William Nylen begins by discussing North Americans' love-hate relationship with politics and politicians, then shows how Brazilians feel the same way (as do many citizens of democracies throughout the world). He argues that this is so because contemporary democracies have increasingly trickled up and away from so-called 'average citizens'. We now live in a world of 'Elitist Democracies' essentially constructed of, by and for moneyed, well-connected and ethically-challenged elites. Fortunately, there are alternatives, and that's where Brazil offers valuable lessons. Experiments in local-level participatory democracy, put into practice in Brazil by the Workers Party show both the promise and the practical limitations of efforts to promote 'popular participation' and citizen empowerment.

The largely successful trajectory of participatory democracy in post-1988 Brazil is well documented, but much less is known about its origins in the 1970s and early 1980s. In Participatory Democracy in Brazil: Socioeconomic and Political Origins, J. Ricardo Tranjan recounts the creation of participatory democracy in Brazil. He positions the well-known Porto Alegre participatory budgeting at the end of three interrelated and partially overlapping processes: a series of incremental steps toward broader political participation taking place throughout the twentieth century; short-lived and only partially successful attempts to promote citizen participation in municipal administration in the 1970s; and setbacks restricting direct citizen participation in the 1980s. What emerges is a clearly delineated history of how socioeconomic contexts shaped Brazil’s first participatory administrations. Tranjan first examines Brazil’s long history of institutional exclusion of certain segments of the population and controlled inclusion of others, actions that fueled nationwide movements calling for direct citizen participation in the 1960s. He then presents three case studies of municipal administrations in the late 1970s and early 1980s that foreground the impact of socioeconomic factors in the emergence, design, and outcome of participatory initiatives. The contrast of these precursory experiences with the internationally known 1990s participatory models shows how participatory ideals and practices responded to the changing institutional context of the 1980s. The final part of his analysis places developments in participatory discourses and practices in the 1980s within the context of national-level political-institutional changes; in doing so, he helps bridge the gap between the local-level participatory democracy and democratization literatures.

People are increasingly unhappy with their governments in democracies around the world. In countries as diverse as India, Ecuador, and Uganda, governments are responding to frustrations by mandating greater citizen participation at the local and state level. Officials embrace participatory reforms, believing that citizen councils and committees lead to improved accountability and more informed communities. Yet there's been little research on the efficacy of these efforts to improve democracy, despite an explosion in their popularity since the mid-1980s. Democracy from Above? tests the hypothesis that top-down reforms strengthen democracies and evaluates the conditions that affect their success. Stephanie L. McNulty addresses the global context of participatory reforms in developing nations. She observes and interprets what happens after greater citizen involvement is mandated in seventeen countries, with close case studies of Guatemala, Bolivia, and Peru. The first cross-national comparison on this issue, Democracy from Above? explores whether the reforms effectively redress the persistent problems of discrimination, elite capture, clientelism, and corruption in the countries that adopt them. As officials and reformers around the world and at every level of government look to strengthen citizen involvement and confidence in the political process, McNulty provides a clear understanding of the possibilities and limitations of nationally mandated participatory reforms.

While scholars, activists and pundits from around the world have heralded the Lula years as a breakthrough for poverty reduction and the forthcoming emergence of Brazil as a dynamic economic superpower, many of their counterparts in the country as well as a number of Brazilianists elsewhere, have expressed great disappointment. Tracing back the trajectory of Brazilian Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores - PT), Hernán F. Gómez Bruera explores how holding national executive public office contributed decisively to a pragmatic shift away from the party’s radical redistributive and participatory platform, earning the approbation of international audiences and criticisms of domestic progressives. He explains why a unique party, which originally promoted a radical progressive agenda of socio-economic redistribution and participatory democracy, eventually adopted an orthodox economic policy, formed legislative alliances with conservative parties, altered its relationship with social movements and relegated the participatory agenda to de sidelines. Touching on multiple dimensions, from economic policy and land reform to social policy, this book offers a distinct explanation as to why progressive parties of mass-based origin shift to the center over time and alter their relationships with their allies in civil society. Written in a clear and accessible style and featuring an enormous wealth of firsthand accounts from party leaders at all levels and within different factions, Gómez Bruera offers much needed new insights into why progressive parties alter their discourses and strategies when they occupy executive public office.

The resurgence of the Left in Latin America over the past decade has been so notable that it has been called “the Pink Tide.” In recent years, regimes with leftist leaders have risen to power in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela. What does this trend portend for the deepening of democracy in the region? Benjamin Goldfrank has been studying the development of participatory democracy in Latin America for many years, and this book represents the culmination of his empirical investigations in Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In order to understand why participatory democracy has succeeded better in some countries than in others, he examines the efforts in urban areas that have been undertaken in the cities of Porto Alegre, Montevideo, and Caracas. His findings suggest that success is related, most crucially, to how nationally centralized political authority is and how strongly institutionalized the opposition parties are in the local arenas.

This book explores the political trajectory of Latin America's most important contemporary labor movement. The New Unionism played a central role in Brazil's struggle for democracy in the 1980s and recast the country's subsequent party politics through its creation of the innovative Workers' Party (PT). The author breaks new ground by analyzing this celebrated prototype of «social movement unionism» as a heterogeneous alliance of component factions that evolves in relation to shifting economic, political, and ideological contexts. Through the prism of internal politics, he shows how Brazil's transitions - from military-authoritarian to liberal-democratic rule, from statist to free-market economic policies, and from a Leninist to a post-Leninist left - undermined the independent labor movement's commitments to internal democracy, political autonomy, and societal transformation. The book concludes with a comparative assessment of Brazilian, South African, and South Korean social movement unionisms' shared dilemmas, arguing that an adequate understanding of their relative declines demands more rigorous attention to the dynamic nexus between internal movement politics and shifting external environments.