Engagagement in a Participatory Budgeting Process with a Non-Majoritarian Voting Method

Participatory budgeting has emerged as an important democratic tool to enhance citizen engagement in public decision-making. By granting citizens the ability to vote on public budgeting allocations, participatory budgeting, in theory, enhances equality, fairness and inclusion. However, participatory budgeting often suffers from low-voter turnout, limiting some of its intended effects. Previous research has demonstrated that those who do participate are often well educated or highly civically-engaged, typically leading to a process that is not representative of the society at large. While this is somewhat understood, further research is needed to explore the characteristics of those who are engaged within the wider participatory budgeting process, as greater emphasis is typically paid to the vote itself, but there is a lack of research relating to other important elements such as the project proposal phase, deliberation phase, campaigning, and voting method. To understand engagement, our research utilises data from a live-participatory budgeting vote in Aarau Switzerland, which was conducted alongside a two-stage entry and exit survey. In doing so, our research pays attention to socio-economic indicators, as well as political attitudes and demographic information, to understood engagement within the participatory budgeting process. This allows our research to categorize citizens on the basis of levels of engagement (e.g. active in the project development and deliberation phase or not; online and offline participation), which can offer important findings relating to the type of citizen likely to be more involved. Moreover, our research then aims to create a model to identify the characteristics that influence levels of engagement. The model not only seeks to explain voter turnout, but also seeks to analyze levels of engagement at other stages of the participatory budgeting process. The findings of this paper are of vital importance for those interested in optimising the participatory budgeting process, as it may offer policymakers the ability to conduct targeted communication strategies aimed at engaging those who may be underrepresented in the process itself. It also expands on existing research which over emphasises the voting process, to include additional elements of the participatory budgeting process. In doing so, the research contributes to a fairer, more inclusive participatory budgeting, which may be of benefit to future campaigns.