Brazilian citizens, civil society organizations, and public officials are adopting and adapting new democratic institutions in the hopes of improving ordinary citizens? quality of life, expanding their voice and vote, changing the distribution of public goods, and deepening the quality of democracy. Civil society activists and ordinary citizens now participate in a multitude of state-sanctioned institutions, including public policy management councils, public policy conferences, participatory budgeting programs, and legislative hearings. The proliferation of democratic institutions has demonopolized how and where citizens gain access to public officials, thus limiting the power of clientelistic gatekeepers and allowing civil society organizations (CSOs) to diversify the political strategies used to secure public goods.Citizens now attend deliberative hearings, exercise voice and vote over public resources, and monitor government officials? implementation of policies. This book demonstrates how the proliferation of multiple democratic institutions transforms when, where, and who citizens, CSOs, and public officials engage each other. The book?s central argument is that the promulgation of Brazil?s 1988 constitution initiated a participatory citizenship regime, thereby altering the political and policy terrain through which citizens express political voice, claim social rights, engage their fellow citizens and public officials, and hold government officials accountable. ?Citizenship regimes define who has political membership, which rights they possess, and how interest intermediation with the state is structured? (Yashar 2005, 6; italics in original). Brazil?s participatory citizenship regime significantly expands who participates in formal policymaking institutions,which political rights can be used to secure social rights, and how citizens and government officials negotiate over the allocation of public resources and public goods.

I am arguing here that citizens, activists, and public officials must activate the participatory citizenship regime to ensure that citizens can access rights formally guaranteed under Brazil?s 1988 constitution. Activating such a regime is a contested, highly politicized process through which citizens, CSOs, and political parties seek to adopt new democratic institutions and transform the existing state. Their efforts to activate these rights are resisted by political rivals, unresponsive bureaucracies,short-term political alliances, and the difficulties of sustaining collective action. Because of this resistance, there is broad variation across Brazil with regard to who can access new rights and new democratic new institutions. By focusing on multiple democratic institutions over a twenty-year period, this book illustrates how the participatory citizenship regime generates political and social change. The participatory citizenship regime draws attention to the centralrole of the state in convening institutions that mediate disputes among citizens, CSOs, and government officials. Across Brazil, government officials now administer an extensive participatory architecture,which incorporates millions of citizens and CSO activists directly into policymaking venues. At least 300,000 Brazilian citizens are elected to participatory institutions in which citizens have some authority over public funds and policymaking (Baretto 2011).

Between 2004 and 2012,some six to eight million Brazilians participated in public policy conferences sponsored by the federal government (Avritzer and Souza 2013). Although participants did not exercise specific decision-making authority, they contributed to agenda setting that affects governments? policy choices (Avritzer 2012; Pogrebinschi and Samuels 2014). In addition, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians participate in municipal-level participatory budgeting programs on a biannual basis (Wampler and Avritzer 2005; Avritzer 2009; Spada, Wampler, and Coelho 2013). The 1988 constitution marks the formal start of the participatory citizenship regime, but there is tremendous variation in how citizens and public officials have been able to activate it. This book demonstrates that the variation results from the interplay of five factors: state formation, the development of civil society, government support for citizens? use of voice and vote, the degree of public resources available for spending on services and public goods, and finally, the rules that regulate forms of participation, representation, and deliberation within participatory venues. The variation occurs at the level of government (federal, state, municipal), across cities (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte), and states (Rio Grande do Sul, Bahia), as well as across policy arenas (health care, education, housing). This book demonstrates how the interaction of these five factors best explains how new democratic institutions may improve ordinary citizens? quality of life, alter state-society interactions, change the distribution of public goods, and deepen the quality of democracy. Some Brazilians have access to a wide range of rights, but many others continue to lack even the most minimal access to constitutional guarantees promised by the 1988 constitution.

The development of multiple democratic institutions has generated a diverse set of incentives to induce Brazil?s increasingly heterogeneous civil society to be directly involved in public policymaking. Urban civil society in Brazil today is now characterized by the presence of a broad range of social movements, community-based organizations, nongovernmental organizations(NGOs),service providers, and religious organizations(Dagnino and Tatagiba 2007; Avritzer 2002; Baiocchi 2005; Lavalle, Acharia, and Houtzager 2005; Mische 2008; Arias 2006; Wolford 2010; Lavalle and IsunzaVera 2011). The new participatory architecture permits citizens and CSOs to deliberate in public fora, vote on public policies, monitor public officials, and forge new networks. For decades, Brazilian citizens and CSOs drew from a narrower set of blunt instruments, such as clientelism and contentious politics, when they sought out public officials in search of public resources to solve basic social and infrastructure problems (Holston 2008; Leal 1997; Gay 1994). Today, Brazilian CSOs and citizens continue to use contentious politics (the June 2013 protests as one example), but many CSOs are also directly involved in public policymaking processes in which they express voice and exercise vote. The participatory citizenship regime generates two sets of incentives that encourage direct citizen participation in public institutions. Citizens and CSOs are induced to participate for narrow, instrumental reasons, thus helping to overcome low mobilization associated with the collective action problem (Olson 1965; Ostrom 1990). Citizens are willing to participate because their involvement greatly increases the likelihood that their community will receive specific public goods.

But citizens? participation is not reducible to instrumental issues; citizens andCSOs are also motivated to participate because they are renewing what Jeffrey Alexander terms ?bonds of solidarity,?whereby they connect to their fellow citizens and contribute to deepening Brazil?s democracy (Alexander 2006). (Excerpted from Introduction).