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O Orçamento Participativo (OP) foi uma experiência pioneira de participação social nos governos locais implementada em Porto Alegre, no Brasil, em 1989. Nos dias atuais, o OP está presente em mais de 2500 cidades no mundo. Este processo envolveu um conjunto amplo de articulações no âmbito doméstico e internacional. O artigo percorre as conexões transnacionais estabelecidas entre representantes de Porto Alegre, na América Latina e na Europa, a partir das quais foram realizadas diferentes transferências do OP. Duas redes transnacionais são analisadas: a Rede Democratizar Radicalmente a Democracia e o Fórum das Autoridades Locais pela Inclusão Social e Democracia Participativa. O argumento deste artigo defende que um conjunto de "embaixadores da participação" foi determinante na manutenção das redes, as quais serviram como canais de transmissão e espaços de legitimação para o OP.

Resumo Este artigo trata da difusão global do Orçamento Participativo (OP) brasileiro. Desenvolvido em Porto Alegre no final dos anos 1980, essa política de participação social foi adotada, nos dias atuais, por cerca de 2.800 governos. Procura-se responder às seguintes perguntas: como o OP passou de uma experiência local para uma referência global? Que mecanismos facilitaram esse movimento? E, por fim, de que maneira essa política de participação social se transformou ao longo do processo de difusão internacional? A partir de uma extensa "etnografia política transnacional", foram identificados três mecanismos operando na difusão do OP: a indução institucional, a construção social e a circulação internacional de indivíduos. O argumento é que um grupo de indivíduos, os "embaixadores da participação", foi fundamental para inserir o OP na agenda das instituições internacionais. Uma vez que o OP se insere na agenda das instituições internacionais, seu potencial de difusão é ampliado. O reconhecimento do OP pelas organizações internacionais mostra a importância que esse tema vem adquirindo em escala global. Todavia, a observação empírica revela que, a despeito da vasta difusão do OP, os significados que são atribuídos por cada um dos atores a essa política são muito distintos.

Abstract This paper introduces the dossier entitled 'Policy Transfer and South-South Cooperation'. Very often development cooperation programmes, particularly those labelled as part of South-South cooperation (SSC), use policy transfer as one of their key implementation tools. However, irrespective of cross-cutting dimensions and shared commonalities, both fields of practices have generated research traditions that have followed specific disciplinary (and sometimes interdisciplinary) trajectories which have seldom met. Policy transfer promoted by national and international, state and non-state agents of the Global South via development cooperation raises several questions that remain unexplored and overlooked by the scholarly literature. This dossier intends to promote a dialogue between these two fields, thus analysing how policy transfer through SSC may create new power relations, identities, world visions and practices. This introductory article presents a theoretical cartography and offers in the first section a brief literature review of both fields of research; in the second section it presents the historical background of SSC and Brazil's changing roles in it; the third section outlines possible conversations between policy transfer and SSC; finally, in the concluding remarks we bring a few reflections about future research agendas.

Abstract This article discusses the complex relationship between the World Bank and the Brazilian government regarding the implementation of the Bolsa Família Program (Family Allowance Program) from 2004 onwards. The hypothesis is that there was an alignment of the agendas for combating hunger and poverty among the entities. This made it possible to transfer Brazilian instruments and experiences to the world through World Bank. Based on a triangulation technique, it argues that the development of state capacity for the implementation of the program took place on a more cooperative basis than an imposition on the part of the World Bank, in a positive-sum game. Brazil gained the World Bank's seal of approval as a model of policy transfer to the world and the international organisation found new experience of best practices, which renewed the Bank's portfolio of policy instruments. As a result, in the last years of Lula's second term, Brazil became an export platform for social policies in an international context, specifically concerning conditional cash transfer and poverty reduction policies.

Latin American countries have for a long time been importers of public policies and institutions from the Global North. The colonial legacy and resulting patterns of international relations during the 20th century favoured a course of adoption and hybridization of political institutions. In recent decades, a new conjuncture has emerged in which Latin American policies have started to diffuse South-South and even South-North. Led by Brazil with Participatory Budgeting and the Bolsa Familia program, other countries in the region soon followed. The Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system and bicycle policies in Curitiba and Bogot have also reached wide international recognition and circulation. And yet, despite Latin America's new role as a policy "exporter", little is known about its dynamics, causes, and effects. Whyhave Latin American policiesbeen diffused inside and outside the region? Which actors are involved? What driving forces affect these processes? This innovative collection offers a new perspective on the policy diffusion phenomena. Drawing on different examples from Latin American experiences in urban local policies and national social policies, experts present a new framework to study this phenomenon centered on the mobilization of ideas, interests and discourses for policy diffusion. Latin America and Policy Diffusion will be of great interest to researchers, educators, advanced students and practitioners working in the fields of political science, public policy, international relations and Latin American Studies.