exile. FRACAB, the league of neighborhood associations
came under intervention of the military regime, and available reports point
to very circumspect roles for neighborhood associations in the first ten years
of the dictatorship. The dictatorship permitted the functioning of neighborhood
associations, but limited their activities to purely social service functions. By
the late 1970s with the partial relaxation of the martial law, neighborhood
associations started to function more actively. They began to occasionally
challenge the military regime and support pro-democracy activists, as well as
to began to act in coalition to demand urban services. In 1977, FRACAB broke
with the military governments instructions and acted as a support organization
for a May 1st strike in Porto Alegre, growing in numbers and strength as it
continued to harbor the pro-democracy opposition in the state (Guareschi, 1984).
The influence of national new urban social movements in the late 1970s
was felt in Porto Alegre. As a diffuse democratic that demand democracy and
access to urban services throughout the country, in Porto Alegre a number of
new neighborhood associations started to act in concert, often lead by radical
clergy who resisted the favor-trading of neighborhood associations tied to the
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military regime. In 1983, Union of Neighborhood Associations (Unio de

Moradores de Porto Alegre UAMPA) was founded to orchestrate the demands
of growing movements. It called for accountability, participation, and improved
urban services, and among its principal activists were neighborhood activists
originally tied to the PTB, as well as new activists with ties to a variety of
left-of-center parties, and its board of directors always included, in this early
period, activists from a variety of parties (Baierle, 1992). It was with the support
of this Union that the first democratically elected mayor in Porto Alegre was
Alceu Collares of the PDT. The new Mayor of Porto Alegre would try to impose
a vision of limited participation in government for neighborhood associations
under the tutelage of his party. The de-mobilizing impact of this regime is
recounted below.
The 1986 PDT Administration and the Tutelage Regime
With Brazils transition to democracy, free municipal elections were held in
1985. One of the first opposition9 mayors to be elected in Brazil was Alceu
Collares of the PDT, who came to power in 1986 with the promise of instituting
popular participation. As one of the first black mayors of a Brazilian city, and
one of a handful of municipal left-of-center victories, Collares administration
was met with great excitement by community organizations (Pont, 1985). The
PDT administration did in fact create some instances of popular participation,
but tied actual projects to political allegiance, giving preference to neighborhood
associations linked to the PDT. Partially as a result of the disillusionment by
community groups with the party, the PDT was voted out of office in 1988 in
a protest vote that placed an electoral alliance headed by the PT in power.
The tutelage regime fostered cycles of conflict and acquiescence in civil
society. Neighborhood associations would at times participate in government
schemes, but this was often followed by open conflict when demands were not
fully met. Since this regime often relied on the negotiations of individual associations with municipal government, it was difficult for activists to maintain
broader coalitions. By the end of the administration, civil society was largely
de-mobilized and splintered without a uniting oppositional platform, as had been
the case prior to the PDT administration. A number of associations faced a
legitimacy crisis in terms of their constituents precisely because they had sought
individual solutions through the municipal government without a clear system
of negotiating demands.
The union of neighborhood associations, UAMPA, initially called for a
participatory structure where the priorities of each district would be discussed
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with popular leaders of each district (UAMPA, 1986). One of the elements of
the Collares administration watched with interest by the community movement
was his promise to increase the participation of community activists in his
administrative apparatus, largely through municipal councils. Early in the
administration, Collares and his staff emphasized how important participation
would be (PDT, 1986). The councils under the Collares administration were
to operate in tandem with some municipal departments, such as the departments
of Social Services and Housing, and would have greater participation of community persons. According to documents from the time, community leaders were
already suspicious of these institutions, as they afforded little actual decision
making power to civil society, and left final authority with municipal government (Associacoes de Moradores Zona Sul, 1986). UAMPA criticized the
proposals because it relegated civil to the role of giving opinions, and making
suggestions (UAMPA, 1986, p. 7). The only recognized participants would be
from the directorate of legally registered associations, making certain types
of associations in civil society, such as the neighborhood commissions fostered
by progressive clergy in certain areas, unable to participate, putting a stranglehold on popular organization (Baierle, 1992). Some dissenting voices
complained about the paternalism of the administration in holding the right
to veto community input (Mussol, 1986).
These original PDT councils did not come to function fully as planned, and the
administration made other efforts, including sponsoring self-help projects in
certain areas of the city. Little actual community involvement went into decisionmaking, however, and evidence points to the fact that that honoring community
wishes had to do with political allegiances to the PDT, and this led to the cycles
of acquiescence and conflict as demands were sometimes met, but often not fully
met. There are cases, for instance, of PDT supporters bringing a project to a street
through the neighborhood association only to have residents protest and physically block construction because the project did not fully meet the demands.10
One case involved Vila Tronco, in the Cruzeiro district of the city, which
entered into open conflict with the Collares administration over the construction
of an avenue. The vila (a poorer neighborhood) had been in conflict with city
hall over the construction of this avenue since the late 1970s, which was to
serve as a major thoroughfare to the Southern sections of the city, but which
would involve the removal of this settlement that dated to the 1960s. A series
of actions on the part of the neighborhood association, including protests and
petitions, kept the removal at bay until the Collares administration. In 1987
and 1988 the vila started to demand improvements through its new, militant,
board of directors. Demands included regularization of its land titles and street
improvements. These were answered with the arbitrary removal of several
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families, and the announcement that the administration had decided to remove
roughly half of the homes of the vila to build the thoroughfare in October of
1988. A conflict evolved, with UAMPA becoming involved. A series of fights
between police and residents ensued over the next weeks. The project was
brought to a standstill (CAMP, 1991; Petri, 1992).
Two other vilas, in the Norte district of the city, Vila Unio and Vila Santa
Rosa, also attempted to have their demands met through negotiation and conflict.
Both vilas demanded urban improvements. Vila Unio residents were able to
negotiate to have their cause supported by politicians from the PDT (Vila Uniao,
1987). Neighboring Vila Santa Rosa, however, whose neighborhood association
was under the direction of radical activists, had sent a series of petitions to city
hall demanding similar improvements, and were finally scheduled to be seen by
the Mayor in May of 1988. Over one hundred residents appeared at the meeting,
though most were made to wait outside. The leadership of the Santa Rosa
community gave the Mayor an open demanding street paving projects begun in
1980. The Mayor refused to make promises about projects, and according to a
newspaper article, both sides started to exchange insults, and a scuffle ensued
(Era so uma audiencia. Quase acabou em briga., 1988). The association later
released pamphlets describing the disrespect and commitment to the rich of
the Mayor, and promised to step up its struggle against the administration to
assure improvements (Vila Uniao, 1988). This neighborhood was one of the focal
points of the anti-PDT movement that voted the party out of power.
A number of neighborhood associations at the time continued to build their
ties with charity and beneficiary organizations linked to the federal and state
governments. These programs encouraged persons to legally register their
neighborhood associations in order to receive specific assistance, such as a day
care center or milk tickets. The inauguration of these always involved the
appearance of benevolent politicians from the ruling political party at the state
or federal level. While these programs had a relatively small impact, they tended
to further splinter neighborhood activists since many with ties to radical sectors
of the church were suspicious of such paternalist programs (CAMP, 1988).
Between 1987 and 1989, three functioning Popular Councils umbrella
bodies aggregating the demands of several neighborhood associations eachcame into existence. In one case, the PDT administration had encouraged the
formation of such a council, as an organic tie between the popular movement
and the administration (Porto Alegre, 1987). But the council quickly turned
against the administration as its demands were systematically not met (Conselho
Popular da Zona Norte, 1987). In the other two cases, the councils were started
as a way to register opposition to the administration, and were having difficulty
sustaining attendance at weekly meetings by 1988.
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Relatively little in the way of urban improvements in the citys working class
and poor neighborhoods took place in the Collares administration. The construction of housing units for needy families, for instance, totaled 325 for the three
years of the administration. The PDT administration did sponsor a number of
self-construction initiatives in 1987 and 1988, providing materials for specific
projects in the districts, but these were often based on an exchange for political
allegiance to the party. Neighborhood associations were deeply split over these,
because while some activists clearly saw this as a pre-election co-optation tactic
that in fact shifted burden of urban development and construction to the very
poorest citizens, others felt that it would be difficult to turn down materials and
assistance when the city hall truck appeared on Saturday morning (interview).
By the time of the next election for Mayor, neighborhood associations had been
polarized over whether to continue to support the PDT or not. Most active
neighborhood associations had supported the PDT candidacy for the mayors
office in 1986, but there was growing discontentment by 1988 with what was
seen as the attempted co-optation of the neighborhood movement.
By the end of 1988 only five or six of the citys sixteen districts had
significant activity in terms of neighborhood associations, and reports from
the time point to major difficulties associations were having in sustaining
activity (UAMPA, 1988). As the State-Civil Society Regime was one that
occasionally accepted societal demands but constrained civil society by
exchanging political allegiance for these demands, neighborhood associations
often did not act in concert since there were always incentives for breaking
ranks with opposition to the administration. One of the results was that by
the end of 1988 the community movement was having difficulties attracting
participants because the patterns of opposition-allegiance tended in many areas
to discredit them before residents. Surveys were carried out by NGOs in late
1986 and 1987 in two districts of the city that asked about the activities of
neighborhood associations. In both districts, most neighborhood associations
had been founded around a specific collective problem and most were involved
in dealing with these issues; in both districts, however, the NGO report
identified the same pattern of problem solving: key association directors would
have direct contact with agencies of city hall or politicians, and less than half
of associations maintained regular meetings for the whole community. The
main challenges that faced neighborhood associations at the time were:
difficulty sustaining long term activity, lack of information, lack of
resources, lack of interconnections with other associations, and after
mobilization association empties out (FASE, 1986). Another report cites the
lack of new leaders, lack of a clear project and excessive clientelism and
ties to political parties (FASE, n/d).
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4. THE DEMOCRATIC REFORMS TO

MUNICIPAL GOVERNANCE
When the electoral alliance (the Frente Popular, Popular Front) headed by the
PT achieved electoral victory in Porto Alegre in late 1988 there was little
agreement as to what, exactly, the PT way governing would be, with more
examples of what not to do than with positive examples of successful reforms
(PT, 1988b). As one of thirty-six PT municipal administrations elected nationally, there was intense discussion about what the role of a workers
administration ought to be in city management.11 Difficult learning experiences
of the previous PT administrations in Diadema, So Paulo, and Fortaleza, Cear,
showed that in addition to the inherent difficulties in offering effective service
provision, new PT administrations would also likely be flooded with demands
from their bases of support upon election (Keck, 1993).
Founded in 1980 in So Paulo, the PT had continued to expand its bases of
support to sectors outside its union core to other social movement sectors,
particularly in cities. Throughout the 1980s, the party grew, first in the cities
around the So Paulo industrial park, and then in other states in the South and
Southeast of the country. The PT is characterized by both internal democracy
and marked ideological diversity within its ranks; the partys activist core is
made up of a number of semi-autonomous tendencies defending different
positions making up the activist core of the party (Kowarick & Singer, 1994;
Lesbaupin, 1996; Nylen, 1998; Seidman, 1994). Although the PT became a
strong party in Porto Alegre in the course of the 1990s, the party was relatively
weak in electoral terms by the time of its election in 1988, particularly when
compared to the PDT. In 1982, it elected one member of the thirty-two members
of the municipal legislative, and it garnered roughly 10% of the citys votes in
the municipal elections of 1986. The victory in 1988 was based on a slim
margin, and in the first turn of the presidential elections of 1989, the PDT
candidate captured almost 70% of the votes in Porto Alegre, which was ten
times higher than the PT vote (Noll & Trindade, 1994). In the gubernatorial
election of that year, the PT only captured 10% of votes in the city (Santos,
2001). Support for the PT was, at that time, much stronger in cities closer to
its origins in the state of So Paulo, and electoral analysts agree that the PT
only became a significant electoral voice in the course of the subsequent
administrations, as the PDT became les important (Noll, 1996; Passos & Noll,
1996). The PDT controlled several of the important unions, was in the
directorate of the Union of Neighborhood associations, as well as in the directorate of the Municipal Employees Union (Goldfrank, 2001). As a founder of
the PT related:
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The party comes, basically, from the university students movement, and of some sectors
of the union movement, . . . the bank-tellers syndicate, civil servants, etc. and therefore with
little popular basis. To be honest we know that this basis in fact in town is the PDT. This
party, with its populist contradictions is a party rooted in Porto Alegre, Im convinced of
it (Lima, 1993, p. 80).
Partially for strategic reasons, and partially as a result of debates with community activists, the principal reform to which the new administrators devoted
themselves was a participatory system around municipal budgeting priorities.
A series of changes in the 1988 constitution in fiscal arrangements and the legal
status of municipalities had granted unprecedented room for municipal administrators to experiment with such schemes (Alvarez, 1993). A principal feature
of the reforms would be that they would open the administration to a wide
range of demands around urban services, but without privileging organized
sectors. Claimants themselves would be responsible for deliberating among
themselves and regulating demands: that is, deciding the priorities among
societal demands. The relationship between civil society and the municipal
government was deeply changed, as organizations and individuals themselves
would share in the decision-making and would be asked to weigh different
specific needs and priorities against other city-wide needs. Instead of relying
on informal interfaces or formal consultative mechanisms, the cornerstone of
this regime would be an empowered and deliberative interface-forum that was
state-sponsored and did not rely on pre-assumed stakeholders.
Developing Participatory Budget Reforms
In a seminar in June of 1989, community activists and administrators defined
the basic outlines of the Oramento Participativo the Participatory Budget,
which went through various modifications until its final form in 1991. An early
vision of organizing the process through existing neighborhood associations and
unions gave way to organization through large, open, plenary meetings
throughout the city. Certain factions within the PT had defended the position
that unions and organized sectors of the popular movement linked to the party
should have priority. There were factions that argued that the party ought to
not only decide on who should make up the government, but also on concrete
points like: the price of public transportation, which area of the city should
receive investments (Harnecker, 1993, p. 12). This position was defeated, and
it was decided that administrators would govern with the whole city in mind,
not privileging workers or social movements. As Mayor Dutra put it at the time,
we govern the city with a proposal that comes from the popular sector but
can be discussed with other sectors (Dutra, 1990). While strong organization
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existed in certain combative union sectors, such as municipal transports,

experience showed that these movements tended to disperse once goals were
achieved.12 In addition, a number of conflicts between organized sectors and
the administration took place in the first several months of administration,
particularly as PDT activists now dominated many of the citys associations.13
Going from a position of believing that society was already organized and
self-conscious (interview), administrators moved to a position of believing that
settings under which participation took place needed to be run and coordinated
by the administration.14 Meetings were to be organized by district (as opposed
to a sectorally i.e. a format of city-wide meetings on specific areas of investment), and in each district participants were to debate on all areas of new
investment for the district. In each district, pre-existing groups would not be
privileged in voting and discussion, and each district was to elect representatives
to a central body to discuss the division of resources among districts. After a
series of false starts in 1989 and 1990, the administration finally arrived at a
working format for the participatory system. Fiscal reforms within the administration also permitted that a significant level of investments to be decided
upon through participatory meetings, beginning with 1991 (Filho, 1994).
Beginning in 1994, the participatory process expanded to include thematic
meetings. As then-vice Mayor Raul Pont suggested, the target public were the
associations, such as NGOs, unions, and social movements whose organizational
features, demands, and concerns with the city did not coincide with the structure
. . . of the actual OP (Pont, 1994). At thematic meetings on Transportation,
Health and Social Services, Education and Culture, Economic Development
and Urban Planning city-wide concerns were addressed that could not be
addressed at the district-level meetings. The transportation plenary, for example,
would cover the policies of the transportation department as well as city-wide road
construction projects. The Education and Culture plenary was intended to affect
the day-to-day functioning of the education and culture departments instead of
purely concentrating on investments in these areas as was perceived to happen
in the OP (Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre, 1993a). Thematic meetings, like
the other meetings of the OP, do not discriminate between actually existing groups
and an ad-hoc grouping of attendees who choose to participate at the first plenary.
At the same time, the format of city-wide conferences on specific topics
was developed, including congresses on urban planning of the city (1993 and
1995), health (1996) and human rights (1997). In these open conferences,
participants debated a number of directives for the city. The city congress of
1995, for example, counted with 2,600 participants representing over 200
associations and groups (Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre, 1995). Similarly,
the format of sectoral councils was revived at the same time. Sectoral councils
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were conceived as advisory bodies to each of the municipal departments with

open meetings selecting delegates to participate throughout the year in an
advisory function. While these councils do not have the kind of direct decisionmaking power of OP meetings, sectoral councils in certain areas like Social
Services, Health, and Housing, have drawn significant participation and perform
important monitoring roles over the functioning of projects originally decided
upon by the OP.15 These councils perform oversight over the system of
partnerships that permits neighborhood-level groups to develop subsidized
services, such as day-care and adult literacy.
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The Participatory Budget (OP) is still today the principal institution of the
participatory reforms, and is primarily through the OP that the municipal
government makes itself open to societal demands. In principle, decisions made
by participants of the OP are binding and not subject to modification by
municipal government.16 Among the important features of this institution are
the decision-making powers it grants participants in an open, non-sectoral format
that does not distinguish between privileged stake-holders, such as unions,
and unorganized sectors, and does not distinguish among those politically
sympathetic to the PT or not. In addition, the process does not depend on local
activists for the organization of meetings, being assisted by employees of
municipal government. And from the point of view of the argument here, it is
worth noting that the institution devolves the processing of demands to
participants themselves.
The format of the OP has evolved into a two-tiered structure of fora where
citizens participate throughout a yearly cycle. They deliberate on projects for
specific districts and on municipal investment priorities, and then monitor the
outcome of these projects. The process begins in March of each year, with
plenary assemblies in each of the citys sixteen districts and in each of the
thematic areas.17 At these large meetings, with occasional participation of
upwards of a thousand persons, delegates are elected to represent specific
neighborhoods, and participants review the previous years projects and budget.
Neighborhood associations or groups are responsible for electing their own
delegates,18 and the rules do not discriminate among actually established neighborhood associations from ad-hoc street committees or any other spontaneous
association of people who choose to attend the plenary.
In subsequent months, these delegates then meet regularly in each of the
districts and thematic fora to deliberate about the districts needs and acquaint
themselves with the technical criteria involved in demanding a project. At these
Institutional Features
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intermediary meetings, representatives from each of the municipal governments

departments attend and present on the departments specific competencies and
discuss the feasibility of various projects proposed. Delegates are also in
communication with their neighborhood group in order to decide on which
projects and priorities to debate at the district-level meetings. The number of
participants at these meetings vary, but in 1999, between fifty and one hundred
people attended regularly in most districts and thematic areas. It is during the
course of intermediary meetings that demands are, in a sense, processed, as
participants debate and argue about the merits of different projects and overall
priorities. They come to a close when, at a second plenary meeting, a vote
among delegates finally prioritizes the districts demands and priorities and elect
councilors to serve on the Municipal Council of the Budget.
While it is at the lower-tier district-level meetings that the bulk of participation takes place, the Council of the Budget fulfills the function of processing
all of the district and thematic demands, and reconciling district-level and
thematic demands with available resources. A formula decided by the Council
divides the available resources first, among overall investment areas, and then
among districts and thematic areas.19 Councilors two per region and per each
of the five thematic areas will, by the end of their one-year term, have also
proposed and approved changes to the rules of the whole process.20 Councilors
are subject to instant recall, and are limited to two one-year terms.21
The OP has sustained increasing levels of attendance over the years,
especially in the citys poorer districts. In 1991, 3,700 participants were counted,
against 7,000 in 1992, to over 10,000 in 1993.22 By 1995, participation was
high and routinized throughout the city, having in practice become a central
meeting place for civil society activists in each district. Data on participation
shows that per-district rates of participation over the years are highly related
to levels of poverty for the district, despite the fact that some of the poorest
districts did not have vibrant associative activity at the start of the process.23
Some observers from early years reported that some of the associations used
to solving problems through phone calls to their representatives had attempted
to block the process in some of the districts (Schmidtt, 1993). In the Norte
district, for example, organized neighborhood associations, originally tied to the
PT and to the PDT, originally boycotted the first meetings of the OP in protest
of the lack of organization of the process, and then on the format that appeared
to slight the pre-existing associations (interviews).
The profile of participants in the early years was relatively homogenous:
according to 1993 and 1995 surveys of participants,24 the average participant
was of low income and education from the citys periphery or from one of the
vilas. Most participants in these early years were linked to neighborhood
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associations. The profile has changed slightly since the mid-1990s, with an
increase in participation of professionals and people from outside of neighborhood associations,25 though the median participant is still poorer and less
educated than the city-wide average. The 1998 survey showed that almost twothirds of participants had household earnings of up to 4 Minimum Wages, and
60% had up to an eighth-grade education.26 Participants in thematic meetings
had higher levels of education and income,27 and there is some stratification
when general participants are elected to delegate and councilor positions, particularly in terms of gender and education.28 Accordingly, a substantial number
of participants in each of those years were first-time participants, and a portion
of them did not have any participation in civil society.29
There is no doubt these reforms have indeed provided for significant improvements in the citys poorer areas, as well discussed elsewhere (Abers, 2001;
Marquetti, 2000; Pozzobon, 1998; Utzig, 1999). A significant portion of the
yearly municipal budget is dedicated to new investments, the vast majority of
which come from district-level OP demands.30 Hundreds of projects have been
approved and carried out by the OP and have accounted for improvements in
the areas of street paving, land regularization, sewage, and municipal education, among others.31 There is also evidence that these reforms have been part
of a broader project of improvement of efficiency in service delivery at the
municipal level.32 In the rest of the article, however, I discuss the associational
impact of these reforms.
5. IMPACTING CIVIL SOCIETY

The type of State-Civil Society regime eventually established by the PT through
these participatory reforms was very different from previous regimes. Municipal
government now made itself much more open to societal demands from both
organized and unorganized sectors, and claimants themselves would be responsible for deliberating among themselves, both at the district level and at the
city level, deciding the priorities among societal demands. The role of civil
society in this regime would be pro-active within the administration, as
organizations and individuals themselves would share in the decision-making
and would be asked to weigh different specific needs and priorities against other
city-wide needs. Instead of relying on informal interfaces or formal consultative
mechanisms, the cornerstone of this regime would be an empowered and participatory interface-forum that was state-sponsored and did not rely on pre-assumed
stakeholders. The impact of this new regime would eventually be a profound
transformation in civil society itself. Several new organizations and new activists
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would be brought into active participation in civil society as a response to this

new associative environment, and in this section I discuss this impact.
Table 2, below, compares the regime established after 1989 with the tutelage
regime before. Instead of the importance of consultative mechanisms for
politically sympathetic groups and of informal interfaces, the regime established
by the Workers Party would be reliant on empowered participatory fora such
as the OP. The impact on civil society would be that instead of atomized cycles
of opposition and acquiescence, neighborhood associations would act in concert,
and that this would foster scaled up networks.
As Table 2 shows, the regimes are substantially different. While the municipal government was open to some societal demands, these demands were linked
to political allegiance. Interfaces in the tutelage regime revolved around a
number of consultative forums that privileged politically sympathetic neighborhood associations and those with ties to the PDT. As I described in previous
sections, this led civil society organizations into cycles of acquiescence and
Table 2.
Comparison of State-Civil Society Regimes

Before and After 1989.
19861988
19891999
State-Civil Society Regime
Tutelage
Empowered Participatory
State Interfaces
Self-help programs and

Consultative forums for
Politically Sympathetic
Associations
Establishment of
Empowered Interface-forums
Informal Interfaces
Very Important
Not Important
Main Organized Areas

in Civil Society
Organizational Forms of
Civil Society
Working class and LowerMiddle Class areas

Emphasis on Formal
Neighborhood Association
Irregular settlements
Scaled-up groups
Faltering Municipal
Network, and some DistrictLevel networks
Functioning Municipal Level

and District-Level networks
Civil Society Actions
Cycles of Acceptance and

opposition
Broad Participation in
Participatory Forums;
growth in new associations
Emphasis on novel forms,

such as popular councils,
cooperatives, and Street
Committees
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conflict with the administration as demands were sometimes met and sometimes not. In the new regime established as result of the reforms described
above, political allegiance became less important, and instead, it was through
participatory meetings that demands were processed. The result was an expansion of civil society and a number of changes in its practices, and the remainder
of this section discusses these impacts.
New Associations
The most obvious transformation of civil society has been the rapid rise of new
associations throughout the city, particularly in the citys poorer areas. Although
precise figures are difficult to establish for a number of reasons, estimates for
the number of associative entities are shown in Table 3, utilizing a conservative method of estimation.33 The Table gives very general estimates of the trends
in the transformation of civil society in Porto Alegre.
Table 3 shows that the number of functioning neighborhood associations has
essentially doubled in the period; the number of popular councils, district-level
umbrella bodies for associations, has also increased substantially. Housing
Cooperatives, here referring to organizations of residents in squatter settlements
who have purchased the land and collective own the plot, have appeared during
the period. Neighborhood associations, cooperatives, and popular councils are
not, of course, the only type of organization in civil society. A number of other
types of entities, as Samba schools, religious and cultural groups, soccer clubs,
mothers clubs, social movements, professional organizations, and unions are
Table 3.
Transformations of Civil Society in Porto Alegre, 19861998.
Year
Neighborhood
Associationsa
1986
1988
1990
1994
1996
1998
180
240
380
450
500
540
Housing
Cooperativesb
District-Level
Popular Councilsc
11
32
51
2
4
8
11
11
Source: Various.
a
Functioning neighborhood associations, estimated from unpublished documents from UAMPA,
and from documents from the Municipality of Porto Alegre.
b
Estimated number of housing cooperatives from interviews.
c
Popular Councils are district-level voluntary umbrella bodies that coordinate neighborhood
associations.
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part of civil society. In local settings, many of these other entities revolve or
center around the neighborhood association, which makes the number of neighborhood a good proxy for the density of civil society, and popular councils a
good measure of its interconnectedness.
A principal impact has been on Neighborhood Associations. Neighborhood
associations, as described for other cities in Brazil, are a central feature of
community associative life, particularly for popular classes (Assies, 1992;
Boschi, 1987; Gay, 1995). Neighborhood associations are often a principal
reference point for community residents for social activities, social and mutual
assistance, for intermediation with authorities, and for resolving conflicts in the
neighborhood. As Gohn (1982) describes it, neighborhood associations are often
the only formal space in a given community, and are sometimes seen by
residents as an extension of municipal government. While neighborhood
association presidents have often been a principal figure in arrangements of the
exchange of favors with politicians, elections over neighborhood association
directorates are often heavily contested along party-lines. Neighborhood
associations have often been, then, the principal channel to authorities for
societal demands for urban groups. My 1999 survey of associational life in
three of the citys districts found that 80% of associations held meetings at
least once a month, and that over half had meetings more than once a month,
which lends credibility to the fact that these are indeed functioning and real
associations.
Numerous new associations have been formed because of the changes
associated with participatory governance. Districts with high poverty, the ones
with generally higher participation in the Budget meetings, have experienced
the most pronounced changes in associational life in the direction of new
associations. An activist in the poorest district of the city who has followed the
process closely accounted for these changes:
New leaders appear with new ideas every year [. . .] many of the vilas now have developed
associations to fight through the Participatory Budget, and old ones are reopening to go
demand [projects] in the Participatory Budget (Fernando, interview, 1998).
A typical story is that of the Vila So Pedro in the Partenon district. Its
association was founded in 1981 as a social service association, but stopped
functioning in 1986 because of lack of interest. A number of residents attended
OP meetings in 1994 and decided to re-activate the association. The association
has functioned ever since and has been demanding sewage, and street pavement
projects through the OP. It has carried out a number of partnership projects
with the administration, including an adult literacy and has now developed a
day-care center (interviews).
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These changes have been most pronounced in the citys poorest districts,
areas that generally had the least organized associative networks. Aggregate
evidence about the changes in associational patterns showed that districts with
the highest levels of poverty tended to have some of the lowest levels of
associational density in 1988 counted as the numbers of associations per
thousand residents but were the ones that experienced the most pronounced
growth in associations. According to my data, the three poorest districts of the
city, Nordeste, Lomba do Pinheiro, and Restinga, were among the ones that
experienced the most pronounced changes.34
The Nordeste district, for example, provides a clear example. This district of
25,000 residents is one of the poorest and most remote districts of the city;
many of the eighteen popular settlements here are re-settlements from other
parts of the city, and a third of the adult population has education of up to
three years, which is twice the concentration of adults in the lowest education
bracket for the whole city (Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre, 1999). There
were, only two functioning neighborhood associations in 1989, but the district
has had some of the highest numbers of participants in the Participatory Budget
in the whole city. Working around the OP created an important impetus for
fostering other associations in the years following; in the second year of the
Participatory Budget here participants rented a bus which drove around from
settlement to settlement to decide on priorities and needs because it would
impossible to know what was going on another settlement without seeing it
(interviews). By 1999, twenty-seven different groupings elected delegates in
the proceedings; of those, fourteen were registered associations, and twelve
were regularly functioning associations (interviews).
Changes in Associative Practices
There is also evidence of changes in the nature of associative practices in Porto
Alegre. For one, neighborhood associations have often ceased conflictive
activity or other types of pressure tactics, such as petitions directed to politicians.
There is also some evidence for increased proceduralism and rotation among
neighborhood associations, as much of the problem-solving of associations
became directed to the participatory process. New forms of associative practices,
often closely related to participatory governance itself, have appeared.
Historical and interview evidence points to a fundamental change away from
some earlier practices of neighborhood associations. Several activists pointed
to the end of the old militancy and the days of mobilizing directly against
the municipal government(interviews). Counts of the number of land invasions
and direct protests at city hall show that they have declined over the years in
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Porto Alegre, from a high-point in 1987 and 1988.35 A not uncommon sentiment,
is that some activists worry about the fact that community movement has
become less confrontational:
The problem is that we have become too close to the administration. What happens is that
the movement now is tied to the administration. [. . .] that old militancy of going door to
door to confront the government is gone. Now the OP is everything, [and] this worries me
a lot (Nino, interview, 1998).
Similarly, activists also point to the end of the practice of direct mediation
between administration officials and neighborhood leaders, and of strategies like
gathering petitions related to that practice. As an interviewee reiterated:
Before you had to go to politicians office when you had to get something done [. . .] When
you saw him you told him why you needed this street or materials for the (neighborhood)
association building. It was always an exchange. Or you would bring a petition with lots
of signatures to show you had respect in the community. Today it is different (Nara, interview
1988).
While it is difficult to establish with precision the magnitude of the changes,

all evidence points to a change away from the practice of personal mediation
between association presidents and government bureaucrats, as has been
described as a traditional form of relationship between neighborhood
associations and various levels of government in Brazil (Boschi, 1987; Gohn,
1983; Gay, 1995b). There is some evidence for greater a greater open
democraticness36 and proceduralism among newer associations, as shown in
Table 4, below.
Taking as a starting point the differences between associations activated or
re-activated since the OP and those functioning since before, some patterns are
Table 4.
Proceduralism Among 100 Active Neighborhood Associations in

Porto Alegre.
Functioning Since
OP
Total
Direct Elections
Elections Open to All
Charges Dues
Participates in OP
Commissions and
Committees
Source: 1999 Survey of Associations.
50%
96%
76%
44%
100%
82%
Functioning prior to
OP
50%
90%
66%
56%
86%
68%
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evident. Older associations tended to more often require that a person be a dues
paying member in good standing in order to vote, and were slightly less likely
to hold open elections for the board of directors; newer associations reported
a greater importance on committees and consensus decision-making and were
less stringent about who could vote or belong to the association. Although it
is difficult to get precise answers, due to the nature of clientelistic relationships,
it is worth noting among neighborhood associations activated or re-activated
since the OP, only 2% of respondents to the association having received a
favor from a politician or secretary as opposed to 18% among those whose
associations pre-date participatory reforms.37
The example of a new work cooperative in the Norte district, UNIVENS,
illustrates well these features. After concerned citizens from outside the areas
neighborhood association started to participate regularly in the OP, and tried,
unsuccessfully to change it, they formed a cooperative:
Some of us had tried to run for the presidency of the [existing] association in 1992 because
we wanted it to defend our interests in the OP, but we were not able to win [. . .] The old
association was originally a social club and they were not really concerned with some of
the problems we had, like the terrible problem with dust and the children in the unpaved
road, and they didnt attend the OP. It was difficult for us to win the election because not
everyone could afford the dues. In time, we created a cooperative to deal with the
unemployment (interview participant, 1998).
The cooperative has continued to function regularly, having regular attendees

at the OP, and managed to elect one of the councilors for the district. With the
support of other delegates in the Participatory Budget, the cooperative has
continued to expand its activities; originally from outside of an organized neighborhood association, members of the new cooperative created an institution that
had more egalitarian, not requiring dues payments, and more linked to local
problems. Importantly, the new cooperative was more involved in the OP, and
its activists more geared to participation in government-sponsored fora.
A new form of associative practice is a turn toward participation in government.
As the table above shows, new associations are more likely to participate in the
OP. Participation in government in general has also become a more important.
Among the delegates in the 1999 survey, 15% participated in one instance of a
sectoral council; among general participants in 1998, 4% of district participants
and 10% of thematic participants attended a meeting of one of these councils,
higher figures than participation in either unions or political parties. Very many
councils have gained in importance in recent years, as for example, the Municipal
Council on Human Rights.38 This council came into existence in 1993 after a
working group of representatives from associations in civil society had proposed
its creation to the Municipal Executive. In 1994, the Council became a
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legal-statutory institution with the power to propose, coordinate, and supervise

public policy relating to human rights (Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre,
1993b, 1994). It has become a permanent council that meets monthly, and in 1997
it sponsored a city-wide conference on human rights that led to the creation of
district-level fora on human rights, where hundreds of participants became local
human rights agents. The growing importance of participation in these types of
settings, as evidenced by surveys and other evidence above, points to a distinctive
form of the evolution of associative practices in Porto Alegre. The relative slowdown in the growth of new neighborhood associations in most recent years, as
discussed by Baierle (2001), may have to do with the growth in these new forms.
Scaling-up Activism
Popular councils are autonomous institutions that hold regular district-level
meetings on a weekly or bi-monthly basis for representatives of neighborhood
associations as well as independent citizens wishing to discuss the districts
problems, coordinating activities between neighborhood associations and
deploying collective resources for the solving district-level problems. A number
of these councils became organized in the first few years of the Participatory
Budget. Prior to the participatory reforms, there were two such councils that
were functioning regularly or semi-regularly. One, in the Lomba district,
managed a public act of protest against the Collares administration that drew
150 people, but had not been able to sustain regular activities until after the
establishment of the OP in the PT administration. Similarly, other councils
started to intensify their activities. The Cruzeiro district, home to the conflictive
activities around vila Tronco, had a forum that had six regular attending associations, which intensified its activities beginning in 1990 to attract several more
associations (Baierle, 1992). The other nine councils essentially started to function with the development of participatory reforms.
One of the impacts of the establishment of OP meetings in the various districts
was the increased activity of district-level activism and the formalization of
these activities in Popular Councils (also known as Unio de Vilas
Neighborhood Unions) with regional scopes that mirrored the division of the
OP of the city into sixteen districts. These have become so important that a
long-time activist in one of the Popular Councils described the current era as
the era of the [Popular] Council. Long considered an important issue for
Ecclesiastic Base Community activists as well as for other popular educators
in advisory groups, such councils held the promise of articulating the popular
movement and its various components (CAMP, 1987). Similar Councils had
been formed with some success in other urban centers, as a semi-permanent
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forum of discussion, and remain independent of political parties and of the

state.39 Writings from the Popular Council of the Glria district describe the
purposes and functions of such a council:
A Popular Council is the entity that brings together all associations in a district or region
such as: Neighborhood Associations, Community Centers [. . .] Each association of these
has its own interests and problems, and its struggles. In the Council they will fight together
for issues for the whole district, and making decisions that will benefit the greatest number
of persons and not just one association (Conselho Popular da Gloria, 1992).
Though it was not an actual policy of the administration to create these councils, that they developed in parallel to the Participatory Budget is instructive of
how the process fostered their appearance. In the Leste district, for example,
the Council developed in 1991 in function of the OP activities, and in 1992 its
leaders had split into two groups: one that was developing its knowledge of
health policy, and one of land-use policy, with the intent to interfere in both
kinds of policies in the district (Schmidtt, 1993, p. 141). In one of the districts,
the appearance of the Popular Council there is explained as a result of the new
possibility of district-level networks to intervene in public affairs:
the [new] Popular Council of the district begun to include in its agenda discussions about
how to intervene, even if at the time the administration did not give it enough space for
popular intervention (Barcellos, Vitiano, & Nunes, 1993, p. 75).
Scaling-up of activism has also meant increased municipal-level activism, and

a number of municipal mobilizations have resulted in the years since the establishment of the OP reforms. These included a city-wide effort against hunger
and misery. Neighborhood associations, Popular Councils, Samba schools, and
others acted to collect food donations, and local councils along the district-lines
of the OP distributed it to some of the 30,000 hungry families in Porto Alegre
in 1991 (Comite Contra a Fome e Miseria, 1991). Another similar effort was
the municipal mobilization against hunger and unemployment, also in 1991. It
consisted of monthly meetings and working groups of groups in civil society,
including neighborhood associations, the associations of business owners and
unions. The purpose of the meetings was to guide the emergency policy of the
administration as well as to mobilize and coordinate civic action around hunger
(Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre, 1991). The various municipal fora on
specific issues, including on human rights, rights of minors, the environment,
and others, no doubt have emerged out of the networks of activists who now
coordinate efforts municipally, such as city-wide mobilizations against human
rights (1997) and on discrimination (2001).
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The Rest of Civil Society

Although in this account I have emphasized the role of neighborhood associations,
popular councils, and sectoral councils as the main sectors of civil society, they
are not all of it. A number of volunteer social service organizations, including
mutual assistance societies, volunteer day-care centers, and womens groups that
provide social services, also actively function in Porto Alegre. As of 1998, there
were 449 volunteer social service organizations registered with the department of
social services (FESC). Although there are no precise data available about the
trends in this sector, evidence suggests that the number of such social service organizations has been growing throughout the period of the Popular Administration.
A number of volunteer social service organizations have appeared in Porto Alegre
since 1989, many of which as an outgrowth of neighborhood associations. Of the
247 that offer day-care and educational services, over three quarters are tied to
neighborhood associations of some kind. (Conselho Municipal da Crianca e do
Adolescente, 1998) Evidence suggests that many of these have appeared, or
started to function with greater regularity, as result of the increased functioning of
civil society since the 1990s. Part of this is no doubt directly the result of
municipal policy, such as the system of partnerships that has generated over 100
new volunteer-run day-care centers since the 1990s, but part of it no doubt has to
do infusion of new activism in civil society. A typical example of the partnership
is the Community day-care center Nossa Senhora Aparecida in a working class
neighborhood of the Partenon district. Its parent neighborhood association the
Association of Vila So Pedro in the Partenon district- that had ceased functioning in 1986, re-started in 1994 in function of OP meetings. Evidence also points
to an envigoration of cultural groups, such as Samba schools, Afro-brazilian
awareness groups and gaucho (native of the state) cultural groups in recent years.
Particularly affected have been those groups that have been able to address their
demands directly through some of the participatory institutions. Through the
thematic meetings on culture, for example, a number of projects on Afro-brazilian
culture have been undertaken, and this has had to do with the increased visibility
of such groups in Porto Alegre in recent years. There is an umbrella group for
Samba schools, AECPARS (Associao de Entidades Carnavalescas de Porto
Alegre) that has functioned since the mid 1980s, but that has become more active
in the 1990s.
6. UNDERSTANDING THE MECHANISMS

The transformed relationship between civil society and the municipal state
deeply affected civil society and fostered new kinds of civic engagement,
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especially among Porto Alegres poorer districts. It is possible to unravel the

impact in terms of four different types of mechanisms discussed below: changed
incentives for civic engagement, a training of new participants in civil society,
the formation of new networks as result of participatory governance, and the
generalization of a language of accountability.
Changed Collective Incentives
Participatory institutions in the case of Porto Alegre have addressed issues that
were central to the concerns of civil society, making access to the societal
demands easier. Essential issues addressed by neighborhood associations
throughout the 1980s had to do with urban infrastructure and urban services,
and the OP centrally accessed those questions. As an interviewee stated,
Before the Participatory Budget, the associations used to work by themselves. Each one
would write up its demands and go to the government. Today, 90% of the business of
associations is through the Participatory Budget. All our main demands are through the
Participatory Budget. And even complaints are through the Participatory Budget (Antonio,
Interview 1997).
There is not a direct incentive to create an association, because formal existence

is not a requisite to participation. But, the calculus for forming an association
has become different. Before, in the context of uncertain returns from municipal
government, neighborhood activists had difficulties in drawing participants to
meetings on a regular basis. Now, there are incentives for extended collective
work through the OP, and this has often translated into new associations. A
common pattern that activists often describe for how new neighborhood
associations develop is around a demand that requires some kind of collective
mobilization. Sometimes there already is a registered, but inactive, association
for the area. Nonetheless, one or more concerned persons will begin to attend
Participatory Budget meetings and eventually mobilize a number of concerned
neighbors who then attend as an ad-hoc group that later becomes a more permanent association40:
We began by attending the Participatory Budget meeting. There used to be an association
here, but it was more social and less interested in the problems of our side of the vila. So
we went with a different name, and today we are registered as an association. We were
able to get part of the street paved but we are still going to go back because there is a lot
we still need still (Marilia, interview 1997).
In the 1998 survey respondents were asked if they used to participate more or
less in civil society before coming to the Participatory Budget. While 10%
answered to participating less, 27% replied that they participate the same (in
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addition to now participating in the OP) and 27% participate more, which further
lends credence to the argument that the OP functions as an impetus to civic
activism.
Training
One important trend is that there appears to have been a renewal of leadership
in civil society throughout the city. Among neighborhood association presidents,
for example, approximately 40% had their start in associative life with the OP,
and there is some evidence for a greater turn-over in the position of president
of neighborhood associations overall.41 The question of renewal is particularly
important for neighborhood associations because, as many students of urban
politics throughout Brazil have pointed, traditional neighborhood associations
often have lifetime presidents. The institutional design of OP includes many
meetings devoted to learning procedures and rules, as well as more specific
technical criteria for municipal projects. Participants acquire the specific competences related to budgeting, but also acquire skills in debating and mobilizing
resources for collective goals. One participant with only a few years of schooling
elected as Councilor early on in the process, discussed what it was like in the
beginning as a less educated person:
I had to learn about the process as the meetings took place. The first time I participated I
was unsure, because there were persons there with college degrees, and I dont. So I had
to wait for the others to suggest an idea first, and then enter the discussion. [. . .] But with
time I started to learn (Gilberto, Interview 1997).
Participants of the process often recounted that as civil society had changed in
these directions toward municipal and district-level focus and they usually
recounted that the process had an effect on them, personally, in recasting their
horizons as activists:
As delegate and councilor you learn about the region, meet new persons, become a person
who has to respond not only to your association, but also to the district as a whole and the
city as a whole. [. . .]I learned not to look only at the district, but that you have to look at
the city as a whole (Antonio, interview, 1997).
As mentioned earlier, the Participatory Budget has individual didactic effects.

The Participatory Budget accounts for the induction of activists into associations
of civil society, and the political learning of most new activists today. Among
delegates, 43% had their start in associative life in the OP; among those with
less than five years experience, the majority of whom had their start in the
Participatory Budget. Aproximately a third of councilors of the budget had their
start in associative life with the budget. While this renewal is less pronounced
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at the higher tiers of the process, it shows that there has been a significant
influx into associative life from the OP itself.42
The Network of Conversation
A third mechanism is the way in which the participatory process facilitates
coordination. Observers of the process, as Gildo Lima, one of the architects of
the participatory structures in the first administration argues that civil society
has indeed become less locally focused as a result of the Participatory Budget,
and that a new form of mobilization has emerged:
This type of mass mobilization campaign has become rapid, dynamic, and has established
a frequent network of conversations. While I dont speak to my neighbor who lives in
front of my apartment, [. . .] in this network the guy who lives here speaks with the guy
who lives on the other side, and the one who lives really far away, every week because of
this process. Many people do not realize that that we have created the capacity for dialogue
every week as a result of the Participatory Budget (Gildo Lima, interview, 1999).
A number of activists echoed that this indeed was an important process for
development of more permanent networks of activists. For example, an activist
described her trajectory from becoming involved in the Forum of Cooperatives
to then becoming an elected delegate and Councilor, and the way the
Participatory Budget has helped foster more or less permanent bonds:
After starting to participate [. . .] I started to become involved with community leaders and
wound up being elected as a Delegate of the Participatory Budget. At first, I did not understand much, but with time I started to get it. I got a group together from our cooperative
to come on a regular basis. I then was elected to the Council. There it was where I really
learned what is a movement, what a community leader does (Maria, interview 1999).
A smaller survey I conducted among delegates (n = 104) and councilors

(n = 39) bears out that most activists participate in a number of different fora.
On average, delegates participate in 2 to 3 meetings a week, and are regular
attendees in 3 to 4 different fora. These were, in addition to neighborhood
associations, sectoral councils, cultural groups, and political parties. This participatory profile is shown below.
There were district-level differences, but among delegates, almost all respondents participated regularly in a forum outside of the OP, with 44% of
respondents participating regularly in a forum with a district or municipal focus
other than the Participatory Budget, such as a sectoral council. Among
councilors, 100% participated in a district or municipal forum other than the
OP. Both delegates and councilors dedicated significant amounts of hours to
associative life, and both had significant numbers of ties in civil society. Almost
all activists reported participating regularly in their local neighborhood
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Table 5.
Profile of Delegates and Councilors and Involvement

in Civil Society, 1999.
Weekly Hours in Meetingsa

Ties in Civil Society
Community Experience (Years)
OP Experience (Years)
Started in Civil Society with the OP
Delegates
Councilors
7.8
2.9
7.5
4.6
43%
15.5
4.1
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5.7
33%
Source: 1999 Survey of Delegates and Councilors.

a
All figures are self-reported.
association. The larger survey of participants of 1998, yielded a similar picture.

It asked if they regularly participated in outside settings, and showed that over
two-thirds of participants (68%) in the district-level plenary meetings participated in other settings, such as neighborhood associations (42% of total
participants), cultural and religious groups (8%), sectoral councils (4%), and
unions (4%).43 The data on associations also gives a picture of the types of
networks that occur through the OP: it showed that on the whole, associations
were more like to have participants attend the OP (92%) than to have sent a
participant to one of the city-wide meetings of UAMPA (21%).
The Generalization of Accountability
A final impact, analytically distinct from the other three, and also distinct from
good governance itself, is the diffusion of a language and rhetoric of
accountability and of the public good. Participatory Budgeting helps create an
associative environment that is rule-bound, and where citizen-participants
become in a sense empowered to demand accountability and justification for the
actions of municipal government. In the case of meetings, this justification comes
under a number of forms. The cultural logic of justification that citizens are
entitled to demand it from the government permeates discussions that take place
in the Participatory Budget, and provides a powerful symbolic resource for
activists to make other demands on municipal or other levels of government. A
deliberative setting, in other words, where citizens are entitled to demand
justification from the government is a setting where those citizens will feel
entitled to continuously demand justification. As an activist I interviewed put it,
The OP shows that we can be citizens with rights. We dont need favors and we have rights
rights to ask for projects and rights to ask the Mayor and the engineer why they [projects]
dont come (Ar, Interview).
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Several examples could be cited to show that citizens who feel entitled to
demand accountability from municipal government through Budget meetings
are likely to demand justification from any public official. Participants
mentioned in interviews that at plenary meetings when the municipal
government is present, questions to the government often have to do with several
separate realms of governance, and rarely remain tied to OP projects. At district
level intermediate meetings participants often question government officials
present on the functioning of their whole department rather than only on the
technicalities of specific projects, as specified by the calendar of events:
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The impact of this diffusion of accountability is more difficult to trace, but

newspapers from various community groups, such as Comunidade,44 often
criticize the administration using the same language of accountability and
transparency that is part of participatory institutions.
When the housing department comes, it is a general confusion. They come to talk about
something of the projects for next year, but if there is something pending about a vila with
problems thats what we make them talk about, we dont let them get off (Marcos, interview).
7. CONCLUSION: THE LIMITS OF A

PARTICIPATORY REGIME?
Analysts of civil society have argued that we must pay attention to the
institutionalization of oppositional politics (Cohen, 1985). There is much work
on social movements in democratizing settings, and all of it in some way
addresses the conditions under which social movements are developed and
sustained. There is still little empirical research, however, on what happens
when oppositional movements become institutional players, and here I have
attempted to contribute to that question by recasting the several terms in office
of the Workers Party in Porto Alegre in terms of state-civil society regimes.
Framing the case this way also adds to the discussions on state-society
collaboration and synergy. Discussions about the collaboration across the
public-private divide, as those inspired by Evans (1996), have pointed to
the ways in which social movements, unions, neighborhood associations and
regular citizens have come to help make government more accountable, more
efficient, and in some cases more redistributive in several well-known cases. I
have focused on a related question: how can governments create an environment
that facilitates the functioning for civil society?
Based on my comparison of two periods of Porto Alegres recent history, in
this article I explored two state-civil society regimes: a regime of tutelage,
in which municipal government responded to a certain level of societal demands
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by posing constraints of political allegiance on civil society; and an empowered

participatory regime, in which municipal government has responded to societal
demands, but in which claimants themselves, that is, citizens and organizations
of civil society were responsible for processing demands. In the tutelage regime,
neighborhood associations entered into cycles of acquiescence and conflict as
each association pursued individual demands with the administration. As
demands were partially met, associations acquiesced; but as discontentment with
the type of social demand given grew, associations entered into conflict. The
ultimate result was that by 1988, several associations were demobilized.
The empowered participatory regime, on the other hand, has created an
environment in which civic engagement is more productive, from the point of
view of neighborhood associations, and facilitated by institutions of participatory
governance. While the stated goal of participatory governance here has to do
primarily with redistribution of resources, an additional outcome has been that
associationalism has expanded throughout the city, particularly in its poorest
areas. I pointed to the impact of changed collective incentives, the increased
communication among activists, the training of new participants, and a language
of accountability as the primary ways in which participatory governance
synergized civil society.
A number of questions remain for further work, both on this case and on
similar cases. First is assessing the longer-term significance of the changes in
associative practices of previously oppositional actors. The associative practices
of neighborhood associations in civil society have changed profoundly as result
of this new regime. Activists in civil society now tend to get their start in civic
life through institutions of participatory governance as opposed to via political
parties or religious groups, as had been the case in the past. The environment
in which civil society functions is distinct from the past, with a much greater
openness to societal demands and less use for certain kinds of strategies and
coalitions. For neighborhood associations, for instance, strategies of confrontation with municipal authorities have become less frequent.45 The city-wide
association of neighborhood associations, which was founded as a coalition of
associations in opposition to the military government, has not been able to find
an effective role in the reconfigured civil society, which has led commentators,
such as Baierle (1992) and Fedozzi (2001) to describe its crisis. The number
of neighborhood associations actively participating in UAMPA meetings
declined steadily, and more and more throughout the 1990s, UAMPA positions
became less important in the mobilization of civil society as a whole, though
civil society itself continued to mobilize with greater frequency through fora
sponsored by the municipal government. Partially because of its emphasis on
neighborhood associations as the sole representatives of civil society, and
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partially because of the changes in civil society, UAMPA has given way to the
OP as the principal way to link disparate local struggles. The question that
remains, then, is whether this turn away from UAMPA comes at the cost of
the ability of maintaining autonomous spaces and networks away from the
municipal government that could one day be important.
Similarly, another question that remains is whether the attention of civil
society to almost exclusively local issues as result of the success of the participatory process in delivering results is to its detriment. One of the recurring
critiques leveled at the process in its early years, even from within the PT, was
that it remained limited to very specific demands. That despite permitting participants to decide over many different types of municipal investments, the process
still denied access to more comprehensive or more long-term questions. Joo
Couto, head of the Social Movements department of the PT for Rio Grande do
Sul, charged in 1992 that social movements had become very localized . . .
and living from dealing with local, current, problems, and that this had made
it difficult to organize around broader questions (Harnecker, 1992, p. 23).
While the municipal government has attempted to address these criticisms by
expanding the participatory process to include broader areas of municipal
governance, activists today express disappointment at the inability to mobilize
around concerns aimed at the federal government.
The case of Porto Alegre also raises several issues for further comparative
work. First, the case clearly suggests that there are instances where civil society
and its solidarities can be constructed, and constructed over a relatively short
period of time given a certain transformation of the municipal state. Echoing
the themes of U.S.-based scholars who have pointed to the importance of state
institutions for civic life, I here have shown the way in which this state-side
democratization has served the purpose of creating the conditions for this
transformation. Clearly further comparative work is needed that addresses the
civic impact of changes in local-level states and the way these interact with
broader national conditions. One element for consideration is whether these
changes are possible in cities or localities with less developed civil societies.
While civil society was de-mobilized as a result of the tutelage regime, Porto
Alegre was a city where civil society was already quite developed when
compared to other cities in Brazil, particularly those in areas of the country
where associationalism has traditionally been weaker, such as the North. While
the change has been rapid and significant, such changes may or may not
be possible in settings without any civil society at all. While this would only
be settled by comparative work, in-city evidence for Porto Alegre points
us to interesting hypotheses: when we consider districts of the city without
significant associational life, some of those districts were the ones with most
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significant changes over time. Some initial results from other cities in Brazil,
however, has also pointed to difficulties in some areas without any associational
life.46 In some of the municipalities in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre,
for example, OP-type reforms have not been very successful in activating civic
engagement (Silva, 2001).
Another concern for comparative research will be institutional design. A
central issue for understanding the functioning of empowered participatory
regimes is the institutional form of the interfaces with civil society. Within
the definition sketched out in this article, there are several possible forms the
interface may take- there may be variation as to whether it is organized by
localities or sectoral interests, on the definition of recognized participants, and
the rules governing participation, among others. While scholars have addressed
different forms of empowered participation (Fung & Wright, 2000), as the
research continues, one of the issues to be explored will have to be the impact
on civil society of specific institutional arrangements within otherwise comparable settings. An issue raised by the case here, for example, is whether certain
types of institutional arrangements of empowered participation are more prone
to capture by local bosses.
The approach developed here can be juxtaposed to the deep pathdependent account of Robert Putnam about the conditions for an active civic
life in Making Democracy Work (1993). There, Putnam is ultimately
pessimistic about the potential for active civic life anywhere outside of North
Atlantic societies, and posits a centuries-long path dependent account of
the dynamics of civil society. Not only does this case call into question the
long-term assumptions of that work, but also the assumptions about units
of analysis, as it becomes clear, at least here, that taking subnational
units of analysis would obscure important factors. While Putnam does
mention the role of the state at certain points in U.S. history in facilitating
civic engagement in his more recent Bowling Alone (2000), the observation
is not central to his argument about the dynamics of civil society. I have
proposed instead an approach that considers the state centrally, by highlighting its role in creating associational conditions through its openness to
societal demands. This approach necessarily brings into view questions of
politics and conflict as central to discussions of civil society, further
challenging the assumption of the separateness of civil society from those
arenas. Perhaps, echoing Tarrow (1996), the culprit in declining civic
engagement in the United States is to be found not in a factor endogenous
to civil society itself, but perhaps in changing sets of local conditions, where
the changing levels of openness of the state to societal demands have
interacted with changing associational patterns and networks.
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NOTES
1. The results of the 1999 survey are described in Baiocchi (2001), while the results
of the 2001 survey, carried out in conjuction with Marcelo K. Silva, are unpublished.
The features of these surveys are described in the Data Appendix.
2. Some foundational statements can be found in the work of (Cohen & Arato, 1992;
Gellner, 1998; Habermas, 1996; Keane, 1998).
3. Somers writes that a relational-institutional approach, disaggregates social
categories and reconfigures them into institutional and relational clusters into which
people, power, and organizations are positioned and connected . . . [seeing society as a]
patterned matrix of institutional relationships among cultural, economic, social, and
political practices (Somers, 1993, p. 595).
4. This also permits us to consider vastly wider historical experiences from nations
where the development of civil society may not have been so seemingly separate from
the state as in typified in North Atlantic nations. Elley (1992) cites Gramsci: In Russia
the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the west there
was a proper relations between state and civil society, and when the state trembled a
sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed (1971, p. 54).
5. Davis describes the Consejo Consultivo de La Ciudad de Mexico, which was
established in the late 1920s as part of the corporative strategies of the ruling party in
Mexico:
It was to be a body of politically appointed representatives with the official purpose of
aiding Mexico Citys mayor in governing the capital. It had no legislative power, and its
representatives were handpicked by the Calles-dominated PNR leadership. [. . .] representatives were selected who could vocalize the urban demands and redevelopment concerns
of well-established constituencies in the capital. . . and from groups groups whose relatively
high degree of mobilization or organization meant they could cause political problems if
not incorporated (1994, pp. 6768).
6. See Migdal (2001), chapter 3.

7. No comparative data exists. Census data from 1988 about membership in
associations provides a proxy, but the data is only disaggregated to the level of
metropolitan regions, and not municipality. Among metropolitan regions, Porto Alegres
(of which the municipality of Porto Alegre accounts for approximately half the
population) had among the highest rates of the eight metropolitan regions, though lower
than the state average (PNAD, 1988, calculations mine).
8. Ferreira finds that the percentage of those participating in a neighborhood
association in Brazils six largest metropolitan regions increased from 2.3% to 2.5%,
while the percentage of persons participating in any group in civil society declined from
14.3% to 12.1% (Ferreira, 2000). Some of the results of the 1996 survey are available
in IBGE (2000).
9. A mayor not linked to either of the two legal parties (ARENA and MDB) in
existence during the dictatorship.
10. Baierle also cites the example of Vila Nova Gleba, in the Norte district (Baierle,
1992, p. 91).
11. See, for example, (Azevedo, 1988; Bava, 1983; Partido dos Trabalhadores, 1989;
Pinto, 1988; UAMPA, 1986).
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12. Iria Sharo, one of the architects of the process recalled this in an interview with
Marta Harnecker (Harnecker, 1993, p. 22). Other recollections from the time, such as
the ones recorded by Fedozzi (2001) and Abers (2001) offer similar interpretations.
13. Several interviews discussed the fact that with the advent of the PT administration, the citys civil society was all but emptied of PT activists who took up posts in
the municipality.
14. A number of early difficulties between organized sectors and the administration
took place, including conflicts over the price of bus-fares and over demands by one of
the organized popular councils in the city. In addition, an attempt of the administration
to directly create a popular council in one of the other citys districts ended in
disappointment. These are discussed in (Baiocchi, 2001b, Chapter 3).
15. No precise data exists about the number of participants over the years in the
sectoral councils, but several of them, such as the health council (which predates the
PT administration), the social services council, the council on housing, and the council
on planning, have meetings in each of the districts throughout the year that gather
consistent levels of participation.
16. The OP does not have statutory existence codified in municipal laws, however.
OP decisions are turned over to the executive, which then submits it to the municipal
legislative for approval. While the municipal legislative has not ever vetoed or significantly altered the budget decided upon by the OP, yearly approval of the budget has
often been a contentious issue because the majority of city-council has been from other
parties. See Abers (2001), CIDADE (1995) and Genro (1997) for discussion.
17. For the year of 2002 the institutional format has changed to a single plenary
meeting in the yearly cycle.
18. According to 1999 rules, the number of delegates for a district is determined as
follows: for the first 100 persons, one delegate for every ten persons; for the next 150
persons, one for twenty; for the next 150, one for thirty; for each additional forty persons
after that, one delegate. The number of delegates for an individual group will be based
on its proportion of the total of participants (Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre, 1998).
19. This formulas have been changed over the years, but overall investment priorities
for the city are based on the ranking of the various priority areas in the districts.
Resources are divided among districts based on district-level needs, population, and the
ranking of that particular priority area in the district. From these formulas, a certain
number of the projects in each district will be approved for the years budget (Prefeitura
Municipal de Porto Alegre, 1998).
20. For instance, the formula for allocation of resources was changed from one that
originally considered mobilization (i.e. the number of participants) to the current one
that considered population, need and district-level priorities. Other changes enacted by
councilors has been the introduction of term limits, rules about instant recall of councilors
by their district, and rules about the proportion of participants to delegates.
21. This, coupled with the fact that councilors cannot introduce projects or alter
projects and priorities chosen by the district, help prevent the capture of the system by
local strong-men who would turn the process into a patron-client exchange.
22. Data on participation come from the Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre (2001a),
also cited in Fedozzi (2001). Participation appears to have reached a limit of roughly
20,000 in 2001. See (Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre, 2001b). The estimate of
plenary participants is a rough guide to the magnitude of participation throughout
the whole process; while it is a higher number than the number of delegates who
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participate throughout the year, it, in principle, captures the number of participants at
the neighborhood level who meet with delegates to decide on the neighborhood-level
priorities and projects.
23. While districts include several neighborhoods and generally defy simple characterizations such as middle class or poor districts, per-district rates of poverty are
highly correlated with per-capita rates of participation over the years. Taking population
data from 1999, and participation figures for 19901998, a number of trends become
apparent. Districts with the highest levels of poverty, such as the Nordeste (61%), Lomba
(59%) and Restinga (54%) districts, had, on average, per-capita participation rates of
1.6%, 1.1%, and 0.86%. That is, the Nordeste district had an average participation in
plenary meetings of 1.6% of its population between 1990 and 1998. Districts with the
lowest rates of poverty, such as Centro (15%), Noroeste (23%) and Sul (31%) had
average participation rates of 0.08%, 0.14%, and 0.53%, respectively. Calculated from
(Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre, 1999).
24. This information comes from interview evidence and from recollections published
in Abers (1999), and Fedozzi (1997).
25. In 1993, 8% of participants were college educated, against 16% in 1998, while
in 1993 21% of participants were in the directorate of neighborhood associations, against
9% in 1998.
26. A Minimum Wage is a convenient unit to measure income in Brazil with
currency fluctuations. As of 02/2001 it is fluctuating at near U.S.$70 per month, and
poverty is often informally set at a household income of 2 Minimum Wages per month.
According to census evidence, 45% of Porto Alegres households had earnings of up to
four minimum wages, and 55% of its adults had education of up to eighth-grade
(Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre, 1999).
27. Thematic participants, who in numbers have made up between 15 and 18% of
total participants (Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre, 2001a) had, in 1998, more years
of education (9.9) and lower percentages of participants from low-income households
(23%) than district level participants (7.2 years and 34%, respectively).
28. Women, for example, are just over 50% of general participants, though making
up only 35% of councilors (CIDADE, 1999).
29. From 1993 to 1998, between 35 and 40% of participants were first-time participants, and between 1820% had no affiliation in civil society (Abers, 2001; CIDADE,
1999b; Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre & Fedozzi, 1993).
30. Between 8% and 20% of each years budget is available to new investment
(Marquetti, 2000). Some projects are institutional projects, such the renovation of an
administration building, that the administration proposes to the OP council of the Budget,
who approve all new investments.
31. Pozzobon (1998, pp. 310) provides evidence of some of these changes, offering
comparisons to earlier periods. She finds, for instance, that sewage coverage has increased
to 98% of houselholds by 1998, compared to 75% ten years earlier; similarly, the number
of children in municipal schools has doubled over the period, and the number of families
receiving assistance through housing programs was fifteen times higher in 19921995
when compared to 19861988.
32. Some of the work on governmental performance is discussed in detail by Marquetti
(2000), who discusses the improvements over time in the ratio of employees in service
delivery against employees in administration, as well as the levels of per capita
investments in each of the citys districts over time. Marquetti finds that the levels of
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resources per capita spent in the citys poorer districts is several times higher than percapita levels of investment in wealthier districts (2000).
33. One of the main reasons it is difficult to establish how many active associative
bodies existed at any one point in time is that there are many more groups in law than
in practice. See the data appendix for the sources of data utilized here.
34. Nordeste (with 61.2% of poor households) experienced an increase from 0.08 to
0.6 associations per thousand; Lomba (with 59.1%) from 0.12 to 0.8, and Restinga (with
54.2%) from 0.1 to 0.7. Data on poverty comes from Prefeitura Municipal de Porto
Alegre (1999). Data on associations is discussed in the appendix.
35. A detailed discussion of this evidence, based on newspaper reporting, is found
in Baiocchi (2001a).
36. Here defined in normative terms as a reasonable openness to all to participate in
a decision-making process. See Cohen (1994).
37. We cannot discount the possibility, however, that more recent activists know not
to disclose clientelism.
38. O Conselho Municipal dos Direitos da Cidadania, Contra as Discriminaes.
39. For some visions from the time about the role and purpose of popular councils,
see Bava (1983) and Gohn (1989).
40. Examples such as this one raise the issue of whether this associational growth is
perhaps related to a fragmentation of civil society rather than an increase in civic activism
per se, as the question remains about possible splinter associations may now exist in
the place of a single association. The issue is not easy to address on the basis of the
data presented here alone. The patterns are suggestive the greatest growth in associational density has occurred in areas with the least organization, and that areas with the
greatest level of organization have experienced the least growth, which is the opposite
of what one would expect of splintering alone. In addition, associational density appears
to have apparently not increased much past 1 association per thousand in any district,
which is also suggestive of a limit of associationalism. Interview evidence showed that
while in several neighborhoods more than one association now existed, parallel associations were often composed of new entrants into associative life. See Baiocchi (2001b,
Chapter 3) for a discussion.
41 My research also showed that the last elected president of an association, considering all associations in the sample, was in office for 2.3 years before being voted out,
but the next-to-last president had been in office for an average of 5.4 years. Evidence
from the 1999 survey of associations.
42. The question remains about whether this is a stepping stone to political careers.
As of 1998, three members of the city legislative had been councilors of the OP at some
point. It is early to establish the long term patterns of these trajectories.
43. On the average, each participant had 1.4 ties in civil society, according to 1998
data.
44. Literally, Community.
45. An estimate of land occupations, protests and marches, and conflicts with the
police per year, based on newspaper accounts for the years of 1986 to 2000 shows that
such events occurred less than a third as frequently for the years of 19961998 than in
19861988. This is discussed in Baiocchi (2001).
46. This is found, for example, in Ana C. Teixeiras (unpublished) work on smaller
cities in Brazil. Nylen (2002) also questions whether the empowerment thesis holds
across contexts in Brazil.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research for this essay was funded by a grant from the Inter American
Foundation and by the University of Wisconsin. This essay would not have
been possible without the generosity of the prefeitura of Porto Alegre or the
NGO CIDADE. It has also benefited from the comments of several people,
including Patrick Heller, Peter Evans, Erik Wright, Archon Fung, Marcelo K.
Silva, and Paula Chakravartty. The input of the anonymous reviewers was also
important in the final version of this essay.
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APPENDIX: DATA ON CIVIL SOCIETY

Estimating the number of functioning voluntary associations in Porto Alegre at
different points in time is a challenging task, and the data employed here are
best on the best possible estimates, given the resource constraints. Studies about
Civil Society in Brazil have utilized one of two sources to estimate associational activity, neither of which proved particularly useful by itself in the case
of Porto Alegre. Scholars like Santos (1993) and Boschi (1987) have utilized
municipal registries of associations in the city cartrios (notary publics). In the
case of Porto Alegre, such a strategy did not yield useful results. A sample of
associations registered in the municipal cartrio showed that a large portion of
several registered associations were phantomassociations, many in fact often
registered to the same person. There are several explanations for this: In the
case of Porto Alegre, as may have been true in other cities, government agencies
during the dictatorship went about creating sympathetic neighborhood associations, often writing the statutes; in addition, participation in some of the
federally-funded charity programs, such as the Ticket de Leite (milk ticket)
program required the official registration with the cartrio (and nothing else)
as a prerequisite. The use of such data, therefore, did not yield either an estimate
of actually functioning associations in the present or give a reliable estimate of
associational activity in the past. While the number of associations registered
in the cartrio had increased over the time period of 19891999, it was
theoretically possible that such an increase was accompanied by an actual
decline of associations.
The second source often used for Brazil and associational activity are two
household survey supplements administered by the national census agency, the
IBGE, in 1988 and 1996. While the data available from these supplements
suggestively shows both an increase in associational participation in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre, and the fact that participation in the metropolitan
region of Porto Alegre in 1996 is higher than in most other metropolitan regions
in Brazil, when actual participation essentially remained steady for the whole
country, the data is only disaggregated to the level of the metropolitan region.
This makes the data unusable to test the argument advanced here, because the
metropolitan region of Porto Alegre is comprised of several additional
municipalities in Porto Alegres periphery, and does not allow an analysis of
changes within the municipality itself.
The data for Porto Alegres associational changes, then, are triangulated from
two available sources historical sources, and one restrospective source.
Historically, I relied on a more restrictive municipal listing, and the listing
with the Union of Neighborhood Associations. UAMPA maintains a list of
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neighborhood associations registered with it, and requires dues-payments, which

provides one filter for phantom associations. I utilized UAMPA data, when
available, in addition to city-hall sources. In 1987, the Collares administration
carried out a survey of associations. While this survey might be biased to more
sympathetic associations (though it does include a number of PT associations),
it provides an additional measure of associationalism for the first year in my
series, 1988. For the years following, if an entity described as a neighborhood
association appeared for two years in a row in an OP listing, I considered it
an active association for my count. While it is recognized that these sources of
listings are potentially restrictive (for example, there may be a concern that
UAMPA may not list some conservative neighborhood associations, despite
UAMPAs non partisan stance), it is better to utilize a restrictive, as opposed
to another, inflationary method. In addition, since there is no reason to believe
that the standard of restrictiveness changed over time, we can assume that the
growth in associations found here is real, and not an artifice.
In addition, as a measure of cross-checking, I utilized a survey of associations
carried out in 2001. A survey of neighborhood associations in 2001 yielded the
fact that over half of associations currently functioning were either founded or
re-activated since 1989, which roughly supports the finding here that associationalism doubled in numbers in the time period in question. This mirrors the
finding by Avritzer (2001) that of all associations encountered (not only neighborhood associations), over 40% were founded in the 1990s. Considering
re-activations might have yielded similar figures as the one here.
Surveys: 1998, 1999, and 2001
The 1998 survey of participants cited refers to a survey applied to a representative sample of OP participants drawn from first plenary meetings in March
and April of 1998. Respondents were randomly selected from participants at
each regional and thematic meeting and were asked to answer to a questionnaire.
If the person had difficulty in answering the questionnaire in written format,
an interviewer would apply the questionnaire. The sample of participants (1039)
was roughly 8% of the total number of participants for that year (13,000). The
survey was designed and applied by myself, members of an NGO, CIDADE,
in Porto Alegre, and municipal government employees. In the analysis, data
was weighed, so as to avoid bias from the over sampling of participants who
might come to both thematic and district meetings. Data from this survey were
published in (CIDADE, 1999b), though without the weighing procedures the
results published differ somewhat from the results here. Data for participants
in 1993 and 1995 rely on two similar surveys conducted by the Municipal
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Administration and Luciano Fedozzi (1993), and by CIDADE and Rebecca

Abers (1995). Results from these surveys are available in (CIDADE, 1999a;
Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre & Fedozzi, 1993)
The 1999 survey of delegates refers to a survey applied to delegates in three
of the citys districts (Norte, Nordeste, Partenon) in May and June of 1999.
This survey was applied to all the delegates present at a single meeting randomly
chosen, and the response rate (total n = 104), corresponded to over 75% of
delegates in the three districts. The same survey was applied to councilors at
the Council of the Budget (n = 39). The 1999 survey of neighborhood
associations (n = 100) was carried out in the same districts between February
and May. This survey was based on lists of associations available from UAMPA,
the municipal administration, and Popular Councils. Each identified association
was directly approached and an interview was carried out with its directorate.
The response rate corresponded to over 75% of associations for the three
districts, and for each association, one person from the directorate was interviewed. The logic of a survey in three districts, as opposed to a sample of all
associations in the city, was to capture the variance within the districts as well
as to detect networks among associations. Results from these surveys are
discussed in (Baiocchi, 2001b).
The 2001 survey of associations, carried out in conjunction with Marcelo K.
Silva, was based on a sample of associations in civil society, including unions,
neighborhood associations, beneficiary associations, and NGOs. Associations
were gathered from a number of sources, including municipal government,
UAMPA, and listings in the phone book. Results from this survey are not yet
published.

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Synergizing Civil Society: State Civil Society Regimes in Porto Alegre, Brazil

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PART I.

FORMS OF STATE EMBEDDEDNESS

SYNERGIZING CIVIL SOCIETY:

Synergizing Civil Society

2. INTERFACING CIVIL SOCIETY: TOWARD A

Synergizing Civil Society

Synergizing Civil Society

impact of Great Society programs (and their maximum feasible participation

Comparison of Tutelage and Democratic Affirmative Regimes.

Democratic Affirmative Regimes

Synergizing Civil Society

3. PORTO ALEGRE AND PREVIOUS REGIMES

Synergizing Civil Society

family and country discourses, votes-for-works, a strong personal identification

military regime. In 1983, Union of Neighborhood Associations (Unio de

Synergizing Civil Society

Synergizing Civil Society

4. THE DEMOCRATIC REFORMS TO

Synergizing Civil Society

existed in certain combative union sectors, such as municipal transports,

Synergizing Civil Society

were conceived as advisory bodies to each of the municipal departments with

intermediary meetings, representatives from each of the municipal governments

Synergizing Civil Society

5. IMPACTING CIVIL SOCIETY

would be brought into active participation in civil society as a response to this

Comparison of State-Civil Society Regimes

State-Civil Society Regime

Self-help programs and

Main Organized Areas

Working class and LowerMiddle Class areas

Functioning Municipal Level

Civil Society Actions

Cycles of Acceptance and

Emphasis on novel forms,

Synergizing Civil Society

Transformations of Civil Society in Porto Alegre, 19861998.

Synergizing Civil Society

While it is difficult to establish with precision the magnitude of the changes,

Proceduralism Among 100 Active Neighborhood Associations in

Synergizing Civil Society

The cooperative has continued to function regularly, having regular attendees

legal-statutory institution with the power to propose, coordinate, and supervise

Synergizing Civil Society

forum of discussion, and remain independent of political parties and of the

Scaling-up of activism has also meant increased municipal-level activism, and

The Rest of Civil Society

6. UNDERSTANDING THE MECHANISMS

Synergizing Civil Society

especially among Porto Alegres poorer districts. It is possible to unravel the

There is not a direct incentive to create an association, because formal existence

As mentioned earlier, the Participatory Budget has individual didactic effects.

Synergizing Civil Society

A smaller survey I conducted among delegates (n = 104) and councilors

Profile of Delegates and Councilors and Involvement

Weekly Hours in Meetingsa

Source: 1999 Survey of Delegates and Councilors.

association. The larger survey of participants of 1998, yielded a similar picture.

Synergizing Civil Society

The impact of this diffusion of accountability is more difficult to trace, but

7. CONCLUSION: THE LIMITS OF A

by posing constraints of political allegiance on civil society; and an empowered

Synergizing Civil Society