Assessing the Outcomes of Different Forms of Participatory Budgeting: An Experimental Study

A series of crises both directly and indirectly related to politics (e.g. economic, public health crises) have led to ever growing frustration with and cynicism towards political elites and mistrust of democratic institutions, despite a generalized nebulous sense that democracy remains the best available system of governance among European electorates. In response, the issue of innovation in governance has been moved higher in the agendas of governments leading to efforts at decentralization of power and the introduction of policy-making processes that enable citizens a more direct say in decision-making. However, the issue of whether such democratic innovations are welcome by the body politique, at least in the sense of actual engagement, remains somewhat open despite a growing body of literature examining citizen participation. This lack of clarity should not be surprising given that such work tends to, naturally, focus on a single application of a democratic innovation, processes whose outcomes are highly dependent on both the political context, general participatory culture and specific participatory form being applied. The proposed paper instead makes use of an experimental methodology, focusing specifically on the case of Participatory Budgeting (PB), a policy scheme whereby citizens are allowed to have a direct say in how a small portion of the public budget of, usually, some local or regional authority is to be spent. However, PB not being a prescriptive label, different such schemes have been attempted, some closer to participation forms common in representative democracy (i.e. voting among predetermined options) others closer to the deliberative ideal. The overall aim of this work was to attempt to examine whether different forms of PB lead to different outcomes within the same community, with relevant activities taking place independently in four EU member states (Greece, Romania, Poland and Cyprus). In order to achieve this goal, we implemented an entirely experimental process (i.e. without real funds being allocated) manipulating two experimental axes simultaneously: the level of control over decisions that participants had and the specific form of participation. Thus, we created three participant cohorts of roughly 40 people each: a) Cohort A whereby participants made decisions via discussion in small groups over all relevant aspects of the process (determining overall policy priorities/areas, offering suggestions for PB projects and finally making the decision over what would be “funded”) in three separate 2-hour focus groups. b) Cohort B whereby participants were offered a series of predetermined candidate PB projects and had to decide what would be funded following a discussion in a single 2-hour focus group. c) Cohort C whereby participation took place entirely online, with participants visiting a website and voting among a predetermined set of candidate PB projects. The paper compares the outcomes from the three different groups using quantitative analyses as to three separate types of self-reports: willingness to participate should the specific type of PB be implemented in their city, preference for who should have the ultimate say in matters of local politics (citizens, representatives or experts) and subjective evaluations of the process.