| Research Abstract |
This report provides an analysis of power -sharing arrangement of decentralization at local-level experiences in Mexico and Brazil. The society and politics of both countries are characterized by the predominance of the state over the civil society and by huge obstacles against the construction of citizenship, the exercise of rights, and popular autonomous participation. Nevertheless, current politics in Mexico are characterized by expressions of plurality, competition, and political competition for integration of powers and representation of authorities in the three levels of government : federal, state, and municipal. This new political trend is an expression of a long process of democratization that has manifested in diverse areas while modifying the relationship between society and government. Especially, this transformation, the building of a democratic relationship between government and society, has been manifesting itself at the municipal level and through various forms of civi
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l society participation that have influenced change at the national and state levels of government.
In Brazil, the PT's support for democratic decentralization can also be located in its close association with autonomous movement. From its very birth (1980), the PT was a social movement party, having been formed as an alliance of progressive elements of the Church, unions, peasant associations, human rights groups, and an array of revolutionary organizations. Created as an instrument of struggle against an authoritarian regime and its corporatist structure, during its first decade of existence the PT constantly sought to maintain ties to a multitude of grassroots social movements and developed highly decentralized internal structures. The participatory budget of Porto Alegre enables residents of that city to participate directly in forging the city budget and thus use public resources previously diverted to patronage pay-offs to their roads and electrify their neighborhoods. In these way, the budget process discouraged long-standing traditions of clientelism and promoted what would be called 'synergistic relationship' or 'co-governance'.
The participatory budget has produced a synergy between civil associational life, government action, redistribution of basic public goods, and the exercise of formal democratic freedom and human rights both in conventional and new public domains. There has been a real redistribution of public goods, a gradual broadening and deepening of participation, improving governance on the basis of results, transparency and stable institutional arrangements. In this sense, citizenship has become more substantial. So, we could speak of the local-level example of democratic consolidation, the creation of new associational incentives and space, and the overcome of the zero-sum approaches.
I address some problems and a viewpoint on the local democracy and decentralization in the chapter 1. Next, chapter 2 examine the possibility of the state-society relationship focusing on mutual empowerment, ambivalence of localism and public space. Chapter 3 analyze the form and process of political reforms and decentralization in Mexico and Mexico City. Chapter 4 discuss mutual development between decentralization and civil society taking up El Barzon movement, NGO linkages to social movements and their networking with each other. Chapter 5 and 6 consider the questions how and to what extent did the participatory budget further the role of civil society, synergy between autonomous grassroots mobilization and associational life covering the four Worker's Party municipal administrations from 1989. Then I could conform a new 'public space' shared by the local state and grassroots organization. Less
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