| 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. Citizen budgeting participation is spreading throughout the democratic world. Uzbekistan is joining this promising experiment. |
Participatory Budgeting Opens Path for Democratic Reform in Uzbekistan
Taskent, Nov.10.– Since his inauguration in 2016, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has paved the way for many policy reforms in Uzbekistan. Four of these reforms stand out as truly consequential. 
The first two reforms are economic. The move to a mostly market-based foreign currency regime and the implementation of tax reforms delivered significant positive stimuli for economic growth and helped to open the Uzbek economy to foreign investment.
The third reform put an end to the abhorrent practice of state-sponsored forced and child labor. Possibly more than any other, this reform has earned Uzbekistan international praise.
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Liberal democracies face multiple external challenges from autocracies across the world, as well as internal challenges from populist politicians, nativism, and the normalization of incivility in media and political discourses. Character assassination (CA) often accompanies these political and social conflicts, especially when unresolved ideological and moral issues are involved. Social conflicts become aggravated when moral issues intermix with political and economic factors. Factions then resort to persuasive attacks on character to delegitimize and disempower their opponents. This increased polarization and aggressiveness of elite rhetoric likely foster voters’ cynicism and discontent with politics as usual. The increasing gap between liberal elites and the disgruntled electorate, in turn, likely provides even more fertile ground for intra-elite conflict and paves the way for illiberal conceptions of the democratic order.
