We compile research and synthesize key findings about the impacts of participatory democracy around the world, and make them accessible for practitioners and researchers to better understand and advocate for participatory and deliberative programs.
Impacts of Participatory Budgeting
Thousands of governments and institutions have implemented participatory budgeting (PB), giving people the power to decide how to spend part of a public budget. In many cases, PB has been found to positively impact well-being and governance, education and learning, as well as civil society and political participation. These impacts, however, depend on the design and context of the PB process. Understanding these impacts and how the factors that produce them can help advocates to promote PB more effectively, practitioners to design better PB processes, and researchers to produce more useful data and analysis.
This resource highlights 19 key findings on the short- and long-term impacts of participatory budgeting on people, communities, and governments. We sifted through dozens of studies and synthesized the findings across diverse geographic and political contexts. The data are available both in an interactive Airtable and in a research brief, so you can access them in the way that suits you best.
Interactive Airtable
How to use the Airtable
The default list view shows the 19 key findings organized by impact area as well as the regions and countries from which the evidence is drawn. The alternate gallery view highlights details of the case studies and evidence sources cited. Clicking on an entry in either view reveals a more detailed description of the findings and case studies, including the relevant evidence sources and complete citations.
The Impact Area and Relevant Case Study buttons can help quickly sift through the data most relevant to your needs. For instance, if you're building an advocacy campaign around the effects of PB on communities, you can filter the data by selecting "Community." Or, if you're in Peru and want to know what impacts have been observed in your context, you can Group by region or even specifically filter for evidence directly from case studies of Peru.
Research brief
You can also access all of the findings, along with practical recommendations for advocacy; planning and design; and research, monitoring, and evaluation, in a downloadable research brief.
More resources
Impacts of Citizens’ Assemblies
Citizens’ assemblies, juries and panels bring together a randomly selected but representative sample of people to learn about and debate a challenge facing society and identify policy solutions.
In 2025, we are synthesizing research on the impacts of citizens’ assemblies on policy and civic engagement.Our findings will be publicly available on our website later this year. In the meantime, you can explore some insightful papers and studies below.
Resources
