Participatory Budgeting via National Law: What Works and What Doesn’t

A report of key findings on national laws that incorporate a participatory approach to budgeting.

The inequalities exposed by the global COVID-19 pandemic has brought into high profile the need for greater participation in government by all sectors of civil society. It is a demand that had grown to a crescendo even before the virus crippled societies around the world at the beginning of 2020. Since 2017, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has tracked more than 230 significant anti-government protests in more than 110 countries. Most of them, at their core, are about people feeling left out of decision-making by the very governments that are supposed to represent them. As one history professor put it, "When passion can’t flow easily into policymaking, it congeals as angry protest, growing wilder and more paranoid."

A government’s budget—how it allocates and spends a country’s scarce collective resources—is typically a major focus for public anger, for good reason. Participatory budgeting (PB)—a process in which community members help decide how to spend a share of a government budget—is an antidote to this break in the social contract. However, although PB is now practiced by thousands of subnational governments around the world, progress is fitful and can be hard to sustain. Thus, international donors, civil society organizations, and government officials in several countries successfully pushed for national laws that attempt to institutionalize public participation in budgeting.

Until this analysis, however, no one has analyzed these efforts to learn whether and to what degree national PB laws are effective. The answer? It depends. National PB laws appear to be most effective when lawmakers and civil society groups are committed to their long-term success and when laws are carefully deliberated before implementation. We offer recommendations about what to avoid, what to do, and what additional research is needed to advance this critical conversation.

Author information: Stephanie McNulty, Won No
Year of publication: 2021
Source: People Powered