by Jessica Reed at the ECC event
A couple of minutes ago I chatted with Geraldo Adriano Godoy de Campos, a University professor of International Relations in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Geraldo is an expert on participative democracy: he and Ollie Henman (the UK ECC co-ordinator) have worked extensively on city-wide participative deliberations in Brazil.
Their experience is fascinating and definitely inspiring, and I will try my best to summarise it here. Geraldo helped with the management of citizens' consultations in Sao Paulo - a town of more than 11 million inhabitants!- in regards to the city's investement budget. Open delibarations were organised in each different aeras of the city, where everyone could join and have their say. Consellors were then elected by the participants in a proportional fashion: each participant needed a certain number of votes to represent his neighbourhood. In a very affirmative-action fashion, women only needed 5 votes to become counsellors, same for sexual minorities (homeless and natives representatives needed zero).
The elected counsellors then agreed on a budget, which would run for a year. This is a lot of work and hope for every participants, but it seems to be worth it: the process puts decision-making in the hands of citizens who truly want to be engaged in their city's day-to-day budgeting decisions.
Sao Paulo recently elected a right-wing body of governance, which decided to put a stop to those successful experiments. Alas, the legal framework does not make it mandatory for cities to undergo such programs, which are difficult, costly, but most of all strip politicians of their power. However, in other cities like Porto Alegre, where such a system as been running smoothly for 16 years, the involvement of citizens in local politics is still going strong.
Can this work at the European level? The first issue that comes to mind is one of accountability: in the absense of any legal framework regulating such forms of participative democracy, how to make sure politicians will listen?
