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Porto Alegre (literally ‘Joyous Port’ or ‘Happy Harbour’) is your regular South American town. The 11th most populous municipality in Brazil and the capital of the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre enjoys the usual salubrious South American climate, has a broad-based economy that lays emphasis on agriculture and industry. Most of its inhabitants migrated here from Azores, Portugal.

What’s so special about Porto Alegre? It’s a remarkable city as it has come to represent a system of governance and lent its name to experimental models in many other cities, including European ones.

Porto Alegre, which has hosted several sessions of the World Social Forum, has become a global brand ambassador of sorts for participatory politics, largely because of a participatory budgeting experiment tried out in the city with major and startling effects.
Participatory budgeting was part of innovative reform programmes to overcome severe inequality in living standards amongst city residents. One-third of the city’s residents lived in isolated slums on the city’s outskirts, lacking access to public amenities (water, sanitation, healthcare facilities and schools).

Participatory budgeting, a process of democratic deliberation and decision making in which ordinary residents decide how to allocate part of a municipal or public budget, was initiated in Porto Alegre in 1989 and now occurs annually, starting with a series of neighbourhood, regional, and city-wide assemblies, where residents and elected budget delegates identify spending priorities and vote on which priorities to implement.

Porto Alegre spends about $200 million per year on construction and services, and this money is subject to participatory budgeting. Around 50,000 city residents now take part in the process (compared to 1.5million city inhabitants), with the number growing year on year since 1989. Participants are from diverse economic and political backgrounds.

A World Bank paper suggests that participatory budgeting has led to direct improvements in Porto Alegre’s facilities. The high number of participants suggests that participatory budgeting encourages increased citizen involvement. Also, Porto Alegre’s health and education budgets have been increasing year-on-year. The paper concludes that participatory budgeting can lead to improved conditions for the poor.

Based on the success in Porto Alegre, more than 140 of the 5,571 municipalities in Brazil have adopted participatory budgeting and since its emergence in Porto Alegre, this form of budgeting has spread to hundreds of Latin American cities, and dozens of cities in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America.

Porto Alegre continues to be a beacon of hope for those passionate about community participation in politics and governance anywhere.