International Diffusion of Participatory Budgeting Practices (original) (raw)

2018, International Conference on Policy Difuson and Development

One of the most remarkable examples of international diffusion of public policies in the 21 st century is the case of Participatory Budgeting (PB). From the first experiences in Brazil to today, PB practices spread all over the world in a huge diversity of models and contexts. Today, there are around 2.500 experiences related with the label PB all over the world. All of them are based on a common basis, the direct participation of the citizens on the decision making process on a wide range of public policies, from investments to the overall public management. Those different experiences have in common the political will to transform the patterns of the relationship between the state and the citizens in a more democratic way. And after almost thirty years of PD experiences there is a relatively high level of consensus in the specialized literature that PB "increases civic participation, reduces corruption, makes government more accountable, and implement projects that benefit the public" (Menser, 2017:67) The dissemination of PB provided new dimensions of democratic practices in the implementation of public policies, in a moment of a generalized distrust of the political systems all over the world. Representative democracy is in crisis, and PB may represent an alternative to recover the confidence in politics. The theoretical reflection on the subject highlights the potential of PB as a tool to renovate the democratic process. For some authors PB represents a step in the direction of a new participatory form of democracy (Cabbanes 2004, Sintomer 2002) that could overcome the traditional of clientelism on the relation of the state and the citizens (Abers, 1998), others stand out the dimension of empowerment and the protagonism of the social movements (Fung and Wright