HOPE FOR DEMOCRACY 30 Years of Participatory Budgeting Worldwide

The participatory budgeting born in Latin America, specifically in Brazil in the year 1989, expanding gradually along the continent. Its implementation has been variable, so much between countries as also to the inside of each one of them. The Chilean case has been characterized for that the experiences of participatory budgeting, have been in municipalities, not existing up to the date experiences in other levels of government. There are more than 40 municipalities, of different political affiliation and it has supported from the year 2001 up to the date. Experiences have not existed in regional governments. For this reason, it is relevant to know the dynamics of this unpublished experience of participatory budgeting to regional scale. So, this article describes and analyzes the only case of participatory regional budgeting in Chile, developed from the year 2014 in the region de Los Ríos. The purpose the this paper is to explore the institutional design in order to identify the factors that influence in detonate democratic processes of the public investment to regional scale. The principal result the analysis of this case, is that as in the municipal experiences of participatory budgeting, the predominant factor for the origin and development is the political will of the leader or mayor. However, is observed the particularity of which the initial empowerment of the social leaders, was determinant in order that this participatory mechanism has not been used as a strategy of cooption or of renovation of the political clientelism to territorial scale, since it has been demonstrated in most cases of this nature both in Chile and in Latin America. The used methodology was the study of case. The methodological used categories was on the origin and conditions of the participatory budgeting that elaborated Goldfrank, (2006), and Cabannes (2004) and that later is fused in Montecinos's work (2012 and 2014).