Impacts of participatory budgeting: what we know

This research brief offers a global picture of the current state of research on the short- and long-term impacts of participatory budgeting (PB) on people, communities and governments.

Thousands of governments and institutions have implemented 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 contains 19 key research findings as well as practical recommendations for advocacy; planning and design; and research, monitoring and evaluation. You can find more explanation on how different inputs, contexts, and activities lead to these impacts in the PB Theory of Change.

Year of publication: 2022

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