"The subject of this book by Marianne Nassuno is the Participatory Budgeting of Porto Alegre.(…) But she is not interested in making an appraisal of the Participatory Budgeting; rather, wants to know to what extent its success depended on the public organization or on the public administration of Porto Alegre. By focusing on this issue, she makes an important contribution to the study of participation. Because this is a form of exercising power that only becomes reality if the corresponding laws and public policies are well enforced by the State apparatus. In democratic political participation, the agents are the citizens and the elected politicians, but the civil servants have the fundamental role of structuring and materializing the manifestation of popular will. It is this role of the public administration, regarding the Participatory Budgeting of Porto Alegre, that the author analyzes in depth and with rigor in this book" (Luis Carlos Bresser-Pereira, Preface)