Revisiting the democratic promise of participatory budgeting in light of competing political, good governance and technocratic logics (original) (raw)
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The Democratic Contribution of Participatory Budgeting
Participatory Budgeting (PB) has emerged as one of the major innovations in participatory governance for local management and local democracy world-wide. With more than 14,000 experiences recorded in over forty countries, PB is gradually changing the living conditions of increasing numbers of citizens across the world. Highly heterogeneous in processes and underlying ambitions, PB in its diversity provides a challenging alternative to the New Public Management-informed route to public sector reform. In most cases, PB has positively contributed to administrative modernization and other ‘good governance’ imperatives, including bringing substance to decentralization policies. In its most radical incarnations, PB has moreover contributed to inversing established spatial, social and political priorities in cities, in favour of the more deprived. This working paper briefly introduces the world-wide expansion of PB and the heterogeneity of current experiences (section 1) before proposing two analytical frameworks to help differentiate between them. The first is an analytical grid that enables the ‘grading’ of PB experiments according to certain key processes. This is both useful for comparative purposes and as and advocacy tool to orient or re-orient PB practices in a given city or locality (section 2). The second analytical tool proposes a synthesis of the grid’s findings by bringing out, in a succinct fashion, the highly divergent logics underpinning PB experiments in practice. These logics can be described as political (for radical democratic change), managerial and technocratic (to improve municipal finance transparency and optimize the use of public resources for citizens’ benefit) or good governance driven (to improve links between the public and citizens spheres). In section three, we explore four prominent experiences from diverse political systems to illustrate these logics: Seville, Spain and Chengdu, China (political); Solingen, Germany (managerial and technocratic); and Dondo, Mozambique (good governance). Finally, we close the chapter with an assessment of PB’s major contributions to democratic governance, as well as its on-going challenges and limitations to date (section 4).
Working Paper Series 2015 No . 15-168 The Democratic Contribution of Participatory Budgeting
2015
Participatory Budgeting (PB) has emerged as one of the major innovations in participatory governance for local management and local democracy world-wide. With more than 14,000 experiences recorded in over forty countries, PB is gradually changing the living conditions of increasing numbers of citizens across the world. Highly heterogeneous in processes and underlying ambitions, PB in its diversity provides a challenging alternative to the New Public Management-informed route to public sector reform. In most cases, PB has positively contributed to administrative modernization and other ‘good governance’ imperatives, including bringing substance to decentralization policies. In its most radical incarnations, PB has moreover contributed to inversing established spatial, social and political priorities in cities, in favour of the more deprived. This working paper briefly introduces the world-wide expansion of PB and the heterogeneity of current experiences (section 1) before proposing t...
Unraveled Practices of Participatory Budgeting in European Democracies
International Trends in Participatory Budgeting
The goal of the final chapter was to summarize lessons about the worst and best practices, causes, and effects of (successful or unsuccessful) participatory budgeting, delivered by the country case studies included in this book. The information collected serves to check to what extent participatory budgeting as practiced in the countries involved presents a real attempt to change municipal budgets toward addressing the needs of marginalized groups and to improve decision-making based on local democracy and participation, or whether these processes as such are to be judged to be more important than any output and outcomes. All in all, the practices of PB as they evolved in European countries out of the innovative original as developed in Porto Alegre in the 1990s can be seen neither as a process of policy diffusion nor as a process of policy mimesis. The terminology of participatory budgeting remained, but the goals and tools to achieve the goals resulted only in marginal changes in ...
Politics & Society Participatory Budgeting as if Emancipation Mattered
Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, often celebrated, and is now instituted in at least 1,500 cities worldwide. Some of its central features-its structure of open meetings, its yearly cycle, and its combination of deliberation and representation-are by now well known. In this article, however, we critically reflect on its global travel and argue for more careful consideration of some of its less wellknown features, namely the coupling of the budgeting meetings with the exercise of power. We disaggregate PB into its communicative and empowerment dimensions and argue that its empowerment dimensions have usually not been part of its global expansion-and this is cause for concern from the point of view of emancipation. We thus discuss the specific institutional reforms associated with empowerment in the original version as well as its analytic dimensions. We also address some of the specific dangers of a communication-only version of PB as well as some suggestions for reintroducing empowerment.
Participatory Budgeting: Heading Towards a ‘Civil’ Democracy?
This paper provides a theoretical evaluation of the recent spread of participatory budgeting practices worldwide. Several different participatory initiatives are emerging, but participatory budgeting (PB) seems to be the most valid option for dealing with the crisis of democracy. PB is discussed from the background of the various approaches of democratic theory and the implications on the discourse of the governance role of civil society. The systemic involvement of civil society actors through multiple, open and deliberative arenas make PB not just an example of participatory democracy among the others but, rather, a potentially new model of ‘civil’ representative democracy
2021
The title of this study reflects the intention of its editors to include texts relating to both theories and specific deliberative practices with participatory budgeting as a leitmotiv in a concise study.The basic questions which the theory and practice of public policy try to answer is the question about desires in democratic conditions and at the same time an effective formula for balancing centralization and decentralization in decision-making processes. Participatory budgeting, as one of possible variants of deliberation, is one of those phenomena of public life, the quality of which depends on the relations of the parties involved. The shape of these relationships only to a limited extent depends on the ways of their current practice, because these methods are causally conditioned, and the causes lie in cultural constructions. That is why these relations are not easy to study; it is difficult to reach that deep, because it is difficult to both model the conceptualization of the problem and the methodological approach to such research. These are one of the most difficult and, at the same time, the most promising research areas of public policy. We hope that this book will contribute to their partial exploration. We hope that our collection of articles will show that governance practices can contribute to strengthening proactive public activities located in the area of the so-called civil democracy.
Participatory Budgeting: As if Emancipation Mattered
Politics & Society 2014, 42: 29-50
Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, and often celebrated, now instituted in at least 1,500 cities worldwide. Some of its central features - its structure of open meetings, its yearly cycle, and its combination of deliberation and representation are by now well-known. In this paper, however, we critically reflect on its global travel and argue for more careful consideration of some of its less well-known features, namely, the coupling of the budgeting meetings with the exercise of power. We disaggregate PB into its communicative and empowerment dimensions and argue that its empowerment dimensions have usually not been part of its global expansion and this is cause for concern from the point of view of emancipation. In this paper we thus discuss the specific institutional reforms associated with empowerment in the original version as well as its analytic dimensions. We also address some of the specific dangers of a communication-only version of PB as well as some suggestions for reintroducing empowerment.
The Power of Ambiguity: How Participatory Budgeting Travels the Globe
From its inception in Brazil in the late 1980s, Participatory Budgeting has now been instituted in over 1500 cities worldwide. This paper discusses what actually travels under the name of Participatory Budgeting. We rely on science studies for a fundamental insight: it is not enough to simply speak of “diffusion” while forgetting the way that the circulation and translation of an idea fundamentally transform it (Latour 1987). In this case, the travel itself has made PB into an attractive and politically malleable device by reducing and simplifying it to a set of procedures for the democratization of demand-making. The relationship of those procedures to the administrative machinery is ambiguous, but fundamentally important for the eventual impact of Participatory Budgeting in any one context.
Participatory Budgeting at the Local Level:Challenges and Opportunities for New Democracies
The main goals of this paper are to examine the existing models of participatory budgeting (PB), to match the various models to different constellations of contextual variables and to investigate the applicability of PB in the new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). First, the article gives an overview of the different (Western) European PB models put forth in the existing literature (Porto Alegre adapted for Europe, proximity participation, consultation on public finance, multistakeholder participation, and community participatory budgeting) and outlines the main environmental variables (financial autonomy, political culture, the size, heterogeneity and prosperity of the local government (LG) units) that are likely to influence the applicability and feasibility of PB in different LGs. As a second step, the paper analyses the links between different PB models and the environmental variables: it examines under which conditions each of the PB models would be applicable and advisable. As a third step, the article discusses the applicability of different PB models in the new democracies in the CEE region. As the analysis shows, limited financial autonomy of the local governments and the prevailing political culture (combined with weak civil society) are likely to constitute the main challenges to implementing PB in CEE countries, especially if the implementation of the Porto Alegre model is considered. At the same time, PB could be used to encourage the development of participatory culture in the region and to foster genuine decentralisation.
2018
Digital citizens in participatory society propels the need for citizen participation and increased involvement in public processes of public administrations. In addition, legislative amendments by the new Open Government Act presses the need for more transparency and accountability of public spending and budgeting. Initiatives, facilitating participatory budgeting vary from experiments in monitoring budget flows to allocating budgets. This paper reflects on the barriers and opportunities of participatory budgeting in six pilot municipalities within The Netherlands. It describes the differences and noncompatibility on the level of neighbourhoods, districts and cities of budget flows and the administrative processes in order to fully use the potential of transparency.