Radicals in Power

Brazil, and in particular its increasingly famous city of Porto Alegre, is becoming known all over the world for its far-reaching experiments in redistributive democracy. Radicals in Power provides a rich and systematic account of the innovative policies introduced over the past 20 years by the Workers Party of Brazil (PT) at state level, in big city administrations and medium-sized urban centres. Based on original field investigation, and with contributions both from scholars and...
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Brazil, and in particular its increasingly famous city of Porto Alegre, is becoming known all over the world for its far-reaching experiments in redistributive democracy. Radicals in Power provides a rich and systematic account of the innovative policies introduced over the past 20 years by the Workers Party of Brazil (PT) at state level, in big city administrations and medium-sized urban centres. Based on original field investigation, and with contributions both from scholars and active participants in the process, this volume provides a unique understanding of how a non-dogmatic leftwing political movement has instituted highly innovative experiments to involve ordinary citizens, especially the socially disadvantaged, in local policy choices and fiscal allocation decisions, as well as other experiments to achieve participation, social redistribution and justice.The obstacles are many and there have been both failures and electoral setbacks. But at a time when conventional representative democratic institutions are experiencing declining voter turnouts in most countries, the PT's innovative experiments with new forms of participative decisionmaking have a potentially huge significance for the renewal of the substance of democratic government worldwide. Similarly, here is a non-dogmatic leftwing political movement refusing to be reduced to the management of a neoliberal, market-dominated economy, and instead experimenting with imaginative new ways of achieving redistribution and social justice in a non-revolutionary manner. Little wonder that political parties and city administrations in Latin America and further afield are flocking to Brazil to learn from this extraordinarily important experiment.