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This article focuses on the unlikely success of Peru's top-down participatory budget experience. As part of democratization and decentralization efforts in the early 2000s, Peruvians mandated participatory budgeting in all subnational governments. The article suggests that, while success is constrained in many ways, Peruvians can point to two important accomplishments: 1) engaging a significant number of civil society organizations in debating public resources; and 2) an increased focus on "pro-poor" projects. The article concludes that the current challenge in Peru is to improve the process and engage an even more diverse array of participants. Only then will the process have real potential to improve local governance.

Review of Everyone Counts: Could Participatory Budgeting Change Democracy by Josh Lerner (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014) and Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics by Josh Lerner (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014).

Fifteen years after the world's first national participatory budgeting (PB) law was passed in Peru, the sense of optimism about participatory democracy's potential to involve average citi-zens in governance has turned into a more generalized sense of pessimism. With some excep-tions, PB has become a formality. Civil society representatives go to meetings where authorities present projects to be approved without solid debate or discussion. Few would argue that PB is resolving economic or social problems in their communities, cities, or regions. This article documents Peru's PB process along two dimensions —process and results—then also explores the reasons why this project has become so disappointing for activists and advocates in Peru. The results are due to three factors: a problematic design that restricts civil society's participa-tion; low levels of political support among local, regional, and national leaders; and its origin as a neoliberal public policy tool. ; Después de más de quince años de la ratificación de la primera Ley Nacional del Presupuesto Participativo (PP) en el Perú, la sensación de optimismo sobre el potencial de la «democracia participativa» como un mecanismo para involucrar a la ciudadanía en los procesos de gobernanza ha disminuido a un sentido generalizado de pesimismo. Con algunas excepciones, el PP se ha convertido, en gran medida, en una formalidad. Por ejemplo, los representantes de la sociedad civil asisten a las reuniones en las que las autoridades locales y regionales presentan proyectos para su aprobación sin un debate sólido o deliberación. En el Perú, son pocos los que argumentan que el PP está resolviendo problemas sociopolíticos, económicos o sociales en sus comunidades, ciudades, o regiones. Por tanto, este artículo analiza el PP en el país a partir de dos dimensiones —el proceso y los resultados— y discute algunas de las razones por las que este proyecto está desilusionando a activistas y a sus promotores en el Perú. Se expone el argu-mento de que los resultados limitados pueden vincularse a tres factores: el diseño problemático del programa, que restringe la participación de la sociedad civil; los bajos niveles de apoyo político de las autoridades locales y de los gobiernos regionales y nacional; y su origen como una herramienta neoliberal de formulación de políticas públicas.

This reply discusses two articles that explore the limits of legal initiatives that attempt to rectify gender imbalances. The two articles tackle different issue areas (birthing and parental policies), yet come to similar conclusions: legal initiatives cannot necessarily change deeply entrenched cultural norms about women's bodies and choices. The articles also point to the problematic conclusion that policies meant to improve women's experience and expand their choices are ultimately restricted by societal norms about a woman's imagined role in the home and workplace. The articles push the boundaries of debates about gender empowerment and the law, and suggest a series of questions that remain to be answered.

Do participatory institutions facilitate gender empowerment? As these institutions spread around the world, we still know very little about the gendered nature of participatory democratic spaces. Through the case study of state-mandated participatory budgeting in Peru, this article employs original data on participation to explore gender and inclusion. The study suggests that participatory institutions are not promoting gender equality. Instead, state actors have created new political spaces that exclude women and women's organizations and reify traditional gender norms. Like representative democratic institutions, gender inequities are embedded in these very spaces that are meant to empower all citizens.

Peru is trapped in a cycle of political instability, which prevents a focus on strengthening democratic institutions.

A medida que Guatemala emergía lentamente de una guerra civil que duró treinta y seis años, los reformistas nacionales crearon una institución participativa que aún no ha sido analizada en profundidad: el Consejo Nacional de Desarrollo Urbano y Rural. Estos consejos están formados por representantes de la sociedad civil que toman decisiones sobre el gasto en proyectos de desarrollo y las políticas de desarrollo y los supervisan. Formalmente, hay consejos en los niveles de gobierno comunitario, municipal, departamental, regional y nacional. En la práctica, su existencia e implementación varía mucho en los distintos sectores del país. En este artículo se exploran distintos aspectos de este sistema, tales como el diseño institucional del sistema de consejos, los orígenes de este diseño y la efectividad del sistema en cuanto al logro de los objetivos que se plantea. Asimismo se postula que el sistema ha involucrado a algunos actores pero, en general, no ha logrado canalizar efectivamente los intereses y elaborar una política de desarrollo nacional participativa. Esto se debe principalmente a tres factores: su complicado diseño, el legado del gobierno militar y la cultura política de clientelismo y caudillismo. Estas conclusiones sirven de advertencia de que imponer la participación ciudadana puede ser más difícil de lo que muchos reformistas suponen en la actualidad.

Review of Everyone Counts: Could Participatory Budgeting Change Democracy by Josh Lerner (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014) and Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics by Josh Lerner (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014).

AbstractAs institutions are created to engage citizens and civil society organizations more directly, who participates, and what effect does participation have? This article explores two of Peru's participatory institutions, the Regional Coordination Councils and the participatory budgets, created in 2002. Specifically it asks, once these institutions are set up, do organizations participate in them? and what effect does this participation have on the organizations? The data show that the participatory processes in Peru are including new voices in decisionmaking, but this inclusion has limits. Limited inclusion has, in turn, led to limited changes specifically in nongovernmental organizations. As a result, the democratizing potential of the participatory institutions is evident yet not fully realized.