Participatory Budgeting in the United States

Participatory Budgeting in the United States

Author: Victoria Gordon

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-10-04

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1315535289

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Although citizen engagement is a core public service value, few public administrators receive training on how to share leadership with people outside the government. Participatory Budgeting in the United States serves as a primer for those looking to understand a classic example of participatory governance, engaging local citizens in examining budgetary constraints and priorities before making recommendations to local government. Utilizing case studies and an original set of interviews with community members, elected officials, and city employees, this book provides a rare window onto the participatory budgeting process through the words and experiences of the very individuals involved. The central themes that emerge from these fascinating and detailed cases focus on three core areas: creating the participatory budgeting infrastructure; increasing citizen participation in participatory budgeting; and assessing and increasing the impact of participatory budgeting. This book provides students, local government elected officials, practitioners, and citizens with a comprehensive understanding of participatory budgeting and straightforward guidelines to enhance the process of civic engagement and democratic values in local communities.


Participatory Budgeting

Participatory Budgeting

Author: Anwar Shah

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0821369245

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This book provides rigorous and provocative understanding of the art and practice of participatory budgeting for those interested in strengthening inclusive and accountable governance.


Real Money, Real Power?

Real Money, Real Power?

Author: Daniel Williams

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-10-28

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 3030592014

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New York City has the largest council-sponsored Participatory Budgeting (PB) processes in North America. From its inception in Brazil, PB was a process that empowered the least-advantaged members of the community by providing a way to propose budget allocations through voting. This book reports on a multi-methodological study of New York City’s participatory budgeting (PB) process from the perspective of a city resident over time. A participatory budgeting slogan purports that the initiative offers “real power” and “real money” to constituents at a local level. To critically examine such top-down assertions, and different than much that has been written about PB, this book researches and navigates its events the way a member of the community would see it. The study reveals a lack of transparency, manipulation by city agencies, the favorable treatment of insider proposed projects, and a failure to reveal the basis of project costs. It also finds that there is no singular participatory budgeting project in New York City. Instead, there are numerous participatory budget projects, as many as there are council members who engage in the practice. This book provides a ground-level view of these limitations and recommends substantial reform.


International Trends in Participatory Budgeting

International Trends in Participatory Budgeting

Author: Michiel S. De Vries

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-11-26

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 3030799301

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This book analyses the participatory budgeting practice as it has evolved in evaluated countries, focusing on what is substantially at stake concerning the budget and issues involved, the actual participation, the way such processes are organised and administered, and the outcomes of such processes. It concludes that participatory budgeting in selected European countries is far away from the level of ‘best practice’, but that all experiences are not just trivial pursuits. 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 towards 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. The practices can neither be seen as a process of policy diffusion nor as a process of policy mimesis. The terminology of participatory budgeting remains, but the tools to achieve the goals resulted only in marginal changes in the status quo in municipalities in European countries practicing participatory budgeting, instead of resulting in radical changes to increase spending in favor of marginalized groups. Chapter 15 'Unraveled Practices of Participatory Budgeting in European Democracies' is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.


Participatory Budgeting in Global Perspective

Participatory Budgeting in Global Perspective

Author: Brian Wampler

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-07-15

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0192652451

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Participatory Budgeting continues to spread across the globe as government officials and citizens adopt this innovative democratic program in the hopes of strengthening accountability, civil society, and well-being. Governments often adapt PB's basic program design to meet local needs, thus creating wide variation in how PB programs function. Some programs retain features of radical democracy, others focus on community mobilization, and yet other programs seek to promote participatory development. Participatory Budgeting in Global Perspective provides a theoretical and empirical explanation to account for widespread variation in PB's adoption, adaptation, and impacts. This book develops six "PB types" to account for the wide variation in how PB programs function as well as the outcomes they produce. To illustrate the similar patterns across the globe, four empirical chapters present a rich set of case studies that illuminate the wide differences among these programs; chapters are organized regionally, with chapters on Latin America, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and North America. By organizing the chapters regionally, it becomes clear that there are temporal, spatial, economic, and organizational factors that produce different programs across regions, but similar programs within each region. A key empirical finding is that the change in PB rules and design is now leading to significant differences in the outcomes these programs produce. We find that some programs successfully promote accountability, expand civil society, and improve well-being but, too often, researchers do not have any evidence tying PB to significant social or political change.


Everyone Counts

Everyone Counts

Author: Josh Lerner

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2014-10-01

Total Pages: 56

ISBN-13: 0801456053

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The Laurence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce exceptional innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world. The inaugural medal winner, the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), is an innovative not-for-profit organization that promotes "participatory budgeting," an inclusive process that empowers community members to make informed decisions about public spending. More than 46,000 people in communities across the United States have decided how to spend $45 million through programs that PBP helped spark over the last five years. In Everyone Counts, PBP co-founder and executive director Josh Lerner provides a concise history of the organization’s origins and its vision, highlighting its real-world successes in fostering grassroots budgeting campaigns in such cities as New York, Boston, and Chicago. As more and more communities turn to participatory budgeting as a means of engaging citizens, prioritizing civic projects, and allocating local, state, and federal funding, this cogent volume will offer guidance and inspiration to others who want to transform democracy in the United States and elsewhere. "The Participatory Budgeting Project exemplifies the essential features the award committee was looking for in its inaugural recipient. Political and economic inequality is part of the American national discussion, and participatory budgeting helps empower marginalized groups that do not normally take part in a process that is so critical for democratic life."— John Gastil, Director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy


The Governance of Transitions - The Transitions of Governance

The Governance of Transitions - The Transitions of Governance

Author: Martijn van der Steen

Publisher: AFRICAN SUN MeDIA

Published: 2018-12-12

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1928480055

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Why is societal transition not simply a matter of change management or normal policy design? South Africa is living proof of the ability of a society to reinvent and reinstall itself. With the advent of new societal challenges, came the need for real societal innovation, especially in sectors where it was never deemed necessary or possible before. This book asks: What type of governance is helpful for developing new societal institutions and systems that can overcome systemic crises in emerging economies and fragile communities? What emerges is a compilation of chapters that introduce different parts of a solution which can be used in developing both a growing body of practices of 'governed' societal transitions and the associated transition of governance. The Governance of Transitions - The Transitions of Governance, in part, aims to provide building blocks which government and society could use to develop strategies for creating sustainable outcomes. It considers what kind of leadership, organisation or methods for accountability enable new types of governance and what the most important barriers are.


Participatory Budgeting in Europe

Participatory Budgeting in Europe

Author: Yves Sintomer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-10

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 131708392X

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Can participatory budgeting help make public services really work for the public? Incorporating a range of experiments in ten different countries, this book provides the first comprehensive analysis of participatory budgeting in Europe and the effect it has had on democracy, the modernization of local government, social justice, gender mainstreaming and sustainable development. By focussing on the first decade of European participatory budgeting and analysing the results and the challenges affecting the agenda today it provides a critical appraisal of the participatory model. Detailed comparisons of European cases expose similarities and differences between political cultures and offer a strong empirical basis to discuss the theories of deliberative and participatory democracy and reveal contradictory tendencies between political systems, public administrations and democratic practices.