Participatory budgeting (PB) is probably the best-known application of participatory democracy around the world. The World Bank is even an advocate, because it enhances transparency and accountability and reduces government inefficiency. Quite simply it is a process, which enables local people to decide directly how public money, should be spent in their communities, on the things that they know will make the biggest difference. In doing that, it builds community cohesion, capacity and wellbeing. It changes the relationship between service providers and users and helps communities be a part of the solution. It helps rebuild trust in democracy.
Evidence shows that local people can be trusted to make sound decisions most of the time and are often better placed to know how services can be delivered better and more efficiently, but most public bodies remain reluctant to share power and responsibility with their residents and the PB idea advances at a snail pace.
Until now, PB projects have been within the gift of the council or police authority in the United Kingdom. “The People’s Budget” is a campaign initiated in Britain and aimed at mobilizing and equipping local people and community groups to lobby for a say in how money is spent in their neighborhoods. It is, after all, their money. Surely, this is what localism is supposed to be about; fundamental not cosmetic change. As budgets come under increasing pressure, it’s more important than ever to start rebuilding trust.
You can find out more, and get behind the campaign, at the people's budget organization.
At the other side of the Atlantic, a Participatory Budgeting project has been launched by the Brooklyn College where 10% of their budgets are to be voted upon directly by students as an experiment to evaluate results. Therefore, the Brooklyn College Student Government is setting aside 10% of its budget for students to allocate this spring. They are planning as well an International Conference on Participatory Budgeting in the US and Canada, March 30-31, 2012.
Participatory budgeting (PB) is a process of democratic deliberation and decision-making as a form of participatory democracy, empowering ordinary people to decide how to allocate parts of a municipal or public budget. It may be applied by a variety of mechanisms that delegate power or influence over local budgets, investment priorities and economic spending to citizens. It may help to re-establish the legitimacy of government budget decisions in places where corruption has permeated the political scene. PB allows citizens to identify, discuss, and prioritize public spending projects, and gives them the power to make real decisions in public forums about how money is spent. Academic studies suggest that PB promotes greater government transparency and accountability, and increased levels of citizen's interest and participation in public affairs.
The first experiments on applied PB took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, starting in 1989 and the practice is taking place annually since then. A World Bank paper on this issue refers to the positive results of this experiment, noting, for example, that sewer and water connections increased from 75% of households in 1988 to 98% in 1997 and The number of schools quadrupled from 1986 to 2000. It concluded that the experiment led to improved conditions for the poor. Although it cannot overcome wider problems such as unemployment, it leads to "noticeable improvement in the accessibility and quality of various public welfare amenities" (See Participatory Buggeting in Brazil).
Based on Porto Alegre more than 140 (about 2.5%) of the 5,571 municipalities in Brazil have adopted participatory budgeting. Since its emergence in Porto Alegre, participatory budgeting has spread to hundreds of Latin American cities, and dozens of towns and cities in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom have initiated participatory budgeting processes. Further experiments of PB have successfully taken place in India.
However, PB experiments are struggling to overcome existing clientelism. This is a real danger that must be regulated and controlled. There is also the risk of creating unrealistic expectations amongst participants, giving way to distorted budgetary decisions in favor of stronger or more dynamic groups of interests who may be able to dominate the proceedings.
Therefore, mechanisms created to promote PB should target people's participation in monitoring local government budgetary proposals instead of using the system to create a budget by a piecework decision process subjected to particular interests.