Porto Alegre Participatory Budgeting — The Original Citizen Budget Assemblies

In 1989, under mayor Olivio Dutra, Porto Alegre began letting residents directly allocate a share of the municipal capital budget through open neighbourhood and thematic assemblies, with elected delegates negotiating a final city-wide investment plan each year. It was the first large-scale implementation of what became known as participatory budgeting.

To give residents a direct say in allocating part of the municipal capital budget, and to prioritise infrastructure investment through open assemblies and elected delegates negotiating a city-wide plan.

Residents took part in open neighbourhood and thematic assemblies each year; elected delegates then negotiated a final city-wide investment plan from the priorities raised in those assemblies.

The World Bank documented concrete infrastructure gains attributable to the redirected spending: household sewer and water connections rose from 75% in 1988 to 98% by 1997, and new public-housing units grew from sheltering 1,700 residents in 1986 to 27,000 in 1989. The World Bank publicly endorsed the model as early as 1993 and used it to inform lending elsewhere. According to the World Resources Institute, the model has since been adopted in some form by more than 2,700 governments worldwide.

The evidence is not uniformly positive: political commitment in Porto Alegre itself waned over the following two decades, and the city's leadership suspended the process in 2017 -- a reminder that participatory mechanisms need sustained political backing to survive changes in administration.