EMERGENT PUBLIC SPHERES:

TALKING POLITICS IN PARTICIPATORY

GOVERNANCE
GlANPAOLO B A I O C C H I
University of Pittsburgh

This article addresses the question of whether and how participation in government
promotes the conditions for participants to engage in the open-ended and pub lie-
minded discussion heralded by democratic theorists. Ethnographic evidence shows
how participants in assemblies of the "participatory budget" in the city of Porto
Alegre, Brazil, created open-ended and public-minded discussion in two of the city's
poor districts. The urban poor of Latin American have often been treated as unlikely
candidates for democratic engagement, but in these meetings participants regularly
carved out spaces for civic discourse and deliberation, deploying a language of the
commonality of needs as a vocabulary of public interest. In a district with organized
networks of civil society, experienced community activists played an important role
in curtailing conflict, while in a district without such networks, the assemblies were
severely disrupted at times by virtue of being the "only place in the community" that
could serve as a staging ground for some participants to manage their reputations.
A comparison with a prior period in both districts shows that before the budgeting
assemblies were created it was difficult to sustain any kind of regular meeting place
beyond individual neighborhoods to carry out these discussions. The notion of the
"public sphere" is broadened, calling for a revision of the stark separation of state
and civil society in democratic theory.

S OME STUDIES ON citizenship have

noted that the idea of participation in
community affairs evokes romantic images
of virtuous citizens engaged in selfless dis-
cussions that may not reflect the conflict in-
herent in such exchanges (Mansbridge
Direct all correspondence to Gianpaolo
Baiocchi, Department of Sociology, University
of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15620 (baiocc7@
aol.com). For helpful comments I thank Paula
Chakravartty, Jane Collins, Paul Lichterman,
Ivan Ermakoff, Neil Gross, Erik O. Wright,
Mustafa Emirbayer, Rebecca Kranz, Lyn
Macgregor, Ashley Currier, and anonymous ASR
reviewers. The nongovenmental organization
CIDADE, the Prefeitura of Porto Alegre, and
participatory budget attendants made this re-
search possible. The research was funded by
grants from the Inter-American Foundation, the
University of Wisconsin, and from the Centers
for Latin American Studies and International
Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
1980). Despite this unrealistic image, "par-
ticipation in government" has become in re-
cent years a ubiquitous catch-phrase for
policymakers and social scientists from vari-
ous orientations (Borja et al. 1997; Fisher
and Kling 1993; Reilly 1995). As policy, par-
ticipation is advocated because of its poten-
tial to enhance governance or to promote ef-
ficiency and redistribution (Fung and Wright
2000). The growing scholarship on the topic
focuses on the efficiency, fairness, and
sustainability of governmental participation
and has rarely addressed a central question:
Is participation in government limited to ad-
dressing governmental decisions, or can it
become a setting for the broad, public-
minded, and open-ended discussion prized
by democratic theorists and evoked by the
concept of the "public sphere" (Habermas
1974, 1989)? Although scholars have exten-
sively addressed public discussions within
civil society settings (Eliasoph 1999;

52 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 2003, VOL. 68 (FEBRUARY:52-74)

 EMERGENT PUBLIC SPHERES IN BRAZIL
Gamson 1992; Lichterman 1996; Polletta
1999; Schudson 1992), they have not exam-
ined government-sponsored ones.
I examine instances of open-ended com-
munity deliberations in government-spon-
sored assemblies in two poor districts of the
city of Porto Alegre, Brazil: Por do Sol and
Nazar6.' These deliberations provide a use-
ful test for considering the relationship be-
tween participatory governance and the pub-
lic sphere. Porto Alegre is a southern capital
city at the center of a metropolitan area of
almost 3 million people (Prefeitura Munici-
pal de Porto Alegre 1999) and is home to a
participatory experiment that has achieved
academic notoriety for its novel institutional
forms and for the tens of thousands of par-
ticipants from underprivileged neighbor-
hoods (Abers 1998; Baierle 1992; Navarro
1996; B. Santos 1998; Utzig 1996). The par-
ticipatory budget process in Porto Alegre
was introduced by the Partido dos Trabal-
hadores, or Workers' Party, in the early
1990s as a set of reforms that would allow
significant citizen input into the decision-
making processes of municipal governance.
This action was, in part, a move to legitimize
the administration's redistributive municipal
policies (Fedozzi 2001). It evolved into a
structure of assemblies in each of the city's
16 districts that combined elements of "di-
rect and representative democracy" (B.
Santos 1998).
At several times in my fieldwork, these
assemblies became the sites for open-ended
civic discussions beyond the stated purpose
of the meetings, which was to allocate bud-
get priorities. At a meeting in 1998 in the
P6r-do-Sol district, for example, the agenda
of the meeting concentrated on new environ-
mental projects for the next year. About 50
participants from various neighborhoods
were present. During the early part of the
meeting, however, a heated discussion
emerged between two older activists about
an existing public health clinic in the dis-
trict: Marcos and Arno disagreed loudly with
each other about the merits of the clinic, one
accusing the other of having a politician
build it "as a favor" and disrespecting the
"will of the community" at large. The City
' The names of districts and persons have been
changed for the purposes of this article.
53
Hall facilitator responsible for the gathering
had a difficult time calling the meeting to
order, as several participants became in-
volved in the argument, which dragged on
for several weeks and made its way into the
press.
In both districts, activists occasionally
took over meetings in this fashion, making
use of a language of rights and responsibili-
ties in the discussion. In the P6r-do-Sol dis-
trict, however, experienced activists and
well-developed civic networks prevented
these open-ended discussions from becom-
ing too disruptive or too personal. In the
Nazare district, which lacked significant
civic networks, instances of open-ended dis-
cussion more often led to disruptive break-
downs. Because this was essentially the only
meeting place for the whole community and
the Nazar6 community lacked experienced
participants who could maintain order, these
interruptions and digressions more often de-
railed meetings altogether. Maintaining set-
tings for regular discussions in these districts
also had been more difficult in the past when
government-sponsored institutions were ab-
sent.
Understanding how these community gath-
erings took place expands our understanding
of democracy and civic participation in a
number of ways, a task that has become more
relevant as participatory programs grow in
popularity, particularly in the developing
world (Crook and Manor 1994). First, while
showing that the communication character-
istic of the public sphere is present in the
unlikely setting of a city's urban periphery
and in state-sponsored settings, this study
broadens our conception of who are "proper
candidates" for civic action. The participants
here are generally not formally educated, are
poor, and have lived through two decades of
authoritarian rule. These characteristics
make them entirely different from the par-
ticipants of the salons (Habermas 1989) and
dispel misconceptions about the urban poor
in Latin America, who have often been por-
trayed as being entangled in social pathology
and client-patron relationships (Auyero
1999b; Pearlman 1976).
Second, this study points to the impor-
tance of government-sponsored settings in
enabling community practices. Government
sponsorship provides material and logistical
54 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
support for continued discussions and makes
available a language of common problems as
a marker for the public interest. This begins
to address a crucial unanswered question
about whether stateside reforms can "con-
duce to democracy in the absence of a self-
organized citizenry, or an autonomous asso-
ciational realm" (Emirbayer and Sheller
1999:147), and also corrects the notion that
the only place for open-ended community
discussion is within the networks of civil so-
ciety or in its "free-spaces" (Evans and
Boyte 1992; Polletta 1999).
Third, while theorists have correctly em-
phasized the importance of formal rules and
institutional features of participatory settings
(Cohen 1996; Cohen and Rogers 1992;
Elster 1998), I point to the importance of in-
teractions of the local associational context
with these participatory institutions in creat-
ing a stage for civic discussions. Public de-
liberation is "fragile and difficult to estab-
lish and maintain" (Button and Mattson
1999:609), I highlight the role of experi-
enced activists and networks in maintaining
quality discussions.
I explore the conditions for the appearance
of the public sphere in two districts of Porto
Alegre, Brazil. I first consider the extant lit-
erature on the public sphere, and follow with
an introduction to the study. Second, I dis-
cuss instances of meeting takeovers, the lan-
guage deployed in these discussions, and the
role of civil society in assuring the quality
of discussions. Third, I consider a downside
of participation and other available settings
for the public sphere in the two districts. I
conclude by offering some suggestions for
further work based on insights from this
study.
THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE
PUBLIC SPHERE
The public sphere is a central and elusive
concept of civic life and refers to qualita-
tively distinct democratic practices under-
stood to be central to vibrant democracies. I
draw on the literature on the public sphere
and on the work of political sociologists for
a precise definition of the public sphere and
to identify the sets of factors thought to be
associated with its appearance. This case al-
lows an investigation into the role of the so-
cial bases of democracy, the role of the state,
and the role of local civic networks in ac-
counting for the emergence of the public
sphere.
As articulated by Habermas (1996, 1974),
the public sphere refers to an ideal speech
situation in which citizens engage in open-
ended conversations that are neither strate-
gic nor self-interested on issues of common
interest. Discussants take on each others'
roles in a "second-person attitude" and are
able to abstract their own position and con-
sider it in relation to the positions of others.
Although the setting for the "original"
public sphere was the bourgeois salon,
Habermas (1974) also discusses assemblies,
meetings, and informal conversations that
take place in the "lifeworld." Sociologists
have studied the public sphere in social
movements and church settings (Eastis
1998; Flacks 1988; Lichterman 1999;
Patillo-McCoy 1998), neighborhood asso-
ciations and civic groups (Eliasoph 1998;
Lewis 1994; Ryan 1992), Internet discussion
boards, and volunteer meetings (Brown
1997). Despite criticisms about the narrow-
ness of the definition of the concept,^ the
public sphere is a particularly useful heuris-
tic for the case at hand. While the participa-
tory institutions in Porto Alegre have
brought tens of thousands of participants to
assemblies, the quality of democratic prac-
tice in those assemblies is still unknown. If
participants engage in unfettered and reflex-
ive discussions and contribute to the con-
struction of a "collective will," as is de-
scribed for the public sphere, these institu-
tions would have a different impact than if
the participants only improved the quality
and legitimacy of governmental decision-
making.^ Advocates of Porto Alegre's ex-
^ In addition to criticisms about its limited
conceptualization of actors and practices (Fraser
1992), scholars have also challenged whether the
public sphere is historically descriptive
(Schudson 1992). For a review, see Hill and
Montag (2001).
^ Examples exist in which government-spon-
sored assemblies and meetings have had such a
limited democratic component, such as described
for Great Society programs in the United States
(Piven and Cloward 1979), or in the context of
socialist regimes (Bengelsdorf 1994; Zhou 1993).
The history of Latin America in particular is also
 EMERGENT PUBLIC SPHERES IN BRAZIL
periment have described it as a "non-state
public sphere" (Genro 1999), but the ques-
tion of whether it really serves as such a
sphere has not been empirically addressed.''
I define public sphere as an instance of
open-ended and public-spirited communica-
tion, something that "comes into being
when people speak public-spiritedly"
(Eliasoph 1998:16). Participation here re-
fers to presence and involvement in the dis-
cussions in the assemblies.^ In contrast, the
public sphere will specifically refer to a
qualitatively different event—one marked
by discussions that are open-ended and pub-
lic-spirited^—that is, discussions that are
framed in terms that consider broad ranges
of interests and do not regard any one indi-
vidual or group interest as more or less
worthy (Habermas 1996:360).'' To deter-
mine whether a public sphere is present re-
quires attention to the course, subtleties,
and inflections of these open-ended discus-
sions—whether they veer from certain top-
ics, or whether they remain public-spirited,
and whether disagreements degenerate into
personal conflicts. Attention to these details
and to unspoken rules that guide discus-
sions (such as who normally speaks first)
permits establishing whether the noted
drawbacks of participation are present, such
as (1) the domination of articulate and out-
spoken participants over other participants
(Bourdieu 1991; Mansbridge 1980:273), (2)
replete with participatory assemblies sponsored
by populist leaders or military dictators to sim-
ply legitimate governmental plans (Conniff 1982;
Dietz 1998; Eckstein 1977; Hamilton 1984).
'' This is a state-sponsored setting that calls
into question the distinctions normally drawn be-
tween the state and the public sphere.
' Theorists of deliberative democracy also de-
fine participation in terms of an individual's abil-
ity to intervene in and affect the decision-mak-
ing process. Someone present but excluded from
decision-making would not be a participant, for
example (Cohen 1996).
* Here, "participants" refers to those who are
in attendance and involved at meetings of the
government-sponsored assemblies; "community
activist" refers to those who have significant in-
volvement in other voluntary settings in the com-
munity.
^ This is a view between "thick" and "thin"
publicity of political theorists (see Bohman 1999;
Cohen 1996, 1998).
55
the "civilizing force of hypocrisy"—that
participants will tend to agree to common
terms not in their interest (Elster 1998), or
(3) the formation of a cadre of movement
experts (Lipset 1997; Piven and Cloward
1979).
THE SOCIAL BASES OF DEMOCRACY
The literature on the social bases of democ-
racy, while not addressing tbe public sphere
directly, suggests that such democratic com-
munication would be absent in Brazil, par-
ticularly in urban districts like P6r-do-Sol
and Nazar6. Post-authoritarian Brazil has
been described as a "democracy without citi-
zenship" (Bethel 2000), and many commen-
tators have questioned whether Brazilian de-
mocracy has the social conditions needed to
expand to broad, active citizenship (Linz and
Stepan 1996; Stepan 1989). Both districts
examined here are marked by social prob-
lems like adult illiteracy, violence, and un-
employment (Prefeitura Municipal de Porto
Alegre 1999) and for several reasons would
not be propitious settings for the emergence
of the public sphere.
First, the residents of urban peripheries
have often been considered poor candidates
for democratic involvement because urban
peripheries may lack base-line conditions of
legality and the rule of law (Dietz 1998;
Reis 1990). Their fragmented social world
has been well-documented by scholars:
high crime and violence, lack of effective
state services, low education, and a depen-
dence on the informal market and patron-
client relationships (Eckstein 1977; Gay
1995; Portes and Walton 1976; Roberts
1995). These urban dwellers may also lack
the organizational capacity to create set-
tings for the public sphere. Well-proven
models for predicting civic engagement and
participation have consistently shown that
education and economic resources are im-
portant predictors of civic engagement
(Marschall 2001; Verba and Nie 1972), and
recent applications of these models to Bra-
zil have replicated these findings (Ferreira
1999, 2000; McDonough, Shin, and Moises
1998).
Second, in urban peripheries the political
and cultural bases for democratic delibera-
tion may be absent. Habermas (1996), for in-
56 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
Stance, intimates that the public sphere "can
only emerge in the context of a liberal po-
litical culture and corresponding patterns of
socialization" (p. 366). Brazil does not have
a tradition of "second languages of social re-
sponsibility and practices of commitment to
the public good" (Bellah et al. 1985) or a
long-standing "civil religion" (Alexander
and Smith 1993) that is understood to be a
prerequisite to democracy (Crook and
Manor 1994; Dahl 1989; Tocqueville [1831]
1945). Instead, Brazil has a political culture
that emphasizes private entitlement and
privilege over the public good and the rights
of citizens (Matta 1979, 1991, 1992; Sales
et al. 1994; W. Santos 1993). Comparative
research has shown that the "civic" attitudes
and dispositions of Brazilians are weak
(Inglehart 1997).
My fieldwork confirms some of these ex-
pectations for the two Porto Alegre districts
in the years prior to the participatory ex-
periment. In both districts, it was difficult
in the past to maintain regularly functioning
settings for the kinds of democratic com-
munication characteristic of the public
sphere. Although both districts had had
neighborhood associations and social move-
ments, many of these activities involved de-
mands for local day-to-day improvements
(Gay 1995; Gohn 1982; Zaluar 1985) and
had cyclical patterns of action depending on
the response to these demands (Boschi
1987; Guareschi 1980). In an effort to over-
come these day-to-day emphases and cycli-
cal tendencies, activists in various districts
of the city in the early-to-mid-1980s at-
tempted to create regular places for commu-
nity activists to meet to discuss common
problems. They encountered "severe diffi-
culties" in sustaining regular meetings
(FASE 1986).
The challenges of establishing permanent
forums included difficulties in establishing
a district-wide setting (e.g., a meeting hall),
advertising the event, and then drawing
people to participate regularly. A 1986 report
listed, for example, some of the main chal-
lenges facing neighborhood associations at
that time: "difficulty sustaining long-term
activity," "lack of information," "lack of re-
sources," "lack of interconnections with
other associations," and "lack of access to
public officials" (FASE 1986).
THE ROLE OF THE STATE
The role of the state in fostering the public
sphere is ambiguous. On one hand, accord-
ing to Habermas (1989), the state plays a
crucial role in supporting the public sphere
by assuring the rule of law and buffering the
most egregious social inequalities. But on
the other hand, the will of civil society
emerges beyond the reach of the state (or the
market) in the networks of the life world that
regularly places checks on the state. While
democratic theorists agree that neither the
market nor the state can "carry or house pub-
lics" (Warren 2001:77), this conceptuali-
zation creates an ambiguous status for in-
stances of direct democracy where participa-
tion is directly linked to the "exercise of
public power" (Cohen 1998:186). Contem-
porary theorists of participatory governance
have emphasized several features of partici-
patory institutions (Cohen 1996; Elster
1998; Fung and Wright 2000), but have gen-
erally neglected the question of whether
these institutions become settings for the
public sphere (i.e., for collective discussion
and the formation of the public will).^
Since the early 1990s, Brazil has been
home to a number of significant experiments
in democratizing local state institutions and
the provision of services, and also to efforts
to strengthen popular participation in vari-
ous areas of government (Assies 1997). Sev-
eral of these efforts have been carried out by
the Partido dos Trabalhadores, or the Work-
ers' Party, which has relied on its successes
in providing efficient service delivery, espe-
cially to poorer sections of cities, to build up
electoral support (Baiocchi 2002a; Nylen
1998).' The history of the Workers' Party is
* Several documented instances point to the
fact that such settings may at times serve this
function, as in moments in the formation of the
French state (Kwass 1998), in early New England
town governance (Schudson 1998), as well as in
instances of village governance around the world
(Markoff 1996). The theoretical point has not
been fully explored, however.
' In addition to Porto Alegre, a number of other
larger cities have been described: Sao Paulo
(Couto 1995; Macaulay 1996; Magalhaes,
Barreto, and Trevas 1999; Singer 1996); Santos
(Filho 1991); Santo Andr6 and Diadema (Klink
1999; Ribeiro 1999; Simoes 1992); Belo
 EMERGENT PUBLIC SPHERES IN BRAZIL
well known. It evolved from its proletarian
roots in the late 1970s to become a party
closely associated with a broad range of so-
cial movements and with a platform of so-
cial justice and democracy (Branford and
Kucinski 1995; Keck 1992; Meneguello
1989). The party's efforts have drawn sig-
nificant numbers of participants to local de-
cision-making, many of whom are first-time
entrants to civic life. Much of the literature
on democratic consolidation has not yet ad-
dressed these local practices in Brazil
(Avritzer 2000) and their potential impact on
democracy.
CONTEXTUAL FACTORS
Sociologists have addressed a number of
contextual factors shaping communication in
the public sphere, often basing their conclu-
sions on case studies of consolidated democ-
racies. A particularly salient factor is the role
played by the social networks of civil soci-
ety in democratic communication (Elster
1998; Polletta 1999; Putnam, Leonardi, and
Nanetti 1993; Somers 1994). Although the
conversations of the public sphere take place
within the lifeworld, an established civil so-
ciety is more likely to foster regular conver-
sations that are based on common trust and
good information (Habermas 1996).
Putnam's (1995) well-known investigations
of what makes democracy work have noted
the importance of civic networks in making
possible cooperation and collective behavior
around common goals, and in "turning an I
into a we" (p. 66).
The two districts in my study vary in the
existence of civic networks. At the time of
my research, Nazar6 lacked well-defined
civic networks, and most of the functioning
neighborhood associations were only re-
cently established. Most community activists
there had been involved in community affairs
for a relatively short period of time. P6r-do-
Sol, on the other hand, had a strong tradition
of neighborhood associations, many of which
had their origins in liberation theology ac-
Horizonte (Avritzer 2000; Azevedo 1997;
Somarriba and Dulci 1997); Fortaleza (Pinto
1992); and Bel6ni (Guidry and Petit 2002). For
smaller towns see Silva (2002) and Nylen (1995,
2002).
57
tivities and other pro-democracy social
movements from the 1970s and 1980s. In
addition to a number of active neighborhood
associations, P6r-do-Sol also had a function-
ing autonomous umbrella organization and a
number of religious-based civic groups.
I consider the roles of three factors seen
by theorists as impacting the appearance of
the public sphere: (1) The social bases of de-
mocracy, which are not thought to be propi-
tious to the public sphere because of factors
held constant in the two districts; (2) Brazil-
ian political culture, where the social con-
text of these neighborhoods might be as-
sumed to mitigate the appearance of a pub-
lic sphere; (3) and the role of the state in en-
abling the public sphere, also a constant in
both settings. The two districts vary, how-
ever, in their civic endowments: P6r-do-Sol
had a more established and denser civil so-
ciety, while Nazar6 had a more recently es-
tablished and less dense civic network. I ex-
plore the impact of these differences on the
public sphere in these two communities.
THE SETTING AND THE STUDY
Nazare and P6r-do-Sol, the two districts in
the city of Porto Alegre, provide interesting
settings to explore the appearance discus-
sions characteristic of the public sphere. I
offer a brief background on the city itself,
the two districts under investigation, and the
ethnographic methods used.
THE CITY OF PORTO ALEGRE AND THE
PARTICIPATORY EXPERIMENT
Since the 1970s, the city of Porto Alegre has
had a history of significant social move-
ments and neighborhood association activity
(Baierle 1992; Guareschi 1980). And since
the mid-1980s, these movements had pro-
posed participatory reforms to municipal
governance (Baierle 1992). But by the late
1980s, many of these associations had a dif-
ficult time maintaining regular, nonprotest
activities (Baiocchi 2002b). The participa-
tory institutions were introduced in 1991, af-
ter the Workers' Party assumed the adminis-
tration of the municipality, and succeeded,
after a few years, in drawing very large num-
bers of participants from the city's less privi-
leged neighborhoods. Early difficulties in-
58 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
eluded organizational matters within the par-
ticipating institutions, the city's poor finan-
cial situation, the lack of organizational ex-
perience in some of the city's districts, and
conflicts with established civil society net-
works that opposed the participation of new
entrants to civil society (Fedozzi 2001). Par-
ticipating institutions focued on budgeting
matters, and they evolved over the years to
accommodate more participants. By 2000,
upwards of 20,000 participants were counted
in the first yearly assembly of the participa-
tory budget (these data come from the
Prefeitura of Porto Alegre).
Regular assemblies take place each year
beginning in March and involve broad seg-
ments of the population in each of the city's
districts. With the mayor in attendance, the
previous year's projects are reviewed, and
neighborhoods or organized groups in atten-
dance select delegates for the subsequent
proceedings. These delegates then regularly
attend the assemblies to learn about the cri-
teria and costs involved in various city
projects and to discuss their district's needs
and overall priorities. All areas of the mu-
nicipal budget are eventually decided this
way, and common projects range from the
construction of new roads to the delivery of
social services and health care (Prefeitura
Municipal de Porto Alegre 1998). Meetings
are run by a nonvoting City Hall-appointed
facilitator, and 40 to 60 delegates regularly
attend weekly assemblies in most districts.
At the end of the yearly budget cycle in July,
votes among delegates finalize decisions on
the district's projects, set priorities, and se-
lect representatives from the district to serve
on a municipal Budget Council that is re-
sponsible for the ultimate decisions over
budget items, such as the overall allocation
of municipal funds for each district.'" While
the Budget Council makes decisions over the
next months, delegates from the districts
continue to meet and often to monitor the
outcome of chosen projects.
Few studies have has addressed whether
and how participants carry out open-ended
'" At the time of the research, there was a for-
mula in place that allocated funds to each district
based on the district's population, its level of
"need," and its priorities (Fedozzi 2001;
Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre 1998).
community discussions in such community
settings. While some studies have consid-
ered the orientation of individuals who par-
ticipate in these discussions and have ob-
served change over time in associational pat-
terns (Abers 1998; Baiocchi 2002b), none
have addressed the actual process of partici-
pation. If these experiments in Porto Alegre
contribute to the formation of a genuine Bra-
zilian "public space" (Avritzer 2002) or to a
novel form of democracy (B. Santos 1998),
then understanding how open-ended public-
minded discussions take place in the Brazil-
ian setting becomes a crucial question.
THE TWO DISTRICTS
Almost a third of the population of Porto
Alegre resides in "irregular settlements" and
favelas (slums) in socially vulnerable situa-
tions (Naya Oliveira and Barcellos 1990;
Ney Oliveira 1996; Panizzi 1990; Prefeitura
Municipal de Porto Alegre 1998), and these
areas cover much of the two districts studied
here. The Nazar6 district is poor and remote:
Among its 30,000 residents are some of the
city's most violent and destitute people, and
there are few businesses in the district. In
contrast, P6r-do-Sol, a district of 100,000,
has many slum areas but also has lower
middle-class neighborhoods, a business area,
and several churches. While about 65 per-
cent of households in Nazar6 are below the
poverty line, in P6r-do-Sol the percentage is
closer to 40 percent." Political party com-
petition is similar in both districts—the
Workers' Party is the dominant party among
the urban poor in both districts.
The socioeconomic background of regular
assembly participants in the two districts is
also similar: The median participant in both
districts had between six and seven years of
formal education and a household income
between 1 and 1.5 times the income for the
poverty line.'^ Men and women were
equally represented at these assemblies
'' The household poverty measure used in Bra-
zil is often based on two times the monthly mini-
mum wage. For January 1999 that would amount
to a monthly household income of approximately
$140 (in U.S. dollars).
'^ The 1998 survey of participants is in
CIDADE (1999) and Baiocchi (2001).
 EMERGENT PUBLIC SPHERES IN BRAZIL
(CIDADE 1999), and the racial composition
of the assemblies reflected that of the dis-
tricts, with approximately 15 percent of par-
ticipants identifying as "nonwhite."'^ There
is no evidence of discrimination on racial
grounds throughout these participatory insti-
tutions or that racial divisiveness is a factor
in discussions.''' The primary difference be-
tween the two districts has to do with civic
networks; as Nazar6 has fewer civic net-
works and they are more recent, while Por-
do-Sol has a strong tradition of activism and,
at the time of this study, had one functioning
district-level setting where activists from
different neighborhoods would meet, bridg-
ing the district's various civic networks.
METHODS
I spent a year and a half on this ethno-
graphic investigation. I attended district as-
semblies and as many other meetings in
civil society as possible, including meetings
held at neighborhood associations, churches,
and community centers. Asking questions
about the types of discussions and commu-
nity activities at these meetings required di-
rect observation,'^ echoing recent work on
'•^ The difficulties in gathering precise data on
racial identification in Brazil are described in the
growing literature on race relations in Brazil e.g.,
Lovell 1994. The south of Brazil is distinct in this
regard, as it is the region with the lowest percent-
ages of blacks and nonwhites, but also is the re-
gion where indices of segregation and inequality
are the lowest (Telles 1992).
'"* These apparently surprising results are con-
sonant with the available literature on race rela-
tions and urban poverty in Brazil. Civic assem-
blies draw persons from the city's urban periph-
ery, which is where nonwhites tend to live but
which is also relatively integrated. Observers of
the community-based "neighborhood movement"
have pointed to the fact that its leadership is also
relatively integrated (Ney Oliveira 1996). The lit-
erature repeatedly points to the lack of explicit
racial claims in political discourse (Sales et al.
1994), and my ethnographic evidence appears to
confirm this. Whether racial integration is solely
due to features of Brazilian political culture or
more to the fact that the city has such a small non-
white population is a question beyond the reach
of this paper.
'^ While I attempt to preserve the subtleties and
inflection of the talk reported, my field notes are
59
civic networks and political practices that
has begun to rely on participant observation
and ethnographic methods for specific in-
sights. Despite the limitations of ethnogra-
phy (Suttles 1976), it does answer a number
of questions not accessible by other research
methods: questions of meaning, intent, pur-
pose, and implicit rules, among others, that
cannot be answered by interviews alone
(Eastis 1998; Eliasoph 1999; Lichterman
1998; Patillo-McCoy 1998). Knowing the
unspoken rules of these social contexts also
becomes important to apprehending the pos-
sible drawbacks of participatory democracy.
I collected documents and life-history ac-
counts, carried out interviews, and con-
ducted a number of surveys to supplement
my ethnographic evidence. I was able to in-
terview almost all the regular participants
and "known" community activists in the two
districts: This amounted to more than 65 in-
terviews.'^ I also conducted a survey of par-
ticipants at the budget assemblies in both
districts where, in addition to basic demo-
graphic data, I collected evidence about par-
ticipation in community life at large.'^
The argument here is "implicitly com-
parative" (Patillo-McCoy 1998), as I point
to the importance of these government-
sponsored settings in fostering community
discussions. I offer comparisons of the two
districts at previous points in time, and also
discuss the inability of activists to foster
regular district-level meetings for nongov-
ernmental purposes in the Nazar6 district. I
do not focus on the quality of interactions
within nongovernment-sponsored settings
for the lack of adequately comparable set-
based on written notes and not on audio-tapes or
literal transcriptions.
'* I used a combination of "snowball" and sur-
vey techniques to identify people to interview. I
interviewed at least one person from each neigh-
borhood association and all regular participants
of the budget meetings and their "activist con-
tacts."
" This survey of 74 participants was adminis-
tered in each district at a single assembly. It in-
quired about participants' education, income,
years of experience in budgeting assemblies,
years of experience in neighborhood associations
and other meetings, and what other voluntary
meetings participants regularly attended in a
week.
60 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
tings. Instead, I offer evidence based on
documents and oral recollections and recog-
nizing the limits of such types of evi-
dence.'^
EMERGENT PUBLIC SPHERES:
THE MEETING TAKEOVER
Assemblies took place weekly or semi-
monthly in a central public setting in both
Nazar6 and P6r-do-Sol, drawing an average
of 50 participants for each meeting much of
the year. These assemblies lasted up to two
hours, and for several months the agenda in-
cluded the technicalities and relative merits
of certain projects for the district. In P6r-do-
Sol, meetings were held on a weeknight in a
church hall, and in Nazar6, they were held
in a school on a weekend afternoon. In both
districts, participants tended to come from a
range of neighborhoods within the district.
The agenda for the meetings was usually
drawn up in advance by the facilitator, and
time was allotted at the start of each meet-
ing for announcements. A typical meeting
might also include presentations by techni-
cal experts from each of the various munici-
pal departments, followed by discussions
when participants could ask questions or
comment on the topic. The facilitator was
responsible for keeping to the agenda and
calling on participants who would sign up
for a turn to speak.
Despite the fact that nongovernmental
community items of common interest were
not part of the scheduled agenda, "meeting
takeovers" frequently occurred in both dis-
tricts. Often, while announcements were
made during the meetings, participants
would request to discuss a "news" item. In
P6r-do-Sol, participants made a habit of
bringing newspaper clippings, which often
led to discussions that had to be closed off
to keep to the agenda. A typical occurrence
took place at a meeting at P6r-do-Sol when,
after a number of participants had announce-
ments, including a vote in the city council
on day-care and a charity event in the dis-
'* P6r-do-Sol had a district-level forum that
was not formally government-sponsored. The fo-
rum was closely linked to activities of the gov-
ernment-sponsored budgeting assemblies, and it
drew on many of the same participants.
trict, Walter shared a news clipping about an
American factory in Brazil:
I wanted to share with you a news story in
today's newspaper about Ford and General
Motors. Ford has had 122 percent growth
this last year in Brazil, but they are firing
workers in Sao Paulo. They want to pay less
and less taxes to the government and the
workers still cannot afford to buy the cars.
Several activists followed up with im-
promptu comments and discussion about
these factories until the meeting was called
to order again several minutes later. These
types of interruptions were common, and
sometimes the "announcements" part of the
meeting prevented the actual agenda from
being addressed. For participants, however,
such "interruptions" were acceptable, and
sometimes they were important, as many
often took the opportunity to share news,
events, and other items deemed relevant to
community life. When asked about it,
Walter, who always brought newspaper
clippings, told me that "you are always
learning something" because otherwise
"people are in the dark about injustice." For
Walter, whose civic engagement dates to
pro-democracy social movements in the
1970s, the assemblies were a forum to dis-
cuss news in order to foster the "critical
consciousness" prized by liberation theol-
ogy activists (Cardoso 1988). Other partici-
pants, many of whom were newer partici-
pants in civic life, also made it a point to
discuss news events in these assemblies be-
cause of the perceived worth of discussing
items that may significantly affect the com-
munity.
While participants seldom seemed to mind
these "interruptions," facilitators sometimes
described them as disruptive: "Some of these
interruptions are childish, people just want
to create problems." But the facilitators did
not prevent interruptions "to avoid creating
a bigger problem." The discussion of a spe-
cific "news" issue sometimes became a dis-
cussion of politics and economics, govern-
ment policy, or macroeconomic problems,
not to mention specific community prob-
lems, and a meeting sometimes would be
taken over by problems that could poten-
tially embarrass the administration or the
Workers' Party.
 EMERGENT PUBLIC SPHERES IN BRAZIL
Such was the case in the Nazare district,
where a school shooting had taken place a
few days prior to the assembly.'^ The agenda
of this particular meeting was to discuss
education projects for the next year, but par-
ticipants kept returning to the subject of the
shooting. Early on in the meeting, Carla used
the announcements period to begin a long
discussion about having received an inad-
equate response from the police about future
safety in schools. Then, throughout the
meeting, participants repeatedly raised the
issue with a representative from the educa-
tion department, who dismissed their ad-
vances, remarking that it was a police issue.
Carla spent most of the meeting in the back
of the room discussing school safety with
several other women, and toward the end of
the meeting, she asked to make an announce-
ment. First, she apologized for interrupting
the meeting:
I have an announcement. Tomorrow we will
have a demonstration to protest the lack of
respect for human rights in this city and this
district. I know lots of you are with the
Workers' Party, but it needs to respect work-
ers and tomorrow we are calling all mothers
to march all the way to the police station to
demand a police officer at the school.
Her announcement was applauded. The
next day, 50 mothers marched to the police
station, where they were greeted by the
press as well as by councilpersons from the
Workers' Party and other parties. Carla
made a statement to the press that appeared
in the newspaper, and a police officer was
then put on duty at the school. Although
Carla's topic was more instrumental than
Walter's newspaper clipping reading, it was
clearly a public-spirited presentation on a
collective problem. Implicit in Carla's ac-
tions is the understanding that these assem-
blies had become one of the central settings
for engaging with others in civil society.
Her presentation also illustrates that there
was no censure of participants for discuss-
ing issues that, in principle, could hurt the
administration, while showing that commu-
" Policing is not a municipal-level responsi-
bility in Brazil, but a state-level one. At the time
of the study, the Workers' Party was in power at
the state level, which put it in charge of police
issues.
61
Table 1. Counts of Community-Oriented
Discussions in District Budgeting
Assemblies: Two Districts in Porto
Alegre, Brazil, t998
Topic of Discussion Nazard P6r-do-Sol
News items" 6 47
Other events'' in the 45 67
district
Other events in the city 8 14
Protests'^ 4 1
Petitions or similar events 2 1
Note: The counts are for events occurring at 10
meetings in each district in 1998. Counts are not
mutually exclusive, as a single discussion may
cover more than one topic.
''Includes newspaper and television news.
'' tncludes announcements for community events
and meetings.
^' Includes discussions that led to protests being
organized at the meetings.
nity activists like Carla knew the strategic
importance of these settings.
Table 1 lists counts of instances of open-
ended community discussions that took
place in the assemblies of the two districts
over a sample of 10 meetings in 1998. The
counts include several types of open-ended
public-minded discussions. "News items"
include "newspaper clippings" but also
items culled from television or radio, often
items having to do with political figures or
the economy, such as currency fluctuations
or bank scandals. "Other events in the dis-
trict" include announcements of events such
as fund-raising barbecues or tea parties, cul-
tural celebrations, or elections in neighbor-
hood associations. "Other events in the city"
include announcements or discussions about
city-wide activities, such as those concern-
ing the city-wide league of neighborhood as-
sociations. "Protests organized at the meet-
ings" were rarer, but include mobilizations
against the police or against the municipal
housing agency. "Petitions" include petitions
signed or actions like a caravan to City Hall.
While none of these items were part of the
stated agenda for the meetings or the stated
purpose of the meetings, participants often
used meetings for these other topics of com-
mon interest.
62 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
NEEDS AS PUBLIC PROBLEMS
The examples above show how participants
took over meetings with the awareness of the
importance of the district assemblies as a
civic network structure. I now explore the
communicative aspect of this process, as
participants stitched together a language of
public interests and public goods at these as-
semblies, turning "needs" into "public prob-
lems." The creation of "public concerns" out
of specific needs helped create a language of
citizenship that made public-spirited discus-
sion possible. This language of citizenship,
however, was not based on the abstract
rights and duties of citizenship, but was
based on sharing common problems and
working toward common solutions at the as-
semblies. It also was not a language explic-
itly based on religious notions of social jus-
tice, as might be expected given the histori-
cal importance of liberation theology in so-
cial movements in Brazil. Nor was it based
on a socialist discourse of class empower-
ment, such as might accompany a Workers'
Party experiment. Rather, this language of
citizenship emphasized "the good of the
community" and valued collective and prag-
matic problem-solving. It defined the com-
munity as constituted of persons with simi-
lar problems and living situations. For ex-
ample, at one meeting, a longtime partici-
pant tried to motivate a group of new par-
ticipants to stay at the meeting:
For 10 years many people have come here
to solve problems. . . . We fought for it, mo-
bilized for it, and achieved it. We focused
on the closed sewer because we got together
with our neighbors and fought for it. And
after that, we learned that we have to fight
for larger things. We have many problems
we need to still solve.
This language was often deployed in discus-
sions when participants wished to convince
other participants to become more involved
in the process, or to persuade others of the
value of a certain position. But discussions
about the "hows" and "whys" of social prob-
lems emerged in conversations that made
use of this language, as discussion of spe-
cific needs and issues led to discussions of
broader issues. It was not uncommon for a
discussion about funding a cooperative to
lead to a discussion on unemployment, or a
discussion about a park to lead to a discus-
sion on the environment, while a discussion
about building up a slum might lead to dis-
cussion on land tenure and migration.
Often, the discussion of a social problem
implicit in an investment project became a
discussion about the limits of municipal gov-
ernment. In the Nazare district, for example,
an agenda on social service projects for the
district was limited to a small number of
projects for senior citizens, thus prompting
a participant to attempt to create an ad-hoc
committee to coordinate the provision of so-
cial services generally. Laura signed up to
ask a question of the technical expert from
City Hall, but when her turn came to speak,
she decided instead to make a plea for the
creation of a social services committee for
problems with children. She addressed the
whole group present, arguing:
We have at least 500 children in the district
needing daycare. Without daycare and with-
out schools we are bringing up violence in
the district, but by then it's too late. We
need to bring the community to debate these
issues and participate.
The discussion momentarily turned to vio-
lence and crime in the district, with several
people sharing stories about a wave of vio-
lent robberies. In this discussion, people's
private needs for daycare and stories of be-
ing robbed were linked to public problems
of crime and a lack of social services. Josue
collected the names and addresses of volun-
teers for a committee. Participants often
mentioned a sense of belonging to a larger
community of citizens who together are fac-
ing problems together, as a result of having
worked together over the year to decide on
projects. A relatively new participant. Ana,
described how the sense of sharing common
problems was important: "You participate
and you realize that your problems are the
same as everyone else's problems, and you
work because your problems are the same."
For Ana, whose participation in these as-
semblies is her only involvement in civic af-
fairs, the sense of "public" comes from hav-
ing worked collectively to make decisions
throughout the year and from developing a
sense of belonging to a community of others
with similar needs or problems. Her vocabu-
lary, as mentioned, was not an explicit vo-
 EMERGENT PUBLIC SPHERES IN BRAZIL
cabulary of social justice based on religious
or political ideologies, however. This fact
bothered older community activists linked to
church social activism, one of whom found
people "these days too only talking about
projects and not enough with the big ques-
tions." Indeed, another participant I inter-
viewed discussed how participating in these
assemblies had shown him how he "had
rights," by which he meant "rights to ask for
projects and rights to ask the mayor and the
engineer why [projects] don't come." The
language deployed by participants was based
on needs and common problems and was
used to create a sense of public and public-
minded speech.
BUFFERING CONFLICT: THE
ROLE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
Thus far I have discussed emergent commu-
nity discussions as being similar in both the
poorer Nazare district and the P6r-do-Sol
district. In P6r-do-Sol, however, the exist-
ence of denser social networks and the pres-
ence of experienced activists meant that con-
flict was buffered and informal rules of con-
duct were enforced so that interruptions of
meetings occurred within certain topical and
behavioral boundaries. Experienced partici-
pants worked in the background to resolve
conflicts and create compromises, and they
enforced certain unspoken rules to prevent
interruptions that might otherwise have de-
railed meetings. As one of these experienced
participants described to me, if it were not
for people "like her" in the background,
"meetings would be much more full of con-
flict. We try to discuss issues ahead of time
and find compromises." In addition to
"working in the background," these experi-
enced participants also actively curtailed
certain kinds of interventions.
P6r-do-Sol had a number of functioning
neighborhood associations and other civic
organizations, and evidence suggested that
there were significant connections among
them. Three-fourths of the participants of
the assemblies at P6r-do-Sol, for example,
participated in one of these other associa-
tions, and over half of them participated in
an organization beyond their neighborhood.
It was not uncommon for participants to
meet each other at other meetings through-
63
out the week. Participants had significant
experience with the assemblies and civic
life in general; on average, participants in
P6r-do-Sol had 6 years of experience with
the assemblies and had been participating in
civic associations for 10 years. Out of the
40-odd regular participants, almost one-
fourth had been participating in associa-
tions of one kind or another since the
1970s, according to my survey. These more
experienced participants helped facilitate
meetings in P6r-do-Sol, going as far as pre-
paring the meeting agenda and spending
time outside of meetings discussing the
various projects. As a City Hall facilitator
in the district put it, "Working in the Por-
do-Sol was very easy, I would show up
there and they would have all of the meet-
ings' agendas all set up." Another facilitator
noted that "the level of experience in the
P6r-do-Sol makes a difference, a lot of
these guys have many years of experience,
. . . which avoids problems." A number of
incidents during my fieldwork confirmed
that it was experienced participants, not the
official facilitator, who commanded the re-
spect to keep meetings in line.
In P6r-do-Sol, a conflict erupted at a meet-
ing over the placement of a traffic light, and
some residents from a small nearby slum,
the Ave Maria settlement, threatened to stop
traffic at a busy thoroughfare at rush hour
unless the traffic light was moved to the
front of their slum. The thoroughfare was a
very busy one, where cars passed by at very
high speeds. More than one child from this
slum had been injured trying to cross the
street, and for safety the residents wanted a
traffic light in front of their settlement. Ac-
cording to technical criteria, however, a light
would not be possible. Residents from Ave
Maria nonetheless continually raised this is-
sue at several meetings, interrupting other
discussions.
In the middle of an assembly in which a
member of the municipal planning depart-
ment was present, Jairson, a resident of the
settlement, interrupted the meeting with a
threat, addressing the municipal bureaucrat:
I am glad you are here today because I hope
you are ready to admit your mistake in turn-
ing down our demand. Three children have
been hurt at this road, and we are going to
take action until you solve this problem.
64 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
The City Hall planner was taken aback, but
proposed that a meeting be scheduled in Ave
Maria to discuss the technical criteria that
made the traffic light unfeasible. Jairson
pressed on and promised that residents of the
slum would step out into traffic at rush hour
the next day and every day after that until a
traffic light was installed. The meeting
quickly deteriorated into a shouting match,
until some of the older activists in the dis-
trict managed to quiet it down. The next day,
Jairson and Ave Maria residents blocked
traffic during rush hour, though they were
dissuaded from continuing the action by ac-
tivists from other neighborhoods shortly af-
ter they had begun.
At another assembly a few days later
whose agenda was dedicated to sewage
projects, Jairson brought up the topic again
during the period for announcements:
I want to announce that last week we
stopped traffic because we never received
adequate explanation for why we didn't
have the traffic light put in place for us last
year. I want to let everyone know that we
will do it again next week if we have to, and
the week after that.
Other community activists intervened,
saying that they intended to "investigate the
matter." Another activist intervened, men-
tioning that he hoped "Jairson would call
some other people before anyone decides to
stop traffic again" because "a lot of workers
need to get home to their families on the bus
that goes past." The matter was not resolved
right away and dragged on for several
weeks. Although the administration's plan-
ners scheduled a number of further meetings
and proposed options like speed-bumps, Ave
Maria residents continued to threaten to stop
traffic. Community activists from the other
neighborhoods in the district continued to
try to prevent another stoppage, while pres-
suring the administration at assemblies to
address the matter. By the end of my field-
work in 1999, there had been no other traf-
fic blockages, but the traffic light question
had not been resolved.
Several other times during my fieldwork,
experienced community activists enforced
informal rules of participation, which in-
cluded avoiding personal attacks and allow-
ing only certain kinds of interruptions. At an
assembly, during a discussion about the
agenda for the next meeting, Marcos claimed
that the next agenda ought to include an item
to prevent Arno from making comments be-
cause "he talks too much" and "is always
trying to show off." Marcos and Arno had
had disagreements in the past and often
clashed over issues. To other participants,
their disagreements now seemed to be per-
sonal. Both men were community activists
with a long history in their respective com-
munities; they were known throughout the
district. Since an incident involving a clinic
a few months before, they now appeared to
contradict each other at almost every turn.
This time, however, others vocally inter-
fered, coming to the defense of Arno and
telling Marcos that "you can disagree, but
this is not how you do it." At other times,
similar potential conflicts were diffused, as
certain types of behavior were criticized for
being inappropriate for "people who work
for the community."
Activists enforced other informal rules
preventing certain kinds of open-ended dis-
cussions deemed to be occurring "at the
wrong place." Discussions that were
deemed "overly personal," such as those
having to do with particular complaints or
personal intrigue, were usually interrupted.
During the assembly's announcements, if a
participant tried to start a conversation
about a broken pipe in front of her house or
on the rudeness of a bus driver, it would
likely be curtailed by one of the more expe-
rienced participants with a suggestion of
where to deal with this problem, telling the
person that "this is not the place for this.
We can try to figure out where to go with
this problem, but right now the agenda is
something else." Similarly, complaints
about other participants or accusations of
improprieties in a neighborhood association
were also often stopped.
While these activists curtailed certain dis-
cussions and activities, there was little evi-
dence that they tried to dominate other par-
ticipants. While these activists commanded
significant respect from others, nothing in-
dicated that they used this respect to ad-
vance a particular agenda or to gain particu-
lar benefits. And although these activists
limited certain discussions, they did not do
so on the basis of political allegiances, as
 EMERGENT PUBLIC SPHERES IN BRAZIL
might be expected.^" Rather, the standard
seemed to be that if a certain issue was
framed as a "public issue"—that the impro-
priety at the neighborhood association or
the broken pipe represented a problem for
the community—discussions on that issue
were much more likely to be allowed to run
their course.
"THE ONLY PLACE IN THE
COMMUNITY": A DRAWBACK OF
PARTICIPATORY INSTITUTIONS
There was little evidence in the assemblies
of the drawbacks of participation most often
noted by scholars, such as the domination of
the less eloquent by the culturally better-
equipped (Bourdieu 1991) or the emergence
of an oligarchy of movement experts who
retained social power by controlling meet-
ings (Lipset 1997; Michels 1999). In fact,
meetings were often unruly and sometimes
difficult to call to order. Nevertheless, the
evidence points to a specific disadvantage to
participation in the Nazar6 district assem-
blies: The fact that the budgeting assembly
was "the only place in the community"
meant that it was a setting so important to
community activists that it was there they
felt they must air certain grievances and
where individuals' reputations in the com-
munity were determined. A number of con-
flicts between municipal bureaucrats and
participants took place during fieldwork, and
a Nazar^ participant described his district as
one that "was not intimidated by administra-
tors with college degrees and was not afraid
of fighting with them." While theorists of
the public sphere might find conflict and dis-
agreement to be fundamental, not all dis-
agreements and conflicts here were public-
spirited ones. Without a core of experienced
^^ tt is beyond the reach of this paper to ad-
dress this apparently surprising finding in light
of theories of the "iron law of oligarchy" (e.g.,
see Lipset 1997). One plausible explanation is
that this "self-discipline" emerges from the spe-
cific social movement traditions from which
these activists come, here heavily influenced by
participatory pedagogy (Cardoso 1988). An alter-
native, of course, is that the time-horizon for
such "oligarchies" to emerge is longer than the
years of the participatory experiment and that
they might appear in the future.
65
and respected activists to manage these con-
flicts, the interruptions in Nazar6 took over
meetings, created personal conflicts between
activists, and at times caused other partici-
pants to leave feeling that these meetings
"were pointless" or "too disorderly." These
kinds of interruptions were at odds with the
public-spiritedness of other interruptions
and sometimes completely derailed the
agenda of the meetings.
My survey evidence shows that in Nazar6
the district assemblies were meeting places
for networks that would otherwise have little
contact. For over half of the participants at
Nazare assemblies, the assemblies were the
only meeting they participated in during an
average week. For most of the other half, the
other main forum in which they participated
was in their home neighborhood. Fewer than
10 percent of participants at the assemblies
participated in any kind of regular meeting
outside of their neighborhood other than the
budgeting assembly. Although there were
probably informal settings where partici-
pants from different neighborhoods might
meet, it is not an exaggeration to describe
these budgeting assemblies as the only dis-
trict-wide meeting event, which lent these
settings a certain importance. Community
life in Latin American urban peripheries is
one in which calculations of honor, reputa-
tion, and respect before others become par-
ticularly important, especially as persons be-
come involved in politics and the processes
that bring benefits to one's community
(Auyero 1999a, 1999b; Gay 1995; Stokes
1995). In these assemblies, interruptions
were staged both by participants and others
who were vigilant of their reputation before
the community.
One of these interruptions took place at a
meeting that was slated to discuss the year's
budgeting process. About 40 delegates were
present, and the meeting was just starting
when a conflict broke out between two par-
ticipants who were accusing each other of
having accepted donations from a political
party in exchange for votes in their neigh-
borhoods. Despite the planned agenda, activ-
ists dedicated the hour to bringing these ac-
cusations out in the open. Mauricio, who
was to assist in running the meeting, was
visibly angry and wanted to "clear his name
before the community":
66 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
I am sorry, but I think we need to take time
out from the meeting to discuss this letter. I
won't have my name used like this without
having a chance to challenge my ac-
cuser. . . . I want a show of hands to see who
agrees to discuss this before discussing bud-
get projects.
The City Hall facilitator attempted in vain
to bring the meeting to order. Confusion en-
sued, and the meeting continued, leaving the
heated discussion between activists unre-
solved. Almost an hour was devoted to the
discussion of the accusations, with several
participants leaving without retracting or
apologizing. Activists like Mauricio under-
stood participatory budget meetings were a
place where issues about the community at
large ought to be resolved. It is not clear, of
course, that coming before the community
and facing accusers (and exchanging accu-
sations) are necessarily public-spirited or
collectively oriented activities. But because
this district lacked any other regular setting
for significant interaction between these in-
dividuals, it is here that these issues were re-
solved. When I asked Mauricio why he
chose to interrupt the meeting this way, he
replied that this was the most important
place in the district, and it was because this
"is where the community meets. There is no
other place in our district. What happens
here is important for the whole district."
Another example of a drawback of the
overwhelming importance of these budget
assemblies occurred a few weeks later. A
shouting match broke out in Nazar6, again
over someone's reputation. But this time it
almost led to a physical fight. There had been
a disagreement over a housing problem in
one of the settlements between two partici-
pants, with one man claiming that the other
had tried to make him "look stupid" in front
of the whole community in the rounds of
questions and answers before the municipal
housing representative. In the absence of
more experienced community activists to
stop the shouting from escalating, each ac-
cused the other of trying to make him "look
bad," and the assembly degenerated into gen-
eral confusion as one of the men made his
way toward the other. The men were sepa-
rated by other participants before blows were
exchanged, and the meeting was postponed
to another week. The facilitator strongly ad-
monished the participants at the following
meeting, but it was not clear that the facilita-
tor had the moral authority to prevent such
altercations from taking place again. Al-
though no other incidents like this one took
place again during my fieldwork, significant
interruptions for private purposes and per-
sonal conflicts took place with regularity.
Not all the participants I interviewed were
happy with the overwhelming importance of
the participatory budget meetings in commu-
nity life. Some expressed a wish for a greater
separation between participatory budget ac-
tivities and civil society. One person told me
that because Nazar6, as a district, does not
have any other meeting place, "there is a lot
of confusion about what we're supposed to
do. Instead of public investments, all kinds
of topics are discussed" that often caused the
meeting "to serve no real purpose." In fact,
meetings did serve a purpose for some par-
ticipants, though not a public-oriented one.
Because budgeting assemblies were the
"only place for the whole community," it was
there that participants developed and main-
tained reputations, resolved disputes, and
jockeyed for prestige in the community.
Without a significant number of experienced
participants to curtail these interruptions,
they continued to occur.
OTHER SETTINGS
Government-sponsored assemblies of the
participatory budget were not the only set-
tings where community activists and other
citizens met in the Nazar6 and P6r-do-Sol,
but they were the principal setting for each
district and were more successful than inde-
pendent settings at continually drawing a
broad range of participants and eliciting
regular conversations on community mat-
ters. Just as the past history of both districts
shows how difficult it is to establish regular
discussions with the character of a public
sphere, even after state-sponsored meetings,
interviews showed that it was difficult to es-
tablish such public-minded discussions on a
regular basis in settings outside of the state-
sponsored institutions.
In P6r-do-Sol, where there was already
significant neighborhood activity, the advent
of the budgeting assemblies facilitated the
creation of an additional parallel and inde-
 EMERGENT PUBLIC SPHERES IN BRAZIL
pendent forum that was closely linked to the
budgeting assemblies. In Nazar6, however,
community activists were unable to establish
such a forum despite numerous tries, and the
budgeting assemblies remained the only
such forum for the district. It the connection
of budgeting assemblies to decision-making
power, or the perception that meetings ac-
complished something that accounts for their
relative success in both districts.
In P6r-do-Sol, the advent of budgeting as-
semblies in 1991 made possible the regular
functioning of a Conselho Popular, or popu-
lar council, although it had been attempted
since 1988. The conselho was an autono-
mous umbrella organization dedicated to
fostering discussion on common problems in
the district, and it drew participants from
various neighborhoods. Community activists
involved in the conselho described its early
difficulties, stating that "before the budget
assemblies it was almost impossible to count
on people showing up to a meeting." Sev-
eral of the principal community activists in
the new conselho had been active in the
community for a number of years before the
budgeting assemblies, principally with local,
neighborhood-level activities, and the estab-
lishment of the budgeting assemblies pro-
vided the impetus for a district-level forum.
The budgeting assemblies regularly drew to-
gether a range of community activists, cre-
ating a setting where they discussed com-
mon problems. In time, these ongoing con-
versations led to the activation of the
conselho.
Although the conselho was, during my
fieldwork, a district-level setting where
open-ended conversations about community
affairs took place, it was a setting that was
closely related to the budgeting assemblies
and was dependent on them. Its yearly
schedule was always tied to that of the bud-
geting assemblies, and at the times of the
year that budgeting assemblies did not meet,
the conselho did not meet. The principal
community activists in the conselho were the
same as those in the budgeting assemblies,
and activities between the two settings were
coordinated. In addition, a significant por-
tion of activities at the conselho was dedi-
cated to the budgeting assemblies, and the
City Hall facilitator of the budgeting assem-
blies was often in attendance. A few times
67
during my fieldwork, entire meetings were
dedicated to solving a community dispute,
such as the one between Arno and Marcos
that erupted in the budgeting assembly. In
other words, the conselho provided a com-
plement to the budgeting assemblies.
Like P6r-do-SoI, in Nazare, before the ad-
vent of the participatory budget assembly, it
was difficult to establish a meeting place for
community discussions. All evidence shows
that there simply was no such prior setting.
Since the advent of the budgeting assem-
blies, activists tried several times to create a
similar conselho, but unlike in P6r-do-Sol,
they never succeeded. According to several
interviews, it was clear that the idea of an
independent conselho did not appeal to a
number of assembly participants. One told
me, "Why do we need a conselhol We al-
ready have the budgeting [assemblies] and
that's where the government comes, not
somewhere else." This feeling was echoed
by other community activists.
Beyond interview evidence, documentary
evidence also makes clear that the institu-
tions of participatory governance served as
important meeting places for community ac-
tivists in the districts, creating settings for
community discussion that previously did
not exist. In P6r-do-Sol, the previous exist-
ence of neighborhood-based activism meant
that the establishment of the budgeting as-
semblies facilitated the creation of another,
nongovernmental, setting, the conselho. In
Nazard, the establishment of budgeting as-
semblies created a setting where citizens
could meet and carry out discussions, al-
though the paradox is that the presence of
other autonomous networks, as in P6r-do-
Sol, was important in the quality of discus-
sions in the participatory budget.
CONCLUSION
The government-sponsored participatory as-
semblies in poor neighborhoods in Brazil
appears as a potential redress to the paradox
that "neighborhoods with the most serious
need for community organization are the
ones with the least capacity to create and sus-
tain them" (Logan and Molotch 1987: 136).
Although some scholars have argued that in
the context of Latin America, "total indepen-
dence and the construction of an autonomous
68 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
social project from the grassroots have
proved to be unworkable" (Schonwalder
1997:765), it is clear from Porto Alegre that
state-sponsored institutions have proven im-
portant in fostering open-ended discussions
in unlikely settings. I have addressed the
question of whether and how such arrange-
ments afford the conditions for participants
to engage in the open-ended public-minded
discussions heralded by democratic theorists.
I have provided an ethnographic investi-
gation into the conditions necessary for the
appearance of the public sphere. In concert
with the predictions of theories on the "so-
cial bases of democracy," the past history of
two Porto Alegre districts showed difficul-
ties in establishing the regular communica-
tion characteristic of the public sphere.
Drawing on ethnographic evidence, I exam-
ined how participants in district assemblies
of the participatory budget created the frag-
ile talk of open-ended public-minded discus-
sion in two of the city's poor districts. Par-
ticipants regularly used these spaces for
civic discourse and deliberation, deploying
a language of the commonality of needs to
signify the community and the public inter-
est. While both the Nazar6 and P6r-do-Sol
districts were home to open-ended discus-
sions, some of Por-do-Sol's activists had
substantial histories of activism prior to the
budgeting meetings, while Nazare's resi-
dents, on the whole, had their first involve-
ment in civic life through budgeting meet-
ings. This was a significant difference. Or-
ganized networks of civil society played an
important role in P6r-do-Sol, most clearly in
terms of managing and curtailing conflict,
while in Nazare the assemblies became the
only place in the community, and thus be-
came a staging ground for some participants
to manage their reputations.
A comparison with a prior period in both
districts shows that before the budgeting as-
semblies, it was more difficult to sustain any
kind of regular meeting place beyond indi-
vidual neighborhoods to carry out these dis-
cussions. According to community activists
like Arno, this was because "people have
difficulty, they don't have experience and
then after working the whole week they
don't want to go to another meeting." As se-
rious impediments in the past, activists also
pointed to the transient lives of those living
in squatter settlements and to their lack of
experience with civic affairs. During the
time of my research, however, on a regular
basis both districts were home to open-ended
and public-spirited discussions on common
affairs at the participatory assemblies.
This case study makes two related theo-
retical contributions. First, adding to the bur-
geoning sociology of democracy, my evi-
dence makes a case for a significant broad-
ening of the potential actors for civic activi-
ties. Habermas's version of the public sphere
has been criticized as a too-narrow con-
ceptualization of the potential types of ac-
tivities and actors thought to be its partici-
pants (Benhabib 1994; Fraser 1992). I have
sought to add to the critique, though from a
perspective different than that of "subaltern
publics" (Fraser 1992) or "plebeian public
spheres" (Negt and Klug 1993).^' Rather, I
have tried to show that even holding con-
stant the definition of public sphere, its fea-
tures are present in two poor districts in
Porto Alegre, Brazil—a context that would
be considered unlikely, given their citizens'
material difficulties, their lack of education,
and the lack of a liberal political culture.
The reason for the appearance of the pub-
lic sphere in Nazar6 and P6r-do-Sol has to
do with the second theoretical contribution
of this research, which is to call attention to
the role of state-sponsored institutions as en-
abling the public sphere in otherwise diffi-
cult settings. Although participatory institu-
tions may be more relevant in those societ-
ies where the state historically has played a
larger role in nation-building than in North
Atlantic societies, instances of participation
in government are increasingly common in
many countries. In the United States, for ex-
ample, participatory association around po-
licing are now commonplace and have
drawn many participants who otherwise
would have had little community involve-
ment (Fung and Wright 2000). Fraser (1992)
has criticized the conception of the public
sphere for precisely neglecting the possible
connections with empowered state settings,
and I have also raised this issue, but in a
slightly different way. Here I argue that em-
^' It would have been possible to discuss a va-
riety of such subaltern counterpublics and the
way they connect to these public spheres.
 EMERGENT PUBLIC SPHERES IN BRAZIL
powered state settings, such as this one in
Brazil, are important objects of investigation
because they have the potential to foster the
participation of unlikely candidates in the
public sphere. By providing material support
and fostering a "sense of public," these em-
powered settings have the potential to bring
in those participants otherwise relegated to
subaltern spheres. Although Tocqueville
[1831] 1945:60-75) observed that, in
America's townships, sharing governance
led people to develop a "public orientation,"
his observations remained largely confined
to relatively privileged participants. I sug-
gest a similar impact of empowered settings
for the underprivileged.
Finally, I call attention to the importance
of interactions between participatory ar-
rangements and the civil society surround-
ing it. The tendency of some scholarship on
participatory governance and deliberative
democracy is to focus on the rules and insti-
tutional design of participatory arrangements
at the expense of the surrounding social con-
text (Elster 1998). Attention to these inter-
actions may significantly qualify both the
criticisms and praise for instances of partici-
pation in government as it they shed addi-
tional light on the desirability of such ar-
rangements in a variety of contexts. One of
the insights from my research is that whether
participatory sites are prone to certain down-
sides or patterns of communication may
have as much to do with the surrounding
civil society as the institutional participatory
rules. In this case, while the assemblies were
not prone to previously noted drawbacks of
participatory democracy, such as the domi-
nation of the assemblies by the articulate
few, they were prone to another drawback of
participation in government specific to set-
tings without already established civic net-
works. The social networks in P6r-do-Sol
were important, not so much in turning an "I
into We," (Putnam 1995) but in preventing
the "We" of the discussions on collective
projects from turning into an "I" of personal
disputes as happened in Nazar6.
Attention to these interactions between
civic networks and participatory institutions
also calls attention to the possible long-term
outcomes and limits of the impact of partici-
patory institutions on civil society at large.
In the case of Porto Alegre, historical evi-
69
dence has shown that these budget assem-
blies have fostered significant forms of civic
engagement throughout the city, as the num-
ber of neighborhood associations, conselhos,
and other civil society organizations have
increased in the period since the establish-
ment of the participatory budget assemblies
(Baiocchi 2002a). In P6r-do-Sol the assem-
blies fostered more activism at the level of
the district, but this impact was limited in
Nazar6. The ethnography here allows some
insight into the importance of interactions
between civil society and participatory insti-
tutions, but barely begins to address ques-
tions best addressed by comparative analy-
sis. Attention to such interactions holds
promise for further comparative research
that addresses the features of participatory
institutions and their surrounding environ-
ments as well. In Brazil, for instance, there
now exist many similar participatory experi-
ments that makes possible a number of com-
parisons; these experiments are now taking
place in settings with different regional tra-
ditions, different racial and ethnic composi-
tions, and different social movement lega-
cies. In consolidated democracies participa-
tory experiments exist in contexts not nor-
mally considered propitious for democratic
communication, such as among socially vul-
nerable residents of inner cities (Fung 1998).
I have pointed to ways that future research
on the evolution of democracy in such set-
tings might productively investigate open-
ended and public-minded discussion and the
conditions that foster it.
Gianpaolo Baiocchi is Assistant Professor of So-
ciology at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the
editor o/Radicals in Power: Experiments in Ur-
ban Democracy in Brazil (Zed Press, 2002) and
of a recently completed manuscript provisionally
entitled Militants and Citizens: Local Democracy
on a Global Stage in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He is
conducting comparative research on democratic
innovations and new claims in civil society in
post-authoritarian contexts. In the fall of 2003,
he will join the faculty of the University of Mas-
sachusetts-Amherst.
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