What began in the 1990s as a concern about civic disengagement in established democracies—sometimes called the “crisis of representation” or even the “crisis of democracy” itself—has since become folded into the literature on democratic quality throughout the world, as scholars examine multiple challenges to contemporary democracy, including clientelism, populism, corruption, and various forms of social exclusion. Not coincidentally, these concerns mirrored the burgeoning literature on local-level participatory democratic innovations (PDIs) like the now-famous case of participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Researchers want to know how and why PDIs arose, to what effect (e.g., “revitalizing” or “popularizing” democracy), and why there has been such variation in “success” and “failure” across the growing number of cases.

Françoise Montambeault’s book tackles all of these questions. It is a model of qualitative fieldwork-based comparative political analysis, examining four cases of local PDIs across two broadly comparable countries—Brazil and Mexico. The most-similar-system research design has been carefully constructed to exhibit different outcomes, in terms of PDI success and failure; yet each case shows similar institutional designs and background conditions that, together, allow the author to control for factors often argued to be at the heart of such different outcomes.

Montambeault’s first argument is definitional and focuses on her dependent variable: PDI “success” and ‘”failure.” She argues that the concept is contested in the literature, making it difficult for scholars to learn from one another’s work. Most use a version of the “empowerment thesis,” in which PDIs generate greater individual political engagement and/or greater collective engagement, generally through heightened deliberative roles for civil society organizations. Montambeault argues for a two-dimensional definition of PDI success: First, “mobilization patterns” are transformed from individualistic to collective (p. 60), or more to the point, from clientelist and, therefore, fragmented to collective-action oriented and, thus, more democratic. Second, successful PDIs also increase the level of participants’ autonomy from the state and from political parties, from co-opted to autonomous. These two dimensions allow her to construct a four-part typology of ideal types: clientelism (individualized mobilization + low autonomy), disempowering co-option (collective mobilization + low autonomy), fragmented inclusion (individual mobilization + high autonomy), and democratic cooperation (collective mobilization + high autonomy). Each of these types is represented by at least one of her case studies, perfectly representing all variance on the dependent variables.

Montambeault’s second argument is her explanation for that variance. She quickly dismisses the existing literature as inadequate by design (mostly single-case studies) and because none of it can fully explain the variance she has identified. Just setting up a PDI, for example, even a “good” one, does not guarantee success. Context matters. Some of that context she holds constant with her research design: a prior history of clientelism, “a tradition of local associationalism and civic activism” (p. 52), and the impetus for implementing a PDI emerging from “challenger” political party elites wishing to bypass existing captured mobilizational and representational channels.

The most important differences—explanatory variables—have to do with the degree of political competition at the local level. First, the greater the degree of “political competition and factionalism among political parties and politicians (both among and within political parties and coalitions, and among the branches of the local government)” (pp. 62–63), the greater will be the incentive for politicians to revert to clientelistic exchanges in order to purchase support. Conversely, with less competition, the more political elites can afford to throw support behind their PDIs. Second, the degree of competition and factionalism among and within civil society organizations similarly affects their willingness to engage in clientelism or to invest in the new PDIs. Finally, “the actors’ understanding of their mutual roles in the participatory process” (p. 64) is critical to PDI success. Ideologies and beliefs, not just political calculation in contexts of greater or lesser competition, also matter—not any specific ideologies and beliefs, however, just those that allow participants to make sense of and value their participation and that of others in the process. The author concludes that all three of these contextual variables must be “taken together” (p. 59) to fully explain observed variances in her cases.

The bulk of The Politics of Local Participatory Democracy in Latin America is taken up with detailed presentations—one chapter each—of her four cases: Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl and León in Mexico, and Recife and Belo Horizonte in Brazil (five cases, in fact, since she includes a within-case comparison of two very different versions of participatory budgeting in Recife). The cases ultimately validate and confirm her arguments.

In terms of shortcomings, the book shares a common problem in the discipline: an underappreciation of the existing relevant literature. Science is cumulative, and Montambeault is well aware that we need to “build on existing studies” (p. 59). Yet she devotes merely half a paragraph to each of the three theoretical frameworks she identifies as characterizing the literature on PDIs (pp. 44–47). Particularly striking is the paucity of references to how her findings may (in fact, do, repeatedly) confirm arguments in the extant literature. For example, the author dismisses as “limited” (p. 6) Brian Wampler’s highly regarded Participatory Budgeting in Brazil (2007), a within-case comparison of eight carefully chosen and constructed cases. Wampler is criticized because he did not follow her within-in case and cross-case research design. Montambeault locates Wampler’s argument within “a category of studies [that] focuses on the idea that participatory institutions need to be supported by a strong political will” (p. 47). However, her cursory discussion of Wampler’s work does not provide readers with a true sense of how much her own scholarship builds upon his, and that of many others. “Building upon existing studies,” in this example, could mean describing the factors that Wampler finds to explain PDI success or failure and showing how her own work provides the missing explanations for these factors. In other words, she might have positively recognized Wampler’s contribution as significant and then demonstrated how her own work builds upon his significant, albeit insufficient, contribution. Science is cumulative, but it does not have to be adversarial.

Like others in our discipline, this very good book could have been made even better had it taken this extra step. Having said that, both because it breaks new ground while also confirming important earlier scholarly findings, it will surely take its place as a significant contribution to the literature on PDIs and other prescriptions for improving democratic quality in Latin America and throughout the world.