Sao Paulo Citizen Assembly
The Citizen Assembly was a direct democracy experiment organized in the city of Sao Paulo by the Rede Nossa Sao Paulo with the support of the municipal Legislative Chamber, based on an initiative by Rodrigo Ochigame from the MIT and James Holston from the University of Berkeley. The project consisted of a process of deliberation and direct vote through which citizens could directly discuss, propose and decide how to decentralize the municipal budget. In the first instance, citizens could make proposals of any kind and submit them to vote through an online platform. Subsequently, the most voted proposals were selected to be presented to the Legislative Chamber. Likewise, the participants of the web platform could vote four male and four female commentators to defend these proposals before the Chamber. Finally, the most voted proposal was be submitted for discussion within the Chamber.
Institutional design
Formalization: is the innovation embedded in the constitution or legislation, in an administrative act, or not formalized at all?
Frequency: how often does the innovation take place: only once, sporadically, or is it permanent or regular?
Mode of Selection of Participants: is the innovation open to all participants, access is restricted to some kind of condition, or both methods apply?
Type of participants: those who participate are individual citizens, civil society organizations, private stakeholders or a combination of those?
Decisiveness: does the innovation takes binding, non-binding or no decision at all?
Co-governance: is there involvement of the government in the process or not?
- Formalization
- not backed by constitution nor legislation, nor by any governmental policy or program
- Frequency
- single
- Mode of selection of participants
- open
- Type of participants
- citizens
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields a binding decision
- Co-Governance
- yes
Means
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Ends
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