The Systemic Turn and Participatory Budgeting: The Case of Rio Grande Do Sul

Participatory budgeting (PB) has been one of the most popular local democratic reforms in Latin America in recent decades. This article examines what happened to PB when it was scaled up to the state level and integrated in a participatory system in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (2011-2014). Using theories of deliberative systems, multichannel participation and countervailing power, as well as a mixed methods design, we find that the systems approach allowed for both deliberation and direct democracy and mobilized new sectors to participate online. However, the different participation channels undermined each other. Social movements migrated to other spaces and left the budgeting process open to control by well-established powerful groups.