Examining the Claims of Critics of the Participatory Budget

Abstract

Chapter five introduced us to some of the OP’s most fervent critics: opposition members of Betim’s city council. It would be easy to dismiss much of what they had to say on the subject as mere partisan diatribes on the part of traditional clientelistic politicians out to discredit an innovative democratic process that challenges their here-to-fore unquestioned capacity to administer public goods as if they were their own private property (i.e. the very definition of patrimonialism). However, since we took the claims of Orçamento Participativo (OP) proponents seriously in chapter six and subjected them to critical analysis, it behooves us to do the same with the arguments of the OP’s critics. In this chapter, then, I will present four major critiques of the OP that emerged again and again in conversations with opponents of the process in both Belo Horizonte (BH) and Betim. I will then present the counter arguments of OP proponents, generally administrators and officials affiliated with the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores). Finally, for each debate, I will make use of my own observations, the data from my quantitative and qualitative analyses of the OPs of BH and Betim, and relevant data from comparable cases (e.g. Porto Alegre) to hazard some conclusions about the conflicting claims.