joint task forces and committees, and ouvidorias (ombudsman-like ofices inside government bureaucracies) have been increasingly mobilized to create links between government actors and decision- making processes, on the one hand, and civil society and citizens’ demands and proposals, on the other. The impressive advance of participatory institutions throughout Brazil raises questions about their effectiveness. Are these participatory institutions actually making a difference? To what extent and under what conditions can participatory institutions really inluence policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation? Answering these questions involves complex methodological issues, and the evidence available so far suggests a pattern of mixed results (Pires 2011). On the one hand, a spate of recent studies have demonstrated that these participatory institutions have important consequences for policy making and government activity. For example, research conducted by various scholars has documented the inluence of citizens/users of public services in deliberations about service delivery within local-level councils. At the national level, recent evaluations have revealed the inluence of public deliberations in national conferences on both the formulation of policies by the federal government and the national legislative agenda. Other analyses have focused on comparisons between municipalities with developed participatory institutions and municipalities without (or with incipient) channels for participation. The indings suggest that the presence of participatory institutions is associated with better performance in service delivery, pro-poor resource investment allocation, and lower levels of corruption and mismanagement (a review of these studies is available in Pires 2014). The irst phase, from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, can be characterized by the emergence and dissemination of participatory institutions at local and state levels of government. Following the pioneering experiences of Porto Alegre, Lages, Pelotas, and Ipatinga in the late 1980s, participatory budgeting experiences diffused throughout the country, reaching more than two hundred municipalities in the early 2000s (Marquetti, Campos, and Pires 2008). In addition, local policy councils were widely adopted in areas such as health care, education, and social welfare. These councils reached coverage of over 80 percent among the 5,565 municipalities in the country (Munic/IBGE 2009). At the state level, policy councils have also been widely implemented. On average, each of the 27 Brazilian states has 13 councils in different policy dimensions (Estadic/IBGE 2012). The second phase, starting in the 2000s, marked the diffusion of participatory institutions to the federal level of government. Since 2003, we have been observing a vigorous process of incorporation of channels and mechanisms for interactions between government and civil society actors. More than 15 new policy councils were created—an increase of 50 percent from the previous period— and many others have been revamped to bring in representatives from social movements and other organized actors. Between 2003 and 2011, some 85 national public policy conferences were held, debating priorities for policy making in areas as diverse as women’s and LGBT rights, education, environmental protection, urban and regional development, and disaster relief. More than 6 million people took part in these debates (IPEA 2013). In addition to policy councils and conferences, other channels such as public hearings and consultations, negotiation roundtables, The Midlife of Participatory Institutions in Brazil by ROBERTO PIRES | IPEA, Brasília | roberto.pires@ipea.gov.br DEBATES In little over four decades, Brazil transformed itself from an authoritarian regime with low levels of associative life and few opportunities for public participation into a hotbed of “participatory democracy” in the global South. Nevertheless, despite the impressive advances of the post-1985 democracy, it is possible to say that today, participatory institutions in Brazil are experiencing a midlife crisis. That is, they can no longer be considered to be novelties or democratic innovations as they had been previously treated by many specialists. Yet they have not achieved full maturity and thus cannot be viewed as systematic and deining features of government activity and policy making in Brazil. In this short article, I advance a critical assessment of the midlife of participatory institutions in Brazil. I highlight the signiicant achievements of participatory institutions in terms of their diffusion, but I call attention to current challenges that limit their effectiveness and full incorporation into the country’s administrative and political systems— challenges that must be urgently addressed by the recently reelected PT-led government. The promulgation of the 1988 Constitution, in addition to restoring democratic institutions and the rule of law, provided support for the spread and development of a varied set of participatory institutions—formal processes that create opportunities for citizens and social movements to participate in decision making, implementation, and evaluation with regard to public policy. These include policy councils, conferences, participatory budgeting, public hearings, and consultations, among others (Avritzer 2009). Such channels linking civil society and governmental actors have been incorporated into local, state, and national levels of government in two distinct phases. lasa forum summer 2015 : volume xlvi : issue 3 28