Suchergebnisse

Despite participatory institutions' increasing ubiquity, we know little about their effects on governance and well-being. What we do know comes largely from Brazil, where positive outcomes have been attributed to civil society's role in implementation. Often, however, participatory institutions are imposed by national governments, with little civil society engagement. In these cases, scholars have argued, participatory institutions are unlikely to improve governance and well-being, as civil society is not present to unlock the institutions' potential. We test this proposition in Peru, the first country featuring government mandated participatory institutions for all subnational governments. We find, surprisingly, that Peru's participatory budgeting process increased pro-poor spending and improved citizen's quality of life. We attribute these outcomes to reduced information asymmetries, made possible by the central role played by an influential and autonomous government agency. We employ a unique panel dataset, as well as an original survey and extensive interviews with government and civil society actors.

Participatory budgeting (PB) is designed to leverage local knowledge about community needs and translate spending preferences into tangible community development action by giving communities control over key budgetary resources. Moreover, PB participants learn about decision-making processes in development policy and can organize to pursue their communities' interests beyond the PB process by engaging with government and civil society. PB advocates hope that infrastructure, service delivery, and, ultimately, well-being will improve for underserved communities and groups that have been historically excluded from the perspective of representative democracy. This article presents the theoretical logic connecting PB to community development and summarizes the global evidence from studies that test the theoretical propositions above. We find evidence for PB's impact on community development performance in several important contexts. However, we also note that many hypotheses have yet to be tested in rigorous, large-N, comparative studies. There is thus considerable room to evaluate PB's impact in the future.

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 mobilisation, and yet other programs seek to promote participatory development. This book provides a theoretical and empirical explanation to account for widespread variation in PB's adoption, adaptation, and impacts.