No abstract

This paper describes participatory budgeting in Brazil and elsewhere as a significant area of innovation in democracy and local development. It draws on the experience of 25 municipalities in Latin America and Europe, selected based on the diversity of their participatory budgeting experience and their degree of innovation. The paper provides a systematic analysis of the range of experience that can be included in participatory budgeting-in terms of the level of funds being considered, the extent of control and mode of involvement of local citizens, the relationship with local government, the degree of institutionalization and the sustainability of the process-and it considers the questions that are raised by this diverse set of possibilities.

In 2013, over 1,700 local governments in more than 40 countries were practising participatory budgeting (PB), which entails citizens meeting to agree on priorities for part of the local government budget for their neighbourhood or the city as a whole, and helping to oversee project implementation. This paper reviews PB in 20 cities in different continents, ranging from small urban centres to Chengdu, China, with over 17 million inhabitants, and examines 20,000 recently funded projects worth over US$ 2 billion. It finds that PB has contributed significantly to improving basic service provision and management, with projects that are usually cheaper and better maintained because of community control and oversight. While in most cases PB improves governance and the delivery of services, it does not often fundamentally change existing power relations between local governments and citizens. The paper also discusses challenges and solutions for PB’s effectiveness and scaling up.

Participatory budgeting (PB) has been a major innovation in participatory governance worldwide, with more than 3,000 experiences listed across 40 countries. PB has also diversified over its 30 years, with many contemporary experiments (referred to as PBs) only tangentially related to the original project to “radically democratize democracy”. We propose a taxonomy to distinguish the logics currently underpinning PB in practice: political (for radical democratic change), good governance (to improve links between the public and citizens’ spheres), and technocratic (to optimize the use and transparency of public resources for citizens’ benefit). Illustrating these competing rationales through contemporary experiences, we reflect on the contributions of the good governance and technocratic frameworks to managerial and state modernization. Undoubtedly, these help explain PB’s growing attraction for proponents of the good governance agenda. However, rekindling PB’s promise for democratic deepening, we argue, requires refocusing on its deliberative quality. We draw attention to civic education and empowerment of participants as key components of PB practices intent on opening pathways towards alternative political systems – indeed, of materializing Henri Lefebvre’s “right to the city”.

No abstract