Brian Wampler, professor of global studies and political science and research director for the School of Public Service, recently co-authored a book examining the rise, spread and decline of participatory budgeting in Brazil.
Co-authored with Benjamin Goldfrank, The Rise, Spread, and Decline of Brazil’s Participatory Budgeting also considers what the decline of participatory budgeting in Brazil means for other nations.
Participatory budgeting brings citizens into public forums to vote on infrastructure projects. Although the innovative democratic institution is one of world’s most widely adopted participatory programs, it has now largely been abandoned in Brazil, where it began during the transition to democracy in the 1980s and early 1990s. Wampler and Goldfrank seek to explain this puzzling transformation.