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Participation as an Essential Element of an Active Civil Society
their individual needs through mechanisms and processes that allow
resolving and satisfying community needs. In other words, when the
members of a community share common problems and they work
collectively to resolve these, each individual satisfies their own needs.”
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Citizen Participation at the Local Level
Civil society’s demand for democratic governance is easier to achieve
at local or municipal levels than at the national level. The proximity of
people to the seat of power enables citizens to exercise better control
over public authorities and influence the design, implementation and
evaluation of local public policies. After all, it is at the local level where
we find most of the models and experiences in citizen participation,
from the famous municipal participatory budgeting practices to
economic development initiatives and local employment programs.
In this field, the participatory budgeting experience that rose from an
initiative of the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil stands out. In 1989 this city
had more than one million inhabitants and was facing serious social
problems. A decentralized system was established which allowed all
residents full access and input into budgetary decisions by integrating
them into neighborhood groups and other levels of representation.
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This activity has enabled the community to express their opinion on
important issues facing the city; establish priorities from among the
issues that require immediate attention; select priorities and generate
practical solutions; have an opportunity to compare solutions with
those proposed in other regions of the city and in other thematic
areas; decide, with the support of technical staff from the municipal
government, to invest in programs that are the least expensive and
most feasible; make final decisions regarding the investment plan;
and finally review the successes and failures of the investment plan in
order to improve criteria for the following year.
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The success of this
experience has enabled the model to be replicated in hundreds of cities
throughout the continent.
The Rural Water Project in Paraguay is another initiative that
