The watering down of participatory budgeting and people power in Porto Alegre, Brazil (PLA 58)

Guest editors: Tom Wakeford and Jasber Singh. The Brazilian city of Porto Alegre pioneered the idea of participatory budgeting in the late 1980s. Its initial success has been followed by a wave of attempts to set up similar schemes across the world. With the watering down of this radical power-sharing system following the loss of power by the Workers Party in 2004, discussions about financial and political sustainability of such initiatives are now taking place under the banner of an emerging campaign called Popular Sovereignty.

Website hosting the Popular Sovereignty Network, which seeks to strengthen popular power as a strategy to give effectiveness to the participation offers made by governmental institutions: ongcidade.org ~The Transnational Institute (TNI) is an international network of activist-scholars committed to critical analyses of the global problems of today and tomorrow, with a view to providing intellectual support to those movements concerned to steer the world in a democratic, equitable and environmentally sustainable direction: tni.org

Participatory Learning and Action (PLA, formerly PLA Notes) is the world's leading series on participatory learning and action approaches and methods. PLA publishes articles on participation aimed at practitioners, researchers, academics and activists. All articles are peer-reviewed by an international editorial board.