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Participatory Institutions in Democratic Brazil

A new book published by Woodrow Wilson Center Press explores the relationship between participatory institutions and citizenship in Brazil.

WASHINGTON—Woodrow Wilson Center Press has published a new book, Participatory Institutions in Democratic Brazil, by Leonardo Avritzer. It is copublished with The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Brazil has conducted some of the world's most stunning experiments in participatory democracy, most notably the creation of city budgets through local citizens' meetings. Taking this trend as his backdrop, Leonardo Avritzer introduces a fresh analytical approach to reveal the social and institutional conditions that make civic participation most effective and expands the empirical base. By examining participatory health councils and city master plans within a diverse group of cities—São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Salvador—this book goes beyond the current literature, which has focused almost exclusively on budgeting in Porto Alegre. Ultimately, it provides a more complex understanding of the links between participation, citizenship, and democracy through a set of case studies that will resonate both inside and outside Brazil.

"Participatory Institutions in Democratic Brazil manifests mastery of a wide terrain and an impressive degree of good judgment about a wide panorama. It has much to offer in terms of new information, and will likely be welcomed by experts." —John D. French, Duke University

"This is an ambitious, original book that opens up a new field of analysis about the role of participation in democracy, reorienting the current debate on civil society and civic engagement in a different direction and linking it to the crucial question of democratic institutionalization." —Enrique Peruzzotti, Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Argentina

Leonardo Avritzer, an associate professor of political science at the Federal University of Mina Gerais, Brazil, has been a major contributor to the political sociology of Latin America. He was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2006.

Participatory Institutions in Democratic Brazil is distributed by The Johns Hopkins University Press, accessible online at www.press.jhu.edu or by telephone at 1-800-537-5487. The list price is $49.95 for hardcover and $29.95 for paperback.

Woodrow Wilson Center Press publishes books by fellows, resident scholars, and staff written in substantial part at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Titles range from popular accounts of historical topics to fundamental reviews of scholarly fields to authoritative background on important policy issues. For more information about the Press, or to search its backlist of titles, please visit www.wilsoncenter.org/press.