Political effects on the discontinuation of participatory budgeting in municipalities

Abstract

The article analyzes the factors associated with the discontinuation of participatory budgeting (PB) in Brazilian municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants between 2000 and 2016. We used econometric models to estimate PB’s discontinuation based on political explanatory variables and people’s local participation. The results indicate that discontinuation is associated: (i) positively with the election of a different local government, regardless of the winning party’s ideology; (ii) positively with the election of a local government with a left-wing ideology’; (iii) negatively with the election of a non-left-wing local government; (iv) positively with the election of a left-wing local government replacing another left-wing government. Changes in local government where other non-left-wing parties replace non-left-wing parties had no significant effect on discontinuation. The results contribute to our knowledge by showing the local and contextual factors that explain the discontinuation of participatory budgeting; this should help guide the design of participatory public policies and allow practitioners to reflect on the mechanisms that could be adopted locally to avoid discontinuation. The article also contributes to the literature by demonstrating the association between discontinuation and changes in left-wing local governments, which may prompt future research, given the unexpected result.