Participatory budgeting represents a direct-democracy approach to budgeting. It offers citizens at large an opportunity to learn about government operations and to deliberate, debate, and influence the allocation of public resources. It is a tool for educating, engaging, and empowering citizens and strengthening demand for good governance. The enhanced transparency and accountability that participatory budgeting creates can help reduce government inefficiency and curb clientelism, patronage, and corruption.
Participatory budgeting also strengthens inclusive governance by giving marginalized and excluded groups the opportunity to have their voices heard and to influence public decision making vital to their interests. Done right, it has the potential to make governments more responsive to citizens’ needs and preferences and more accountable to them for performance in resource allocation and service delivery. In doing so, participatory budgeting can improve government participation.
However, a well-functioning public sector that delivers quality public services consistent with citizen preferences and that fosters private market-led growth while managing fiscal resources prudently is considered critical to the World Bank’s mission of poverty alleviation and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Civic engagement in public affairs can increase state effectiveness. When citizens have the opportunity to make their needs known and hold public institutions to account, it is argued, public resources are likely to be used more efficiently and to deliver public goods and services that are better aligned with citizens’ needs. Local communities have the best knowledge of their needs and preferences and of local conditions.
Public policy and advocacy organizations outside of the state often give voice to needs and preferences that are not heard in closed budget processes. Citizen participation in decision making reduces the information gap between citizens and the state and makes it more likely that funds will be used to deliver the most needed goods and services, improving government effectiveness.
Participation therefore results in better public policy and better public policy implementation. This is true for participatory budgeting mechanisms that involve citizens only indirectly (initiatives in which information on citizens’ needs, interests, and opinions is put into the public domain), as well as for initiatives in which citizens participate directly in public resource decisions at the local level.
Participation also indirectly leads to better public decisions by increasing accountability. When citizens are engaged in processes of planning, funding, delivering, and monitoring public goods and services, the incentives of public officials and office holders change. They become more accountable for the choices they make, reducing corruption and increasing effectiveness and efficiency.
When supported by broader democratic political and social changes, citizens learn that not only are they the clients of government (rather than the recipients of government-granted goods and services), they are also the principals, with governments as their agents.
This recognition inverts more autocratic systems of public power distribution, reinforcing citizen demand for accountable government. Reuben (2003) refers to this dimension of improved conditions for gover- nance as accountability in holding public power under the control of those represented by the state. The argument is that effective public participation in resource decisions builds social capital.
Public participation increases the capacity of individuals and local communities for collective action, strengthening ties between individuals, groups. This leads to more economic and social opportunities and to greater potential for improving the quality and cover- age of developmental inputs such as public education, health, and social development services.
Successful participatory mechanisms strengthen citizens’ access to information by creating a framework that creates incentives for citizens to demand more and better information and puts pressure on state structures to provide information. Meaningful and effective citizen participation in public choices also improves trust in government and commitment to tradeoffs made.
Together with improved budget transparency, participation can build social cohesion. Insofar as democracy and participation are ends in themselves, participation in public decision making is a form of direct democracy that allows for a more meaningful democratic relationship between citizens and govern- ment than representative democracy (McGee 2003). It can also provide marginalized groups with access to policy makers.
This is in contrast to purely representative democracy, which presupposes absolute bureaucratic efficiency. Participatory budgeting has been advanced by budget practitioners and academics as an important tool for inclusive and accountable governance and has been implemented in various forms in many developing countries around the globe.
Through participatory budgeting, citizens have the opportunity to gain first hand knowledge of government operations, influence government policies, and hold government to account. Successful civic participation requires the political will to engage with citizens: in countries in which participatory processes have been successful, political support for civic involvement has been consistent. Such support creates an atmosphere of trust and allows citizens to feel that they are playing a role in determining how local government structures spend their resources and how such spending will affect their lives.
Abdullahi Machina Baba,Student, Department of Political Science, University of Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria.
