A Letter From Brazil: Where a Great Democracy Invention Is Making a Comeback

A Senator Reflects on the Birth, Decline, and Coming Resurgence of Participatory Budgeting

What are the obstacles and opportunities facing democracy today? Zócalo is publishing a series of letters to highlight how the world’s democratic ideals are faring in practice. From Brazil: Senator Humberto Costa writes about the efforts to re-mobilize one of his nation’s signature democratic ideas: participatory budgeting.

One of the world’s great democratic innovations is about to make a big comeback in the place where it was invented: my country, Brazil.

And the story of that innovation’s rise, fall, and revitalization offers lessons for the world.

Participatory budgeting was a creation of Brazil, first …