This chapter discusses the limits of the current understanding of democracy as an extension of European and North-American experiences to the rest of the world. Such an understanding tends to stress the role of elites in the production of administrative rationality and political stability. The chapter shows that, in the case of Brazil, intra-elite rivalry is what accounts for the breakdown of democratic experiments throughout the 20th century. It also shows that, in the recent process of democratization in Brazil, political innovation is linked to the emergence of new non-elite social actors at the local level. These actors are at the root of a promising experiment in participatory democracy, participatory budgeting, an experiment which emerged in Porto Alegre and was extended to more than 100 cities in Brazil. Participatory budgeting transfers new potentials which emerged at the societal level to the political field, introducing a new form of participation in the process of distribution of public goods. This experiment has generated new forms of dealing with administrative complexity and new forms of discussing principles of justice in the distribution of public goods. Up to now, thousands of people have been involved in the decision-making process, with excellent results at the distributive level. In conclusion, the chapter argues that it is only possible to understand the construction and expansion of democracy in Brazil through an approach that privileges the role of participation instead of the role of elites.