10: Participatory Innovations

The governance mechanisms outlined in Chapters 8 and 9 depend on participatory democracy – ordinary citizens exercising meaningful authority over decisions affecting their lives. This chapter examines international experience with participatory institutions, assesses evidence on scalability and proposes specific innovations for wealth governance.

Participatory democratic practices have proliferated globally over the past three decades, providing evidence about effectiveness, challenges and design principles.

Participatory budgeting (PB) – citizens directly deciding public budget allocations – originated in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989 and has spread to over 3,000 cities across 6 continents (Participatory Budgeting Project, 2024).

Porto Alegre’s process, operating from 1989 to 2004 under Workers’ Party administrations, enabled residents to allocate significant portions of municipal capital budgets: