Bringing Participation into Governance A way to Combat Poverty and Inequality? A Minor Field Study of a Participatory Program in Brazil
(2008)Department of Political Science
- Abstract
- Today there are various views on how democracies can be advanced. Bringing participation into decision making processes has been suggested as one method. It is believed that it can give rise to better government, better decisions and better citizens ? but its positive effects will depend heavily on the cultural and local context. Opening up the public sphere for participation is never a simple matter. By using the approach called Empowered Participatory Governance (EPG) a local participatory program in Porto Alegre, Brazil has been evaluated. The purpose has been to see if it has succeeded in producing the positive effects that participation is argued to give rise to and to see what obstacles were encountered. The results have been... (More)
- Today there are various views on how democracies can be advanced. Bringing participation into decision making processes has been suggested as one method. It is believed that it can give rise to better government, better decisions and better citizens ? but its positive effects will depend heavily on the cultural and local context. Opening up the public sphere for participation is never a simple matter. By using the approach called Empowered Participatory Governance (EPG) a local participatory program in Porto Alegre, Brazil has been evaluated. The purpose has been to see if it has succeeded in producing the positive effects that participation is argued to give rise to and to see what obstacles were encountered. The results have been multifaceted. The program had a solid structure and it succeeded in bringing disadvantaged groups into the decision making process. The participants developed new skills and competences. On the other hand, the lack of commitment from the government and the lack of resources were obstacles that negatively affected the outcome. The promise of effectiveness was not fully obtained. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/1318932
- author
- Kisvari, Judit
- supervisor
- organization
- year
- 2008
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- Participatory Democracy, Social Justice, Governance, Brazil, Local Engagement, Political and administrative sciences, Statsvetenskap, förvaltningskunskap
- language
- English
- id
- 1318932
- date added to LUP
- 2008-09-11 00:00:00
- date last changed
- 2008-09-11 00:00:00
@misc{1318932,
abstract = {{Today there are various views on how democracies can be advanced. Bringing participation into decision making processes has been suggested as one method. It is believed that it can give rise to better government, better decisions and better citizens ? but its positive effects will depend heavily on the cultural and local context. Opening up the public sphere for participation is never a simple matter. By using the approach called Empowered Participatory Governance (EPG) a local participatory program in Porto Alegre, Brazil has been evaluated. The purpose has been to see if it has succeeded in producing the positive effects that participation is argued to give rise to and to see what obstacles were encountered. The results have been multifaceted. The program had a solid structure and it succeeded in bringing disadvantaged groups into the decision making process. The participants developed new skills and competences. On the other hand, the lack of commitment from the government and the lack of resources were obstacles that negatively affected the outcome. The promise of effectiveness was not fully obtained.}},
author = {{Kisvari, Judit}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Bringing Participation into Governance A way to Combat Poverty and Inequality? A Minor Field Study of a Participatory Program in Brazil}},
year = {{2008}},
}