The Porto Alegre Experiment Learning Lessons for Better Democracy

Yves Sintomer divides his time between the University of Paris VIII and the Marc Bloch Centre in Berlin where he is a researcher. He is the author of La democratie impossible? Politique et modernite chez Weber et Habermas (La Decouverte, 1999). Marion Gret completed her doctorate on participatory democracy in Argentina and Brazil at the Institute for Advanced Latin American Studies at the University of Paris III. She is currently a research associate at CERAD (Centre d'etude et de recherche autour de la democratie), University of Rennes and at CREDAL (Centre de recherche et de documentation on Latin America), IHEAL (Institut des Hautes Etudes d'Amerique Latine), Paris III.