We inhabit a perpetually accelerating and increasingly interconnected world, with new
ideas, fads, and fashions moving at social-media speed. New policy ideas, especially “ideas …

Can we design institutions that increase and deepen citizen participation in the political
decision making process? At a time when there is growing disillusionment with the …

With the urbanization of the world's population proceeding apace and the equally rapid
urbanization of poverty, urban theory has an urgent challenge to meet if it is to remain …

Case studies from around the world and theoretical discussion show how the capacity to act
collectively on local problems can be developed, strengthening democracy while changing …

Brazilian cities have been the sites of significant experiments in participatory and
deliberative governance. Participatory budgeting has to be singled out as one of the most …

Originally developed in Brazil, participatory budgeting is widely recognised as democratic
innovation yet its concrete results vary greatly. Collating evidence from empirical and …

In the late 1990s, the Workers' Party (PT) government of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do
Sul introduced participatory budgeting, a process in which citizens establish annual …

The contributors to Beyond Civil Society argue that the conventional distinction between
civic and uncivic protest, and between activism in institutions and in the streets, does not …

This book improves understandings of how and why clientelism endures in Latin America
and why state policy is often ineffective. Political scientists and sociologists, the contributors …

Detailed fieldwork in São Paulo, Brazil, shows that the conventional understanding of civil
society and citizen participation is flawed in two major ways. The dominant focus on the …