Skip to content
Home/ Bootstrapping Democracy: Transforming Local Governance and Civil Society in Brazil
Bootstrapping Democracy: Transforming Local Governance and Civil Society in Brazil

Bootstrapping Democracy: Transforming Local Governance and Civil Society in Brazil

by Baiocchi, Gianpaolo
No customer reviews yet ISBN 9780804760553

Despite increasing interest in how involvement in local government can improve governance and lead to civic renewal, questions remain about participation's real impact. This book investigates participatory budgeting--a mainstay now of World Bank, UNDP, and USAID development programs--to ask whether its reforms truly make a difference in deepening democracy and empowering civil society. Looking closely at eight cities in Brazil, comparing those that carried out participatory budgeting reforms between 1997 and 2000 with those that did not, the authors examine whether and how institutional reforms take effect.

Bootstrapping Democracy highlights the importance of local-level innovations and democratic advances, charting a middle path between those who theorize that globalization hollows out democracy and those who celebrate globalization as a means of fostering democratic values. Uncovering the state's role in creating an "associational environment," it reveals the contradictory ways institutional reforms shape the democratic capabilities of civil society and how outcomes are conditioned by relations between the state and civil society.

About the author

Product details

Pub dateJun 1, 2011
ISBN-100804760551
ISBN-139780804760553
LanguageEnglish
Last updated 2026-07-19 14:54
$110.03
In stock — ships in 24 hours with free tracking
Delivery by Monday, September 14, 2026
Qty
Sign in to Add to Saved list
Free delivery on orders over $35.
15-day returns. Any reason.
Secure checkout. We never store card details.

Readers who bought this also bought

More from Developing & Emerging Countries
See all
Capital: The Eruption of Delhi
Dasgupta, Rana
$12.78
Brazil: What Everyone Needs to Know(r)
Roett, Riordan
$12.05
Inside the Islamic Republic: Social Change in Post-Khomeini Iran
Inside the Islamic Republic: Social Change in Post-Khomeini Iran
$43.09
Mexico: What Everyone Needs to Know(r)
Camp, Roderic Ai
$12.05
Information Infrastructures in India: The Long View
Ninan Thomas, Pradip
$115.52
Pockets of Effectiveness and the Politics of State-Building and Development in Africa
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-BC-ND 4.0 International License. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. <p/>Why do certain parts of the state in Africa work so effectively despite operating in difficult governance contexts? How do 'pockets of bureaucratic effectiveness' emerge and become sustained over time? And what does this tell us about the prospects for state-building and development in Africa? <p/>Repeated economic and social crises have demanded that development thinkers and policy actors have had to engage with the critical role that states play in delivering development. <em>Pockets of Effectiveness and the Politics of State-building and Development in Africa</em> shows that politics is the driving factor that shapes how well state agencies perform their roles. It deploys a new conceptual framework - the power domains approach - to explore the shifting fortunes of key state agencies in five countries - Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia - over the past three decades. Our original research reveals when, how and why political rulers decide to build effective state agencies and enable them to deliver certain forms of economic development - often through forming strategic coalitions with senior bureaucrats and with international support - and also when this support falters and gives way to a politics of survival. Comparative analysis identifies two potential trajectories towards state-building in Africa, each shaped by different configurations of social and political power. The book critiques the role that international development agencies have played in (mis)shaping the state in Africa and suggests a new strategic agenda for building the state capacities required to deliver sustained development at the current juncture. The book closes with critical commentaries from two leading scholars in the field, to help place our work in context and establish the next steps for research and strategy in this increasingly important area of development theory and practice.
$131.97