Changing Urban Movements Repertoires Following the Erosion of Porto Alegre’s Participatory Budgeting: From Institutionalized Participation to Deinstitutionalization

Abstract

In Brazil, numerous participatory institutions have been suspended over the past decades, including many participatory budgeting (PB) programs at the municipal level. Since the introduction of PB in Porto Alegre in 1989, extensive literature has discussed its effects on the way urban social movements make demands. However, the suspension of many PBs across Brazil raises a new question: how do these movements adapt following the loss of an arena that had become central to their efforts? Looking at the pioneering experience of Porto Alegre’s PB, whose progressive erosion started in 2002, I argue that urban movements have since shifted away from institutionalized participation routines, and adopted new routines that combine bureaucratic activism with proximity politics. Focusing on these movements’ repertoires of interactions I argue that the erosion of PB led to the deinstitutionalization of urban social movements.

Introduction ¹

During the two decades following its transition to democracy, Brazil emerged as a laboratory for participation (Avritzer 2009). In the late 1980s, diverse mechanisms were introduced or developed to incorporate social movements into the decision-making process, spanning from local to federal government levels. The multiplication and consolidation of new arenas for interaction between the state and citizens facilitated the establishment of an institutional framework for social participation (Rocha 2008; Teixeira and Teixeira 2019), even though some were more formalized than others. ²

As key players in the redemocratization at both local and national levels, social movements (SMs) consistently engaged in these arenas, inaugurating a cycle of institutionalized actions within participatory spaces (Carlos 2020). This phase was characterized by the routinized and expanded nature of their interactions with the state (Keck 1995; Wampler 2008; Dagnino and Tatagiba 2010; Abers et al. 2014; Montambeault 2015; Baiocchi and Ganuza 2016; Lüchmann et al. 2017; Goirand 2019; Carlos 2020). The literature describes this process as an institutionalization, marked by the widespread use of institutional strategies, emphasizing active participation in participatory institutions (PIs), as opposed to extra-institutional repertoires of collective action like protests and direct action (Dowbor 2012).

At the local level, these movements have often manifested as residents’ associations, known as “associações de moradores” (AMs), in neighborhoods historically neglected by public authorities. ³ These associations formulated demands in critical areas such as housing, sanitation, health, and education. Their activities were primarily rooted in community organizations and often involved confrontations and negotiation with the state to assert their right to the city ⁴ (Fedozzi 2000). Beginning as early as the 1970s, their mobilization led to the creation of institutionalized arenas for political participation. Within these arenas, they could articulate their demands and exert influence over decision-making processes related to public policies (Rocha 2008). This trend was especially noticeable in participatory budgeting (PB), which provided urban social movements with a formalized platform to express and channel their demands. Additionally, it served as an institutionalized arena where they could engage with the municipal administration.

Yet, over the last decade, Brazil has experienced a shrinking of its participatory arenas, ⁵ primarily due to shifts in political leadership, transformation in the strategies of political parties and decision-makers regarding participation and heightened budgetary constraints (Romão, et al. 2020; Fedozzi et al. 2020; Wampler and Goldfrank 2022; Bezerra et al., 2024). Participatory budgeting has steadily declined in numerous cities across the country over the past decade. This trend is driven by decreasing incentives for both political parties and citizens to support PB. The emblematic case of Porto Alegre’s PB serves as a harbinger of this trend, experiencing a gradual and slow suspension from below (Montambeault 2019) that started as early as 2002 (Fedozzi 2009; Melgar 2015; Müller 2022).

The erosion of participatory budgeting raises crucial questions for urban social movements entrenched in these processes. To what extent does it influence their approach to formulating demands and defining strategies and modes of action? How do these movements adapt following the loss of an arena that had become central to their efforts?

To address these questions, I use an approach grounded in the repertoire of interactions between movements and the state (Abers et al. 2014). I argue that the erosion of participatory budgeting has led urban movements in Porto Alegre to disengage from this specific institutionalized arena, encouraging their deinstitutionalization. This process is conceptualized as a significant reduction in the utilization of institutionalized participation routines. The basis for this argument lies in the empirical analysis of Porto Alegre’s pioneering participatory budgeting, drawing on new ethnographic data from Partenon, a metropolitan district particularly representative given its strong associative tradition and longstanding incorporation within PB.

I argue that since 2002, participatory budgeting has gradually become less useful for the movements in Partenon, as it no longer empowers them to substantially impact decision-making. As a result, urban movements have significantly reduced their use of institutionalized participation, as it no longer produces tangible outcomes. The erosion of PB then reshapes the patterns of socio-state interactions, while urban social movements readapt their strategies. Furthermore, participatory budgeting, by facilitating encounters between officials and social actors, has diversified SMs’ repertoires over the years. Instead of a straightforward return to protest and direct action, this complexity encourages the adoption of new routines that blend bureaucratic activism with proximity politics.

The next section provides an extensive review of the literature concerning the institutionalization of social movements and the impact of participatory institutions on the way these movements formulate demands. Building on this foundation, I construct a theoretical reflection on the relatively underexplored process of deinstitutionalization in social movement literature. I then introduce a theoretical framework centered around the repertoire of interactions (Abers et al. 2014). Following a discussion of Partenon’s movements’ involvement in participatory budgeting, my analysis unfolds in three sections, each describing a routine of interaction.

Participatory Institutions Transforming Movements’ Repertoire

The literature on social movements has predominantly concentrated on the internal organizational aspect of institutionalization. This focus aims to delineate the rationalization of social movement activities, their bureaucratization, and professionalization (Della Porta and Diani 2006). McCarthy and Zald (1977) in their foundational model of resource mobilization, explain that social movement organizations arise from the need for collective actors to manage resource flows to resolve their collective action dilemma (Olson 1965).

Institutionalization is thus seen as the main factor explaining a movement’s durability. In other words, movements with a more robust organizational structure are considered more likely to sustain themselves over time (Walker and McCarthy 2010). However, this postulate is strongly challenged by the contentious politics theory, which sees institutionalization as synonymous with the domestication of social movements, characterized by the abandonment of protests from their repertoire (Meyer, and Tarrow 1998), the routinization of their activity (Pruijt 2003), thus distancing these movements from their social base (McAdam 1999) or, more broadly, a deradicalization and loss of identity (Kriesi et al. 1995).

However, literature on the women’s movement has more recently shown how institutionalization can provide access to new resources and constitute a lever of empowerment for movements (Stoffel 2007; Banaszak 2009; Bereni and Revillard 2018). Mobilizations have also led to the opening of intersections between the state and SMs (Banaszak 2009), within which activists could act relatively autonomously to advance the movement’s interests. These intersections can act as spaces for institutional socialization of the claims waged by activists;they can also deploy a repertoire of institutionalized confrontational action, imbued with bureaucratic and movement dimensions (Bereni and Revillard 2018).

In Brazil, the existence of multiple arenas for interaction between public authorities and civil society has led several authors to consider institutionalization through the prism of a complex and interdependent relationship between state and social movements. As a site of routinization of interactions between government and civil society (Wampler 2012), PIs have indeed been considered in the literature as vectors of institutionalization of claims, actors, and social movements. The concept of institutionalization then refers above all to the integration of SMs’ demands and actions within state institutions (Dagnino and Tatagiba 2010), or to a transformation of movements into state institutions (Lavalle et al. 2019). From the angle of the modes of action, institutionalization can be characterized by the progressive focus on the use of formalized and codified arenas to channel demands and interact with state authoritiesas opposed to opting forprotests or street actions.

By offering new codified spaces to channel demands, PIs have a transformative effect on the repertoire of SMs. For some, it involves introducing an organizational logic (Hornhart 2018) that prioritizes collaboration with state authorities over contestation (Dagnino and Tatagiba 2010). Indeed by mainly driving participants to discuss certain public policies, PIs also involve specific activities and work rhythms, potentially irreconcilable with those previously used with SMs (Silva and Job Schmitt 2012). Moreover, participation in PIs presents a high cost for movements since they require their leaders to acquire technical qualifications (Dagnio and Tatagiba 2010). Acting through participatory institutions can then become a source of hierarchical and organizational conflict (Pismel 2019), with some activists being reluctant to change their practices. From a more general perspective, the emergence of the movement-based Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) favored the introduction of activists into public institutions viaa process of professionalization (Goirand 2019) which is often considered detrimental to the autonomy of social movements (Dagnino and Tatagiba 2010).

However, a counterargument to these assertions is that they often overlook the ability of social movements to preserve their autonomy (Lima 2021) and their inclination to employ hybrid strategies (Dowbor 2012) by combining action via institutions and outside institutions. Accordingly, authors understand the state as a heterogeneous and permeable entity (Armstrong and Bernstein 2008; Lavalle et al. 2019) traversed by multiple contradictions through which SMs can advance their respective claims (Dowbor 2012). Subsequently, in line with Banaszak’s (2009) thesis, Abers (2019) considers that PIs and the presence of SMs within state institutions enable the presence of bureaucratic activism.

In terms of modi operandi, rather than a simple deradicalization, Carlos (2020) argues that the insertion of SMs within PIs has diversified their repertoires by deepening their links with political institutions and their relations with other SMs and nongovernmental organizations, by restructuring their relationships with the state through a more cooperative approach to the state and by complexifying their internal organizations. Müller (2022) corroborates these assertions by studying the district of Lomba do Pinheiro in Porto Alegre, showing that hybrid repertoires allowed the district’s SMs to locally reduce the erosion of PB. Drawing on this literature, I consider that the possibility of channeling demands within participatory institutions has profoundly modified and complexified the practices and strategies of social movements (Carlos 2020), introducing the use of institutionalized channels of interactions with state institutions. The focus on these new tools over the use of protest routines is then defined as an institutionalization of the SMs, from the perspective of their means of action.

While institutionalization has been a central preoccupation of Brazilian social movement scholars within the context of the multiplication of participatory spaces invested in by SMs, the reverse process remains overlooked in the literature. Hence, as these participatory institutions are transforming and, in some cases, even disappearing, the question of the deinstitutionalization of social movements’ repertoires remains unanswered. In Brazil, the progressive narrowing of channels of interactions between social movements and the state invites us to question the future of SMs in the face of the loss of arenas that had become central to their claims. In this article, I address this issue from the angle of the adaptation of strategies and repertoires of interaction, seeing the erosion of PB as a vector of deinstitutionalization for SMs.

It is necessary to mention that from neo-institutionalist perspectives, the concept of deinstitutionalization describes a set of mechanisms of democratic backsliding, in Latin America and Brazil, in the face of a return to authoritarianism. Withinthis perspective, it has meant the delegitimization of the participatory infrastructure (Bezerra et al., 2024) and the fragilization of institutional fits (Castro et al. 2022), which describes participatory institutions as anchor points within the state for movements. (Lavalle et al. 2019; Carlos 2020) In the case of Belo Horizonte’s PB, Montambeault (2019) uses the concept to describe the institutional changes that gradually led to a delegitimization of PB in the eyes of its participants. Although these neo-institutionalist perspectives contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms of democratic backsliding, the focus on institutional changes does not allow for in-depth reflection on its consequences for social actors.

While it is not common in social movements theory, the term deinstitutionalization has previously been used by Rodgers and Knight (2011) to describe the organizational transformations of the women’s movement in Canada in the face of the recent dismantling of the institutional mechanisms that had financially supported it and provided a platform for its demands. More recently, Pereira, Aragusuku, and Teixeira (2023) have described deinstitutionalization as a process of withdrawing demands, actors, and categories of social movements from the state. Drawing on the institutional fit approach, they demonstrate how conflicts between the LGBTQIA+ movement and anti-gender activism in Brazil have led to the deinstitutionalizationof one and the institutionalization of the other.

Focusing on the hybrid strategies of SMs, I refer to deinstitutionalization to describe the gradual decline in the use of institutionalized modes of action. While institutionalization referred to the progressive shift toward channeling the demands of movements within state institutions (Dagnino and Tatagiba, 2010; Lavalle et al. 2019), deinstitutionalization signifies a reversal of this process, marked by an increased reliance on routines outside of institutionalized arenas. This enables a better understanding of how actors enduringly embedded in participatory institutions have progressively adapted their strategies following the loss of an arena that had become central to their claims. In doing so, I analyze the long-term effects of participatory institutions on the way SMs make and aggregate demands, even after being stripped of their redistributive potential. Additionally, it provides original insights into the potential consequences of democratic erosion at the local level from the perspective of social movements.

Focusing on meansof action, I use the approach of repertoires of interactions, developed by Abers et al. (2014) to answer this question. It is based on an amplification of the concept of repertoires of actions (McAdam et al. 2001), allowing us to incorporate a diversity of routines used by social movements beyond the sole possibility of protest and confrontation, and to examine how they have been used, combined, and transformed. Following this approach allows us to highlight how PIs have complexified the repertoires of SMs underlining their role as vectors of institutionalization.

Four common routines of interaction between the State and movements can thus be identified. First, both protests and direct action aim to exert pressure on public authorities via the demonstration of a movement’s capacity to mobilize; this routine designates the use of actions, the most common of which is the use of demonstrations. Second, institutionalized participation is characterized by the use of official channels of interaction with the state, ofwhichrules are defined beforehand and accepted by all the actors involved. Drawing on the iconic experience of PB, I will show how a successful PI encourages SMs to focus on this routine, therefore becoming a vector of institutionalization of social movements. Third, proximity politics represent a form of individualized interaction operating through interpersonal contact, implying asymmetric relationships and informal exchanges between activists and State representatives. Fourth, bureaucratic activism (Abers 2019), represents the occupation of positions in bureaucracies, through which activists continue to pursue the objectives of their movement.

In this article, I analyze how the progressive erosion of a PI has led SMs away from codified spaces for interacting with the state, thus deinstitutionalizing their repertoires. After discussing the case of Porto Alegre’s PB as a vector of institutionalization, I illustrate how its erosion fosters a reverse process of deinstitutionalization in the repertoires of urban movements, which have become more complex and diversified over time. This article thus demonstrates that the erosion of PB leads to a decrease in the use of institutionalized participation—although it has not entirely disappeared—in favor of registers rooted in proximity politics and bureaucratic activism.

Investigating Thirty Years of PB in Porto Alegre

This article adopts a processual and historical approach to analyze the evolution of the means of actions of urban social movements following the erosion of a PI at the municipal level. It is based on an ethnographic survey conducted in the city of Porto Alegre, often considered the birthplace of participatory budgeting (even if similar experiences were the forerunners of Porto Alegre’s PB), whose introduction and success are the result of multiple interactions between SMs and municipal authorities (Fedozzi 2000). Porto Alegre’s PB stood out as a singular instance of social movement institutionalization, becoming the principal arena where urban movements articulate their demands, consequently reshaping their strategies. The examination of Porto Alegre’s case provides an extensive and nuanced exploration of the implications of democratic erosion for actors deeply entrenched within participatory institutions.

Porto Alegre comprises several subdivisions (districts), each consisting of numerous neighborhoods. Previous research has highlighted how the integration of PB varies across these districts, with the associative tradition being a significant explanatory factor (Fedozzi 2000; Abers 2000; Baiocchi 2005). Building on this literature, this article examines the case of Partenon, characterized as a historically active and organized district with a robust network of associations predating the introduction of PB. It stands out as a unique example of urban activism deeply embedded in a participatory institution, as evidenced by Baiocchi (2005). Given its robust associative tradition and deep engagement in PB, Partenon emerges as an especially compelling case for exploring the broader implications of the closure of a participatory institution. Consequently, this case study offers an opportunity to observe and delineate the process of deinstitutionalization within a context characterized by intricate socio-state interactions. From a temporal point of view, my analysis starts from the year 2002, chosen as the beginning of the decline of PB (Fedozzi 2009; Siqueira and Marzulo 2020; Müller 2022). The end of my analysis is set for 2023, the year of our five-monthon-site research.

Studying a declining participatory institution presents some important methodological challenges. First, starting in 2017, the municipal administration stopped giving reliable data about PB such as the amount of money invested . For the time being, my messages to the authorities remained unanswered. Second, residents’ associations and urban movements in Brazil represent a heterogeneous, unstable, and changing whole (Sader 2007). Many AMs have deeply transformed their activities during the last decades, many others stopped being active, and very few have kept systematic archives. Third, the individuals engaged in these movements have moved from one neighborhood, non-government organization, or institution to another.

To address these challenges, I used an ethnographic approach centered on semi-structured interviews. I interviewed community leaders and presidents of AMs who have historically been involved in their district to explore the evolution of social mobilization in their neighborhoods, their personal trajectories, and their connections with PB, past and present. As many community leaders and former PB participants had ceased their activism, as shown by Junge (2014), I mainly relied on word of mouth and snowball sampling to locate them for data collection. To mitigate selection and sampling biases and to diversify my venues of access, I conducted ethnographic observation of PB reunions and other forms of mobilization within and outside state institutions. I also reached out to current PB participants. As a result, I conducted 20 interviews over a five-month period in Porto Alegre, while living in Partenon. ⁶

Porto Alegre: At the Origins of SM Institutionalization through PB

In Porto Alegre, the inhabitants of more precarious neighborhoods historically put up fierce resistance to the military regime in the late 1970s, which addressed accelerated favelization with a policy of forced and often violent expulsions. In a general context of efforts to re-democratize the country, Porto Alegre’s urban movement emerged as an important force for confronting the public authorities and fighting for the right be part of the city, particularly concerning the introduction of infrastructures and access to public services (Fedozzi 2000).

In Partenon, a dense network of combative associations (about 20 AMs) already existed before the democratic transition. At the end of the 1970s, several residents’ associations were created, to organize action and reflection on the improvement of living conditions in neighborhoods under-equipped with public infrastructures. During the 1980s, they first engaged indisputes with the municipal authorities, leading to the achievement of some improvements for their communities following a routine of direct actions and protests. For instance, in 1984 activists occupied the Riogrande government for ten days (Baiocchi 2005).

Their coordinated actions, along with other AMs throughout the city, led to the construction of a singular participatory institution that was to profoundly transform the urban landscape and their relationship with municipal authorities. Implemented by a newly elected Petista administration starting in 1989, participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre emerged from interactions (often tense) between urban movement representatives and public authorities. Although it has had several models (Fedozzi 2000), in its most mature form, PB consists of a

two-tiered structure of fora where citizens participate as individuals and as representatives of various civil society groups (neighborhood associations, cultural groups, special interest groups) throughout a yearly cycle. They deliberate and decide on projects for specific districts and on municipal investment priorities, and then monitor the outcome of these projects. (Baiocchi 2005, 58)

As it starts to bring concrete results, PB quickly gains in popularity among the residents of peripheral neighborhoods. The urban movements of Porto Alegre, directly involved in the construction of the institutional design of PB, will massively invest in this new channel to voice their claims, as it offers real chances to improve the quality of living in their neighborhoods. A vast literature has developed about Porto Alegre’s PB, regarded as a pioneering democratic experience and an innovative tool for empowering grassroots mobilization, encouraging their self-organization (Baiocchi 2005), and promoting horizontal, cooperative relations between residents, with an asserted desire to resist state control (Abers 2000). The PB experience also enabled activists to engage in every stage of the revitalization process in peripheral neighborhoods, while facilitating the successful implementation of public infrastructures (Pimentel Walker 2016, 58)

PB favored the creation of new formalized AMs, to collect the residents’ demands but also to manage some of the projects and infrastructures set up through PB (often in the case of schools or nurseries for example). To present a demand, participants were asked to join or to create a formal association, implying a series of documents. Consequently, the number of associations in Porto Alegre grew sharply following the implementation of PB: from 240 active neighborhood associations in 1986 to 450 in 1994, then 600 in 2000 (Baiocchi 2005). These changes in the organizational patterns came along with a profound transformation of the type of actions used in Porto Alegre. Promoting more cooperative attitudes toward the municipal administration, which have proven to be responsive and attentive to the needs of peripheral neighborhoods, the introduction of PB has led above all to the use of institutionalized participation strategies, gradually relegating direct action to the background.

Indeed, PB allows activists to converse with the municipal authorities in an arena where their actions are framed by official and known rules, the content of which they were able to partly determine. It also opens a codified channel of dialogue with the public authorities and allows activists to directly influence the implementation of public infrastructures through their participation, thus advancing their claims. Based on data collected through local media, Baiocchi (2005) observes that protests, demonstrations, land invasions, occupations, and petitions aimed at the municipal administration drastically reduced following the introduction of PB: from more than 30 per year between 1986–88 to 10 per year for the 1996–98 period.

When it comes to the case of Partenon, empirical inquiries have shown that PB has progressively absorbed preexisting autonomous networks of activism. Indeed, to articulate their demands, AM representatives can rely on the forum do orçamento participativo (FROP), which offers an institutionalized space for organizing and aggregating the demands previously approved by district-level assemblies. The trajectory of the Conselho popular do Partenon (CPP), an autonomous forum of AMs formed in the 1980s who traditionally occupied this aggregative function, gives us an iconic example of this absorption process.

As Antonio, one of the founding members of the Conselho who also worked for the Petista administration as a PB coordinator, explains to us word for word, PB has become so central and popular that ithas begun to monopolize time and attention:

After a while, participatory budgeting was so strong in the city that it drew attention to and the Conselho Popular became very much just a part of participatory budgeting. And then it generates a little bit of dependence. Because we already had difficulties discussing other things for lack of time and legs. […] We would need much more time to discuss all the things that we used to discuss, we used to philosophize and talk about, before PB, right? And PB, then, ended up demanding all the time for this. Which was a mistake, right? The CPP would have to grow to have people who discuss everything. And everyone just wanted to discuss PB, PB, PB, right?” ⁷ The words of Antonio show us well how Partenon’s movements shift from an autonomous network of discussion to an institutionalized space of aggregating demands. Studying the same district, Gianpaolo Baoicchi goes along the same lines while asserting that “[in Partenon] BP did not upset pre-existing relationships, because it was able to absorb these previous networks.” (Baiocchi 2005, 57)

While PB becomes the central space where urban movements aggregate and formulatetheir demands, institutionalized participation becomes the main routine of interactions with the municipal administration. Indeed, PB allows activists to exert direct influence on the proposal and implementation of public policies, while also opening a codified space for challenging local authorities. Even if they don’t disappear, protests and direct action then lose their raison d’être as tools to exert pressure on public authorities and to force negotiations, as soon as demands and interactions with public agents are institutionalized within PB. To close this section with the words of Mariluz, ex-CPP member and PB delegate, it shows that movements in Partenon before PB had the “will to get things done, but [they] didn’t have the way. The FROP became the way because there were resources there.”

Partenon stands out as one of the first districts to become integrated into PB (Baiocchi 2005), with its pre-existing networks of activism gradually absorbed into this institutionalized space of socio-state interactions. Examining this particular case enables us to meticulously investigate the enduring effects of a participatory institution over time. Moreover, considering the established status of PB as the primary platform for expressing demands, the repercussions of its decline are increasingly becoming evident and pronounced. For these reasons, the Partenon case study emerges as particularly fruitful for better understanding the process of deinstitutionalization.

Through PB, movements in Partenon were able to introduce public infrastructures in historically precarious neighborhoods. While protest and direct action didn’t disappear from existing repertoires, their efficiency becomes questionable in comparison to the certitudes that institutionalized participation now offers. The introduction of PB can be considered a vector of institutionalization of urban movements, as it strongly encouraged them to go through a codified and formalized space to channel their demands and voice their claims. Nevertheless, the next section shows that this affirmation indeed remains true as long as PB brings concrete results.

Deinstitutionalized Repertoires Following the Erosion of PB

In 2002, a municipal financial crisis initiated a phase of decline for PB, after nearly 20 years of construction and consolidation (Fedozzi 2009; Siqueira and Marzulo 2020; Müller 2022). The number of unfulfilled demands accumulates from this period, and popularity of PT erodes. In 2004, the Petista coalition lost the municipal elections after having served four consecutive terms from 1989–2004. For many of the interviewees, 2004 is remembered as the beginning of the end for PB, as it has been strongly associated with the PT, even though the succeeding administration pledged to keep PB running, which remained very popular.

Despite this promise, PB’s redistributive capacities gradually diminished in the years that followed. Between 2005 and 2010, the municipal government completed only 47% of the projects approved through PB. The value of completed projects fell from R$524 million between 2001 and 2004 to R$18 million between 2013 and 2016 (Siqueira and Marzulo 2020). This gradual decrease continues over time so from 2013 to 2019, 91.4% of demands were overdue (Müller 2022). Meanwhile, the presence of executive branch representatives at meetings is becoming increasingly rare (Melgar 2015).

Once the demands made within PB begin to accumulate without leading to the implementation of infrastructures, it gradually ceases to be a relevant space for the action of SMs. The accumulation of pending demands, emptying PB of its redistributive potential, leads to a progressive delegitimization of PB (Montambeault 2019). This change in the configuration of spaces for interaction between public authorities and social movements has proven less favorable to the use of institutionalized participation and does not lead to a renewed reliance on direct action and protest.

While actions within state institutions have not disappeared, they are increasingly individualized and rely on proximity politics, involving interpersonal relations between community leaders and politicians. Although asymmetric relations have always existed within PIs (Montambeault 2012; and Montambeault and Goirand 2016) their erosion tends to exacerbate these relations as the uncertainty of seeing a demand implemented drives the search for other ways to ensure results. This section shows how the professionalization of activists has led them to prioritize actions such as proximity politics and bureaucratic activism over returning to routines of direct action and protests. Thus, I illustrate that the erosion of PB has encouraged a gradual deinstitutionalization of urban movements, as actors shift their focus away from institutionalized participation toward other routines.

Diminished Institutionalized Participation

Participation in PB requires substantial personal effort from its participants, with monthly meetings lasting one to two hours at the end of the day. It requires an even greater commitment from counselors and delegates who attend, prepare, and organize many other meetings. It also represents a significant economic cost to its participants in the form of bus fares to pay to attend reunions. Once the certainty of successful demands through PB disappears (which we have seen previously as the driving force of PB’s popularity), the significant commitment required to engage in institutionalized participation becomes disproportionate to anypotential gains. As Antonio who became one of the PB coordinators for the Petista administration in the 1990s, says: “[Participation withinPB] evolved after participatory budgeting started to change a little bit, works started to pile up without being done. […] The government stopped giving money […]. So that’s it: people don’t participate a lot, because they’re going to waste their time.”

Antonio believes that what has mainly driven people to massively engage in PB throughout the years were its results when public infrastructures and services wereregularly and formally brought into marginalized neighborhoods for the first time. The lack of political commitment towards PB was salient in almost all interviews conducted in Porto Alegre. In the case of Partenon, the words of Jane, an ex-PB counselor active in the local AM of her neighborhood since the 1980 are also illustrative of this trend in loss of trust by the movements: “It’s been years. Eversince PT left, there hasn’t been any incidence of PB in my community. [Since 2004] the incidence of public works has just diminished in the communities, particularly in my district, in Partenon. And along with that, popular participation also diminished.”

One of the primary forms of criticism of PB by community leaders is the verticality of its decision-making; for what many considered to be a democratic innovation articulated around the idea of giving a voice to peripheral communities has now lost its essence. As of 2023, PB meetings have demonstrated the administration’s inhibition of community proposals by regularly refusing many demands because of unrealistictechnical criteria (i.e. having property over a vast vacant area in denser neighborhoods of the city) or administrative issues as simple as improperly filled formularies. To face these issues, the administration in office as of this investigation developed an innovation they called the PB cardapio whichworks as a restaurant menu presenting different choices of infrastructures and public works for the communities to select. Demands within the cardapio are then presented as easier and more reliable to obtain through PB than propositions and initiatives from the residents.

Furthermore, many Partenon activists consider PB to be a stage aimed at creating and consolidating “vote catchers” for the municipal administration, therefore encouraging proximity politics and the exchange of favors. For Copinaré, a former AM president and PB coordinator in the 1990s, the newly elected Fogaça administration began to select leaders inside the PB council: “That was the strategy: undermine the council by putting their councilors and delegates.” Rosa Helena, many times PB councilor for Partenon, community, and PT activist since the 1990s, made a similar argument stating that the Fogaça administration

started to organize people to enter inside the [PB] council […]. The councilor […] that had its functions linked to an administration could never enter [in the PB council]. What did they do? […] They started to introduce many councilors, right-wing people. People that would candidate themselves [as politicians] in the future.

In this context, the few PB works that have materialized have not been because of the capacity of the mobilization of the communities, but rather due to individual relationships between local leaders and the administration. As an example, Marcelo, a former AM president, explained that his community formulated a demand for habitational units which had been approved through the PB processdue to their mobilization within PB;however, it was never implemented despite receiving the necessary backing in votes. He stated: “What happened was that somebody more skillful and more friendly with the administration went there and [our] demand never appeared in thebook. […] It’s something that discredited PB. It started like that in my district, there in the community where I participated. It discredited PB.”

Finally, demands have been resolved thanks to PB during its first cycles, such as sanitation, access to water, or land regularization. Once these basic problems are solved, many long-time community activistsestimate that the residents become less mobilized and losetheir interest in PB. For Jane, “It’s clear that when you see your demand contemplated, why are you going to participate? Because when you went to this war and manage to win it, you accommodate within your front.” This observation has also been made in Belo Horizonte, as one of the explanatory factors behind the progressive decline of the local PB (Montambeault 2019).

Owing to these factors, participatory budgeting has gradually become less useful for the movements in Partenon, as it no longer empowers them to substantially impact decision-making. Institutionalized participation within PB loses its relevance, especially in a context where the municipal administration is perceived as unresponsive to the local community’s proposals. Nevertheless, this decreased level of institutionalized participation has not entirely disappeared from the repertoires of social movements. Making empirical observations of PB meetings, I have met some of the interviewees who were previously denouncing the way PB is being run. However, some maintained regular participation within PB, despite criticizing it.

Drawing on interviews and observations, their presence can be considered as serving two purposes, in addition to the slim possibility of seeing one of their demands being implemented: first, it encourages the municipal authorities not to close PB permanently, particularly because of the electoral consequences that this could have. Attending the assemblies and meetings is a way to show that PB is still something that matters to communities. From the inside of PB, they struggle to limit its internal transformation, by competing for elected PB positions, denouncing changes, or confronting the delegates and councilors in charge.

Second, despite a strong loss in the engagement and responsiveness of municipal officials with PB, there also remains an arena to challenge municipal officials. During the early rounds of PB, several municipal officials, including the mayor, appeared regularly at assemblies and meetings. Although their presence has gradually diminished (Melgar 2015), some officials do appear, when called upon because of their expertise on a subject that is to be discussed. However, this depends very much on the goodwill of the municipal authorities and the value they place on PB. Thus, PB remains a space in which officials can be challenged and held to account within codified discussions.

With a PB stripped of its redistributive capacities and with minimal engagement from policymakers, it loses its relevance as a channel for voicing demands and residents disengage from institutionalized participation. Institutionalized participation has been largely discredited in the eyes of activists, who no longer believe that this approach significantly advances their demands. However, institutionalized arenas of participation have not been completely abandoned, as also evidenced by the presence of activists within various public policy councils, especially in health. Considering deinstitutionalization as an ongoing process, this section illustrates the diminishing centrality of institutionalized participation in the repertoires of interaction of the Partenon movements. This register is now primarily utilized by a small group of professionalized actors within participatory institutions and is no longer considered a significant means of advancing demands. Nonetheless, participation in these arenas allows activists to meet with decision-makers and exert pressure on them. Institutionalized participation is thus combined with other strategies and no longer constitutes the central element in their repertoires.

A Limited Return to Protest and Direct Actions

As previously noted, the consolidation of PB in the 1990s resulted in a gradual decrease in protest actions by more than a third between 1986 and 1998 (Baiocchi 2005). This shift facilitated a substantial increase in institutionalized participation. However, the decline in PB did not reverse this trend. According to interviewees, confrontations with public authorities are infrequent and localized to specific neighborhoods, rather than being widespread across the region. Non-institutional actions, such as marches, demonstrations, or street blockades, are primarily triggered when an existing service is under threat or when basic needs are at stake.

The most recent instance of a district-wide mobilization in Partenon dates back to 2007 when a proposed transfer of health competencies from the regional to the municipal level posed a threat to the closure of eight health posts. In response, community leaders, many of whom were active participants in the municipal health council, orchestrated marches throughout Partenon, passing by the jeopardized health posts to raise awareness among the population. Their efforts were reinforced by the support of local health professionals. The most contentious incident unfolded when one of the main roads in Porto Alegre, traversing Partenon, was blocked, causing a traffic jam between the capital and its neighboring cities to the east. Mobilizations were regularly held at each of the health posts, and activists engaged local media to spread their message. This situation persisted for nearly a month until the municipal authorities ensured the continued operation of all affected health posts. Since then, subsequent mobilizations have occurred, but none has left a lasting impact at the district level.

As an example of more localized direct action, minor mobilizations occurred when a local university attempted to construct a parking lot on a space occupied by its neighboring community. Coordinated through the local AM, residents began a campaign to raise awareness among students. They strategically placed posters condemning the potential eviction in areas frequented by students and distributed informative pamphlets near the campus. The university’s image was adversely affected, prompting the rector to personally engage with the local community. Subsequently, negotiations took place, leading to the relocation of the parking lot project. The regular occurrence of droughts during the summer also prompts residents to periodically organize street blockades. These actions are intended to capture the attention of authorities and compel them to intervene in addressing the water scarcity issue.

Protest actions played a central role from the 1970s to the 1990s but have gradually waned as institutionalized participation proved more effective and basic needs diminished. The following excerpt from my conversation with Rosa Helena, an active participant in the local health movement, vividly illustrates the challenges faced by activists in organizing protests:

It became difficult to attract people to come to a meeting. It has become very difficult these past 10 years. […] I’m going to give you an example of our mobilization, for the health post in Vila Vargas [Rosa Helena’s neighborhood], which came from years of struggle, more than 15 years [ago]. […] Today in the unit we attend to more than 20 thousand people. […] With a unit with only, I think, ten rooms, very small, where the doctor and the patients don’t fit well, and it’s a big walk to pass an exam … So we urgently need [another unit]. Over the last 10 years, we made, I think, like five or six mobilizations. If five people came it’s a lot. In front of the post to say to the people that we were claiming another unit […] and that we urgently needed the government to start building another unit […] Every government said no to us, but why? Because we only had five people in front of the post.

In the same way, Copinaré, a former AM president who has been active throughout the region for years as a mediator for the municipality corroborates Rosa Helena’s experience saying

People demobilized. Just when water is lacking, people just mobilize when water and light are lacking. […] If my street isn’t paved, I don’t care. Now if water is lacking, well, count me in. It needs to be something that affects your family or your purse. Demands of sanitation, paving, staircase, that doesn’t generate mobilization.

These days, the activities undertaken by the AMs are primarily focused on service-oriented initiatives, including community kitchens, social assistance programs, the organization of recreational activities, and educational endeavors. Nongovernmental organizations have multiplied in the outskirts of Porto Alegre since 2004, as the newly elected Fogaça administration sought to rely more on the private sector in its policies toward marginalized neighborhoods (Junge 2014). Many associations have established agreements with the municipality, securing financial support from public authorities to deliver services, predominantly in the realms of education or social assistance. This trend is also intricately tied to the success of PB, as numerous daycare centers, schools, and social assistance centers have emerged from demands articulated through the PB process. Once approved, these facilities are routinely placed under the supervision of the AMs and their respective presidents, who played a pivotal role in formulating the demands.

Angela, a PB participant and a member of the PT for over two decades, has been actively involved with numerous AMs since she joined the UAMPA, the Union of Residents’ Associations in Porto Alegre. In 2023, she served as president, and her current role primarily involves assisting and supporting associations in their day-to-day tasks. Her experience with the establishment of a partnership between a community organization and the state vividly underscores the challenges involved, notwithstanding the acknowledged benefits to the community in gaining access to these services:

The residents’ association represents the whole the community. This doesn’t happen that much, because with time, their status changed and we have the question of the partnerships. What is a partnership? [As a] residents’ association, it has a space and it managed an agreement for youth education. Then the president, and secretary, got stuck with the organization of this partnership rather than with the issues of the community. […] I’ll give you an example that we [the UAMPA] are following […]. There I already followed more than three mandates of an association [managed by] different people. They have an agreement for a nursery. So where was the base of the association? It’s a nursery. They don’t have any headquarters for the resident’s association. Then there are no demands from the association. If something happens like a manhole burst or a pipe burst, then the president of the associations must make these contacts. But he is so excited and worried with the partnership for the nursery, that sometimes he doesn’t have the time to make these articulations.

According to Angela’s explanation, the substantial effort required to maintain these public services places a significant demand on the time of the AMs. This frequently results in the prioritization of service-related tasks at the expense of the organization of protest actions or meetings. In conclusion, the decline of PB has not been accompanied by a return to protest and direct action. This section demonstrates that PB has durably transformed the repertoires of interaction and that its decline does not imply a return to pre-PB forms of interaction with public authorities.

Toward Hybrid Routines of Proximity Politics and Bureaucratic Activism

Up to this point, this article has shown that SMs in Porto Alegre persist in hybrid strategies, combining institutionalized participation and direct action. However, the effectiveness of the former has been significantly undermined by the diminishing legitimacy of PB, while the latter has become more sporadic and localized. In the next section, we will explore how strategies associated with proximity politics and bureaucratic activism have gained prominence in the repertoire of interactions for these social movements. PB plays a pivotal role in this transition, having provided since its early beginning a space where the administration and activists could meet and negotiate. Rather than inherently embodying democratizing virtues and fostering the autonomy of social movements, participatory institutions allow and sometimes encourage practices of individualized co-optation and informal exchanges (Rocha, 2013; Montambeault and Goirand, 2016). However, these dynamics do not necessarily indicate political allegiance of community leaders toward decision-makers (Sa Vilas Boas and Tarragoni, 2015). Instead, participatory institutions integrate into preexisting relationships, where participatory ideals and informal exchanges coexist (Montambeault, 2012; Dagnino and Tatagiba, 2010).

First, institutionalized participation within PB has allowed urban activists to better understand the process of policymaking and the functioning of democratic institutions, through a mechanism of institutional learning (Baiocchi and Ganuza 2014; Montambeault 2012; Wampler 2012; Talpin 2012; Melgar 2015). This has often led to the professionalization of some of the most mobilized resident association members, regular participants often being recruited by municipal authorities or local politicians to serve in political and administrative bureaucracies.

Some are hired by municipal authorities to manage the regional or municipal coordination of PB, due to their experience with the process and their proximity to the administration in charge. We have seen some examples so far, with Copinaré or Antonio, who both worked for municipal administrations. Several local elected officials (municipal or state deputies) also recruit local PB leaders into their offices, giving them a role as intermediaries between peripheral neighborhoods and elected officials. The vast majority of the interviewees I mentioned so far have worked at least once for a politician, often from the PT (only one didn’t).

Second, several longstanding PB participants and community leaders leverage the reputation and technical skills gained through PB to pursue their own political careers, as demonstrated by Junge (2012) in his ethnographic study of the Beira Rio district in Porto Alegre. Since the introduction of PB, numerous participants who have served as PB councilors or delegates have contested local elected positions including municipal deputy and frequently, children’s rights advisor (conseilhero tutelar). ⁸ They then hire activists from their entourage to work in their cabinet. For example, a former PB councilor from Partenon district, Aldacir Olbioni, was elected deputy of Porto Alegre (for the PT) in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2016, and 2020. He hired several activists within this office throughout the years.

Third, the regular presence of public officials at PB-related meetings also contributes to the convergence between community leaders and public authorities. Since the introduction of PB, representatives of the municipality have been regularly called upon to address residents’ assemblies. These meetings have been linked to issues discussed in PB and aim to inform participants about legislation or the implementation of public policies, such as health or social assistance. The frequency of these interventions varies from one municipal government to another, depending on the commitment of elected officials. Observations have shown that many leaders and officials are personally acquainted with each other, particularly due to frequent interactions between AMs and specific municipal departments. Departments such as water and housing are commonly solicited by the AMs, fostering a close and familiar relationship between community leaders and municipal officials.

The three dynamics outlined—professionalization and co-optation, initiation of political careers, and convergence—encourage the development of individual contacts and connections between community leaders and politicians. This results in activists becoming part of public bureaucracies and institutions and creates fresh avenues for activists to individually advance their community’s demands, often through personal engagement with local elected officials. As an illustration, in 2023, a community leader who was employed by a municipal deputy leveraged this connection to orchestrate a meeting with the municipal authorities. The purpose was to thwart the auctioning of a vacant lot, land that the local AM had wanted to own since 2003, to establish a PB-approved health post. A meeting ensued between the concerned residents’ association and local elected officials, presided over by the municipal deputy who employed one of the community leaders. As a result of this collaboration, the decision to auction the lot was revoked.

Personal contact with municipal deputies also facilitates the establishment of public infrastructure in peripheral districts. This phenomenon, reflective of the impact of the erosion of PB, has seen the refurbishment or expansion of several nurseries and schools in outlying neighborhoods through public funds provided by local elected officials. As an indicator, in the year 2023, each municipal deputy had R$1.4 million at their disposal to invest in public projects of their choice. In comparison, the budget allocated to PB in 2023 was set at R$652,000 for each district. An AM leader in Partenon provided an insightful explanation of how and why he consistently addressed his community’s issues with the assistance of municipal deputies:

We always have a deputy with us […] today, to obtain something with the municipality; it’s chaos. So through them, it’s quicker. […] I’m going to give you an example: […] here there has always been a problem with water. In your house you had water, but if you turned on your tap, mine wouldn’t […] I went to see a deputy, a friend of mine [hemimes a telephone conversation]:

• ‘Look, I’ve had a problem in my community for 25 years: people can’t shower, they have to wait till early in the morning to shower. We have to resolve this […] you have to help me, look: it is that, and I need [this], but when I go to the municipality there is a protocol, we must wait, they don’t answer and so on

• ‘OK, what do you need?

• I’m have a water problem, my residents have no water, we have water, but not enough.

• ‘OK [consider it] done.

I became president of the AM in November […]. Day 22 of December we had water in all the community. Today the people at the bottom [of the neighborhood] are splashing water, something that didn’t exist. […] [it’s been obtained] with the deputy and the deputy making demands for me. […] The deputy transmitted to some organ there.

Following PB’s erosion, proximity politics, through personal contact with a local elected official or public servant have now gained a central position in the SMs repertoires. It constitutes a more individualized routine, based on personal skills and relationships. Thanks to their presence inside bureaucracies, some activists manage to advance their community’s needs, by expressing their demands and transmitting information between public institutions and the neighborhoods. Nevertheless, these interactions frequently take place in non-institutionalized settings, relying on private and informal negotiations between activists and politicians or public servants. This poses significant challenges for urban social movements, as proximity politics entails asymmetric relationships, with decision-makers having control over public resources.

Conclusion: The Enduring Effects of PB on Local SMs

Above all, this analysis shows that participatory institutions produce enduring effects on the way local SMs present demands and interact with public authorities. Indeed, the introduction of PB initially led to a gradual transition towards strategies rooted in institutionalized interactions with municipal authorities, relegating direct actions such as marches, street occupations, and other forms of protest to the background. From this point of view, the introduction of participatory institutions represents a vector for the institutionalization of SMs, putting them into codified spaces for channeling their demands, while discouraging the use of confrontational strategies and protest actions.

The suspension of PB reverses this process, primarily by denying social movements an arena that had become central to the formulation and channeling of their demands. The gradual delegitimization of PB in the eyes of Partenon’s AMs has significantly diminished the use of institutionalized participation in their repertoires, especially when it is no longer perceived as an effective means of achieving tangible results. With the removal of this crucial anchor point within political institutions (Carlos 2020; Müller 2022), residents’ associations gradually distance themselves from institutionalized channels of interaction. Drawing on these insights, the erosion of participatory institutions can be interpreted as a driver of deinstitutionalization for social movements, removing institutionalized routines from their repertoires.

The Partenon case underscores that this deinstitutionalization does not necessarily result in a straightforward return to protest and direct action. Instead, many activists have integrated into bureaucracies and municipal administrations. Consequently, activists are involved in individualized routines of interaction, often navigating a blurred mix between routines of proximity politics and bureaucratic activism. In Partenon, the decline of PB is coupled with the emergence of dependencies between local leaders and politicians in a district known for its historical combative and autonomous associative tradition, as indicated by the works of Fedozzi (2000), Baiocchi (2005) and Abers (2000). While their repertoires were significantly deinstitutionalized by the loss of the codified space where they used to present demands, individualized interactions based on personal skills and relationships allowed Partenon’s community leaders to keep a foot close to state institutions.

In conclusion, this article has illustrated the profound and lasting impact of participatory institutions on the strategies employed by social movements. Taking the emblematic case of participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, I have examined how the construction, consolidation, and ultimately the erosion of a PI coincided with a process of institutionalization and subsequent deinstitutionalization of local SM’s repertoires of interactions. Interviews and observations on site have brought to light new findings on the erosion of PB experienced by local movements, and the profound transformations it implies. From a theoretical perspective, this article contributes innovatively to the literature on the institutionalization of social movements by proposing insights on the reverse process of deinstitutionalization, which remains underexplored. This process involves the gradual retreat of social movements from institutionalized arenas of interaction with the state. Institutionalization and deinstitutionalization can be seen as part of an ongoing process, following the transformation of the repertoires utilized by social movements. To do so, I have used an approach that considers the permeability of the boundary between the State and movements, demonstrating that despite a context of democratic erosion and a narrowing of their space for action, movements maintain hybrid strategies, combining actions within and outside institutions.

Finally, Brazil has recently experienced a significant period of attacks on its participatory architecture, particularly during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro (Bezerra et al., 2024). Even before the rise of Bolsonaro, the many PB initiatives that had developed in Brazil due to the electoral success of the PT were on the verge of extinction (Wampler and Goldfrank 2022). Porto Alegre and its participatory budgeting thus appear as forerunners, first in terms of opening up the participatory space and including social movements in decision-making, and second in gradual de-democratization (Fedozzi et al. 2020; Müller 2022). Investigating the consequences of democratic erosion in Porto Alegre represents an important step towards understanding what this phenomenon means for those directly affected. In this article, I have explored how urban movements and community leaders have adapted their strategies to sustain their engagement in the wake of the gradual loss of an arena that they had contributed to build.