All Rights ReservedPimentel Walker, Ana Paula2025-02-112025-02-112016978-85-7785-551-1https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14235/2648Proceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the southBrazilian political culture is permeated by a strong discursive and imagined border between partisan and community politics (Mische 2008). With the end of the dictatorship in 1985, neighborhood leaders adopted a confrontational style of addressing government officials. The deliberative meetings of the Participatory Budget had been typical of this antagonistic communicative style. The Participatory Budget of Porto Alegre, Brazil, is a world-renowned mechanism of municipal resources allocation, which transfers some decision-making power from the City Council to public assemblies (Pimentel Walker 2015). The Workers’ Party, who designed and administered the Participatory Budget for four consecutive terms in Porto Alegre (1989-2005), fostered conflict talk at the deliberative meetings as a sign of their accountability in public office. Scholars characterize government and community interactions at the Participatory Budget during the Workers’ Party administrations as “contestation among friends” since a significant proportion of the Participatory Budget public belonged to the Workers’ Party (Baiocchi 2005; Wampler 2007). However, a shift in communicative interactions between city officials and neighborhood leaders has been taking place since 2005 when a coalition of political parties from the opposition took office. Conflict talk and confrontational styles of communication have been framed by the new governmental officials as partisan and selfish. An alternative way of conducting deliberative meetings, which emphasizes harmonious styles of deliberation between neighborhood leaders and city officials, became gradually hegemonic.EnglishopenAccessconferenceObject236-239