Sustaining a democratic innovation: a study of three e-participatory budgets in Belo Horizonte

Abstract

This article explores the transition from democratic innovation to institutionalised political process of e-participatory budgeting in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Applying a multimethod approach (content analysis, interviews and social media monitoring) regarding the last three editions (2008, 2011 and 2013), it considers how the proponents and organisers of ePB conceive its function in relation to the representative mechanisms that surround it; how the citizens of Belo Horizonte have responded to it in relation to their experience of being represented; and how governments seeking to institutionalise democratic innovations with a view to establishing more direct forms of representation might learn from this exercise.