Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

ability is granted as citizens have a fixed part of the city budget at their
disposal. In theory, the legislative body could reject their decision, but
thanks to its strong legitimacy, this is unlikely to happen (Santos 2005:
316). Finally, past performance is scrutinised every year in popular
assemblies and delegates are subject to recall at any time. Overall,
the balanced design of participatory budgeting has led to increased
participation and to recognition and imitation worldwide. At the
same time, its complex and long-lasting processes suggest that such
experiments are primarily suited for the communal level (Fetscher
2007: 94, Münkler/Wassermann 2008: 17), while at higher levels one
cannot help but ask what other forms of governance might be employed
(Volkmann 2002: 609).
In the light of the presented findings it is recommended that any
participatory experiment should first and foremost check whether each
of the three elements of the public realm are to some extent integrated
into its design, above all, if it is to be more than an informative, or at
best, educational event. As Zhu (2004: 241) has correctly observed it
was “[t]hanks to Aristotle’s contribution, [that] politics for the first time
had its proper domain”. As a distinctive domain, the political realm has
its distinctive characteristics and to define these from a participatory
standpoint was the aim of the present paper.
However, it must be added that securing participation as suggested
does not guarantee good governance and Hannah Arendt’s claim that
the more perspectives included in a judgment, the more qualified it is,
might be too optimistic a generalisation (2006: 28). Instead, as many
authors have acknowledged, courage will remain the central political
virtue (Arendt 2002: 45, Cic. Rep. I, 3, Nordmann 2007: 62, Riecker
2006, Thuc. II, 39, Vowinckel 2007: 51). First, on a personal level, to
be able to expose oneself in the light of the public realm, and, second,
on a communal level, to be prepared to accept the decisions the community
takes, which will always be insecure at the outset and will
always include the risk of disastrous consequences, as exemplified by
the Athenian expedition to Sicily.
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DESIGNING THE PUBLIC
REALM – A PREREQUISITE
FOR DEMOCRATIC
INNOVATION
Marco Walter
“The number of delegates for a district is determined as follows: for the first 100 persons,
one delegate for every ten persons; for the next 150 persons, one for twenty; for the next 150,
one for thirty; for each additional forty persons after that, one delegate. To cite an example,
a district that had 520 persons in attendance would have twenty-six delegates”.