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What are the effects of Brazilian participatory budgeting? Most studies answer this question using selected case studies. This paper proposes an empirical analysis of the political and fiscal effects of participatory budgeting. Focusing on all the cities that have a population greater than 50000 inhabitants between the years 1989 and 2008 it extends significantly the scope and understanding of previous empirical work. To the contrary of previous anecdotal evidence the results show that participatory budgeting does not alter the composition of public spending and public revenues. However participatory budgeting significantly increases (~9%) the probability of reelection of the party of the mayor. This effect is heightened when focusing on the sample of cities with more than 100000 inhabitants. Most interestingly for smaller cities the positive effect of adopting for the first time PB on the reelection of the mayor is mediated by the victory of the Workers’ Party. When the Workers’ Party doesn’t control the city the effect disappears. For the larger cities we observe the opposite result.
