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Citizen participation and the redistribution of public goods
Abstract
This study investigates whether citizen participation in public budgeting resulted in increased redistributive outcomes when compared with bureaucratic decision‐making. We focused on a specific budget item (i.e., the installation of surveillance cameras for crime prevention) and examined whether participatory budgeting yielded larger budget allocations to low‐income neighbourhoods. Results indicate that such participatory budgeting results in larger budget allocations for low‐income neighbourhoods when compared with allocations produced by bureaucratic budgeting practices. The results also indicate that budgets allocated through citizen participation may be no more or even less effective for advancing public goals. These findings suggest a potential trade‐off between equity and public service effectiveness. Citizen participation improves budget equity, but may be less effective for achieving public goals than bureaucratic decision‐making. To explain this, we offer the ‘social pressure hypothesis’, which posits that social pressure during public‐forum discussions can influence participating citizens to make redistributive decisions.
... Yet, empirical analyses of whether and how citizen involvement affects budget outcomes have produced inconclusive, even conflicting insights. For example, some studies have registered a positive effect of public participation on redistribution (Gonçalves 2014; Hong and Cho 2018;Touchton and Wampler 2014), while others reported a negative association between direct democracy and spending for the poor (Funk and Gathmann 2013;Grillos 2017;Hinnerich and Pettersson-Lidbom 2014). To address this puzzle, we examine the extent of public engagement across a global sample of countries and test whether governments that engage more with the public tend to have higher redistributive spending. ...
... Madajewicz, Tompsett, and Habib (2021) register about an 80% increase in the use of safe water in Bangladeshi villages when the residents decided on the location of wells. Participatory budgeting research also provides evidence of a more equitable distribution of public resources and broader societal benefits (Gonçalves 2014; Hong and Cho 2018;Touchton and Wampler 2014). ...
... As Baiocchi and Ganuza (2014, 31) write, participatory institutions 'democratiz[e] the nature of demand making', as they allow diverse viewpoints to enter public discourse, including those of disadvantaged groups. While those less fortunate sometimes participate directly (Hong and Cho 2018), civil society organizations are more likely to utilize such forums to make social justice claims on their behalf. ...
... Structural barriers and inequity in participation can widen the outcome gap between socially privileged and marginalized groups by limiting equitable access (Schlozman et al., 2012). In contrast, others argue that greater public participation can provide an institutional venue that could amplify the voices of marginalized groups that would not otherwise be present, leading to more equitable outcomes (Baiocchi, 2001;Hong & Cho, 2018;. Despite the extensive theoretical debates, few studies have empirically investigated this effect of participation (see Paarlberg & Ghosh Moulick, 2017). ...
... This research contributes to the public participation literature within public management by providing systematic evidence on the relationship between one specific type of public participation and service outcomes (Daley, 2007;Fung & Wright, 2001;Hong & Cho, 2018). No research, to our knowledge, has investigated this relationship using large samples and quantitative analysis in a cross-national context. ...
... Empirical research on service outcomes of public participation is less common (but see Amirkhanyan et al., 2019). Second, scant attention has been paid to outcome equity, and we know little about who benefits from public participation (but see Hong & Cho, 2018). Third, most previous empirical testing has been conducted within a single country context, which may limit the external validity of the findings. ...
How public participation shapes effective and equitable service outcomes has been extensively discussed but rarely tested in the public administration literature. This article examines how parent participation in schools affects overall student performance and whether socially marginalized students benefit more or less when schools involve greater participation. Using a 63-country cross-national educational dataset, we show that parent involvement in school activities is not significantly related to overall student performance, but such efforts reduce the performance gap between immigrant and native-born students. This finding suggests that direct participation can reduce social disparities in program outcomes.
... We take advantage of this variation and attempt to provide systematic knowledge of the effects of public participation in the budgetary process in local governments. Previous studies have primarily focused on a single municipality (Calabrese et al. 2020;Grillos 2017;Hong 2015;Hong and Cho 2018;Shybalkina and Bifulco 2019) or have not accounted for variations of PB across municipalities in their empirical analyses (Boulding and Wampler 2010;Jung 2021). ...
... By addressing endogeneity issues, we find evidence that citizen participation and deliberation in the PB process positively affect the fiscal balance of Korean local governments, and we can reject the idea that the extent of authority delegated to participants accounts for that. Our findings suggest that authentic participation in the PB process can have a broader influence on municipal finances beyond the frequently discussed policy outcomes, such as democratic outcomes (Aragonès and Sánchez-Pagés 2009;Cabannes 2004;Fung and Wright 2001) or social justice outcomes (Grillos 2017;Hong and Cho 2018;Shybalkina and Bifulco 2019;Touchton and Wampler 2014). ...
... As people get together to discuss similar community interests and exchange their perspectives to tackle problems, they not only figure out the best solutions but also develop a sense of solidarity among themselves (Baiocchi 2001). As people listen to each other's views and perspectives on various community proposals, they are more likely to be concerned about issues that affect a large number of people rather than to focus on a small issue that satisfies their own interests (Hong and Cho 2018). Moreover, holding thematic PB meetings provides a chance for participants to discuss matters with a particular focus and priorities in a more systematic way (Cabannes 2004). ...
This study aims to advance our knowledge about the role of public participation in formulating budgetary decisions of local governments. By focusing on participatory budgeting as a prominent form of public participation in the budgetary process, we posit that participatory budgeting serves two important roles in aligning the fiscal outcomes of local governments with citizen preferences: (1) increased transparency of the local budget and (2) improved budget literacy of citizens. This study investigates a link between participatory budgeting and the fiscal outcomes of local governments by utilizing data drawn from Korean local governments for seven fiscal years. Employing instrumental variable regression to address endogeneity, there is strong evidence that public participation and deliberation during the participatory budgeting process have a positive association with the fiscal balance. There is also weak evidence that the authority delegated to participatory budgeting participants affects the fiscal balance. The findings of this study imply that it is the quality of public participation that matters in holding the government accountable for its fiscal decisions.
... For example, Peru's top-down PB had an increased focus on and support for "pro-poor" projects (McNulty, 2012). In another instance, Hong and Cho (2018) showed that PB could be considered redistributive using the case in Seoul, South Korea, which has no explicit goal of equity. Nevertheless, these studies focused on specific types of projects-namely, the projects directly related to meeting the basic needs of the poorest (McNulty, 2012) or the installation of surveillance cameras for crime prevention, which is relevant in poor communities (Hong and Cho, 2018)-rather than investigating the distributive nature of the budgeting process. ...
... In another instance, Hong and Cho (2018) showed that PB could be considered redistributive using the case in Seoul, South Korea, which has no explicit goal of equity. Nevertheless, these studies focused on specific types of projects-namely, the projects directly related to meeting the basic needs of the poorest (McNulty, 2012) or the installation of surveillance cameras for crime prevention, which is relevant in poor communities (Hong and Cho, 2018)-rather than investigating the distributive nature of the budgeting process. As such, there remains a need for empirical evidence to fully understand what makes PB redistributive. ...
... In PB processes, through deliberation, participants realize that they are expected to make decisions that affect not only their lives, but also the lives of others (Wampler, 2012). Studies have found that PB participants often support the interests of other communities than their own that have more pressing needs (Hong and Cho, 2018;Marquetti, 2009;Wampler, 2012). Moreover, the literature shows that through reasoned deliberation, people often choose projects that are most desired by the community as a whole, which benefit the areas in need (Marquetti, 2009). ...
This study examines the relationship between inclusiveness with respect to the structural design of the participatory process and resource allocation outcomes in participatory budgeting. Empirically, this article examines the case of participatory budgeting in Seoul, South Korea, where redistribution is not an explicit goal. Findings suggest that creating organizational structures that enable and encourage public participation has led Seoul’s participatory budgeting to distribute public funds toward poor neighborhoods.
Points for practitioners
Participatory budgeting is an exemplar practice of public participation in the government decision-making process. It is a local budgeting practice that allows the public to participate, discuss, deliberate, and decide where and how to spend public money. This study highlights the importance of designing inclusive organizational structures in participatory budgeting to encourage public participation. Empirical results underscore the link between inclusive organizational structures and more equitable allocation outcomes.
... However, participation can also be examined from the standpoint of its results (immediate outputs), outcomes, and impacts, which means assessing the achievement of proclaimed (as well as unintended) effects: the incorporation of public inputs into regulations, the improvement of quality of regulations, the legitimacy of and support to implementation of a policy, the education and informing of public, etc. The preoccupation with the outcome dimension of participatory endeavours has become more prominent in recent scientific discussions and empirical research (see Rowe & Frewer, 2004;Abelson & Gauvin, 2006;Yang & Pandey, 2011;Buckwalter, 2014, Hong & Cho, 2018Kim & Lee, 2019;Jacobs & Kaufmann, forthcoming;Crow, Albright & Koebele, forthcoming;etc.). However, the multiplicity of potential outcomes is probably the main cause of research complexity of the participation phenomenon. ...
... While Neshkova and Guo (2011) find positive influence of public participation on both efficiency and effectiveness of public services, research conducted by Schalk (2015) points at the clash of the efficiency of public policies on the one hand, and the level and competence of participants on the other. Similarly, Hong and Cho (2018) find trade-off between the effectiveness and equity. Yang and Oh (2013) come across an opposite conclusion -participation does not diminish the efficiency of public administration, but can rather increase its effectiveness and equity. ...
... However, during the past decade, literature has been upgraded both in its conceptual and methodological aspect. Research efforts are widely addressing the entry side of participation 22 (e.g.,Zhang et al., forthcoming;Neshkova & Guo, 2018;Crow, Albright & Koebele, 2016;Hafer & Ran, 2016) as well as its outcome dimension (e.g.,Yang & Oh, 2013;Buckwalter, 2014;Hong & Cho, 2018;Kim & Lee, 2019; Jacobs & Kaufmann, forthcoming). Methodologically, the literature has been enriched by a number of cross-national comparative studies (e.g.Ríos et al., 2017;Pina & Torres, 2016;Bovaird et al., 2016;Yang, 2016;Pedersen & Johannsen, 2016) and more quantitative research methods or combination of qualitative and quantitative methods (e.g.Van Damme & Brans, 2012;Pedersen & Johannsen, 2016;Liu, 2017; Uittenbroek et.al., 2019; Jager et al., forthcoming). ...
Participation has been a relevant issue in public administration research and theory for several decades, especially in old democracies. However, recent processes of globalization, Europeanization and digitalisation, coupled with diminishing citizens’ trust in public institutions, have again made the concept of public participation topical. The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical reflection on the concept and substance of participation in public administration and on research efforts. In order to do so, administrative participation is first defined and distinguished from other types of participation in modern democracies (political and civil participation). Participation in public administration encompasses the processes through which the public is directly involved in regulative and implementation functions of administrative organizations, as well as in the oversight of their functioning. The three main categories of participation in public administration are elaborated – regulative, implementing and oversight participation – together with some apparent forms (instruments) within each category. The main principles upon which administrative participation is based are also explained – transparency, openness, responsiveness and trust. The final part of the paper contains an overview of the existing research and evaluation of participation in public administration. The twofold value of participation – intrinsic and instrumental – is explained, its potential benefits and shortcomings are listed, and a distinction between the process and outcome dimension of participation is elaborated. Although the literature has become rather extensive and refined, one can conclude that unambiguous findings on the practical effects of participation are still deficient, especially with regard to its dependence on different contextual – especially organizational – variables. Therefore, some conceptual and methodological observations for further research are formulated.
... However, this participation usually involves the selection of representatives who themselves make collective decisions. In fact, much of the current work on citizen participation focuses on direct democracy, in which individuals vote for or against specific laws or changes to existing laws (Hong & Cho, 2018). ...
... However, other PB efforts have seemingly altered public spending. Hong and Cho (2018) focus on the outcome of PB in South Korea by examining whether the process alters the placement or location of surveillance cameras between neighborhoods. They find increased resources (cameras) allocated to poor communities when PB is used than when not used. ...
... New York City is one of the only municipalities that has a large and expanding PB system that also makes its data transparent and available, permitting empirical analysis. 1 Single cases such as this are the norm in PB research due to variation between municipalities' systems as well (see Hong & Cho, 2018;Shybalkina & Bifulco, 2019;Su, 2018, as recent examples). Nevertheless, results from these studies may not generalize to other municipalities. ...
Participatory budgeting is described as a direct-democracy approach to resource allocation decision making. Theories assume it changes how public resources are spent by moving decisions from elected officials to citizens. The literature does not consider how earmarking—in which legislators direct parts of public budgets directly—might affect the impact of such policy devices. New York City’s participatory budgeting process which uses earmarks is analyzed to determine spending changes. Officials involved fund more projects at lower average amounts than those not involved but do not change the areas of funding, all of which is expected in systems of budgetary earmarks controlled by legislators.
An earlier version of this article is available at https://academicworks.cuny.edu/bb_pubs/1169/
... Participation by citizens in organizational decision making is generally regarded in the public administration literature as positive and useful for all parties (Neshkova & Guo, 2012). A range of studies find that participatory budgeting (PB) is an effective tool to promote participation, gain strategic advantage (Shybalkina, 2022), improve budget equity (Hong & Cho, 2018), and enhance the effectiveness of public expenditure (Fung, 2015). However, few studies focus on the role of internal actors (politicians and managers) in managing PB (Bartocci et al., 2022). ...
... Citizens' expectations and attitudes to political life and decision-making processes may also impact the success of the participative process. Studies exploring citizens' perceptions include those examining: motivations for engaging in PB (Barbera et al., 2016;van Eijk & Steen, 2014); conflicts between different categories of citizens (Ganuza et al., 2014); and the effect of social pressure on redistributive decisions (Hong & Cho, 2018). PB can be motivated by a willingness to give a voice to citizens in political decisions (Sintomer et al., 2008) but other studies find that citizens may lack knowledge of government processes and mechanisms, thus creating unrealistic expectations (Ianniello, Iacuzzi, Fedele, & Brusati, 2019). ...
Participatory budgeting (PB) aims to enhance citizens' participation in local government. While there is a significant body of literature on PB, few studies investigate the role of internal actors in its management. This study aims to understand public managers' perceptions of the whole PB process. Using the Q‐methodology on a sample of Italian local governments experienced in PB, we analyze the perspectives of public managers, revealing four approaches to PB, which we classify as skeptics, enthusiasts; guarantors; and believers. We find that managers have different approaches to how PB works and its potential effects, based on their role in managing the process. We also find that their attitude may influence citizens' participation in and perception of PB. Further research should consider the nexus between managers' perceptions and citizens' involvement in PB.
... We track whether individuals' repeated willingness to vote for setting-up collective sanctions, a measure of support of the punishment regime, sustains high levels of cooperation, providing a controlled test of the link between levels of system support and regime characteristics such as collectiveness and participation. A large literature sees participation as driver of particularly effective government (Fung and Wright, 2001;Agrawal, 2005) but concerns are raised whether involvement of too many stakeholders creates bad policy outcomes due to, for example, being elite dominated (Mansuri and Rao, 2004) or facing a trade-off between equity and efficiency (Hong and Cho, 2018). The institutions we create in the laboratory vary whether individuals are involved in setting them up, directly testing whether it is the participation in the decision how one is governed, i.e., is collective sanctioning implemented, and holding equal power over choosing the institution, that determines the quality of outcomes. ...
... The World Bank, for example, has been pushing participatory budgeting as standard for implementing its Billion-$ development programs world wide (Goldfrank, 2012), an institution that seems particularly effective because it tends to stick around (Touchton and Wampler, 2014). Participatory institutions yield better outcomes by creating aware and involved citizens (Agrawal, 2005) but many examples are not benefiting all members of the targeted group often being elite dominated (Mansuri and Rao, 2004), face a trade-off between equity and efficiency (Hong and Cho, 2018), or lack any evidence of improving outcomes at all (Mansuri and Rao, 2012). The institutions we create assign the ability to be involved in creating it, directly testing whether it is the participation in the decision how one is governed, i.e., is collective sanctioning implemented, and whether it is giving everyone the same power over choosing the institution, which yields better government performance. ...
We experimentally explore the role of institutions imposing collective sanctions in sustaining cooperation. In our experiment, players only observe noisy signals about individual contributions in finitely repeated public goods game with imperfect monitoring, while total output is perfectly observed as it is often the case in collective action problems in society. We consider sanctioning mechanism that allows agents to commit to collective punishment in case the level of cooperation among members of society falls short of a target. We find that cooperation is higher with collective punishment compared to both no punishment or punishment targeting individuals. Importantly, our results indicate that it is the combination of making a commitment to be punished and the collective nature of punishment which induces cooperation. Our findings show that punishing a group collectively for misbehavior of some of its members induces cooperation when individuals participate in setting up the sanctioning institution. The study contributes to the literature on institutional legitimacy and how to ensure good government performance when dealing with collective action problems, and, by considering commitment, improves enforcement methods criticized for their detrimental effects on some societal groups.
... Additionally, public participation in the modern sense should include non-political participation, such as social participation and moral partic-ipation [12]. Public participation in governance mainly involves urban governance [13], volunteerism [14], corruption governance [15], and public goods redistribution [16]. ...
... Additionally, public participation in the modern sense should include non-political participation, such as social participation and moral participation [12]. Public participation in governance mainly involves urban governance [13], volunteerism [14], corruption governance [15], and public goods redistribution [16]. Public participation in community services for COVID-19 belongs to the dual category of urban governance and public goods redistribution. ...
The satisfaction of highly educated citizens with community services for COVID-19 represents the attitude of the middle class and plays an important role in both the social and political stability of a country. The aim of this paper was to determine which factors influence public satisfaction with COVID-19 services in a highly educated community. Through a literature review and using the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) model, this paper constructed a public satisfaction model of community services for COVID-19 and proposed relevant research hypotheses. A community with many highly educated residents in Beijing was selected as the case study, where 450 official questionnaires were distributed based on the age ratio of residents, with 372 valid questionnaires being collected from May 2021 to July 2021. The study results obtained by a structural equation model (SEM) show that: (1) public satisfaction is significantly and positively influenced by quality perception (0.305 **), public demand (0.295 **), and service maturity (0.465 ***); (2) public satisfaction has a significantly positive effect on service image (0.346 ***) and public trust (0.232 **), and service image significantly affects public trust (0.140 *); (3) service maturity is positively influenced by public demand (0.460 ***) and quality perception (0.323 *); and (4) public demand is positively influenced by quality perception (0.693 ***) (* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.00). The conclusions of the study can provide suggestions and recommendations to improve the satisfaction of highly educated residents with community healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
... Existing evidence from PB's forerunner programs (KDP and PNPM) suggests that the growth of civil society was strong, but we do not yet know how PB design has affected PB across the broader universe of 74,000 villages. In South Korean cities, government programs that support participation and implement projects selected by citizens have had an empowering effect on civil society as well (Hong & Cho, 2018;. More research on this outcome is needed. ...
... The limited evidence from Indonesian cities indicates that resources allocated at the neighborhood level are insufficient to make meaningful differences in social well-being. Preliminary evidence from South Korea suggests that PB programs allocate greater resources to poor neighborhoods (Hong & Cho, 2018;No & Hsueh, 2020). Although we cannot conclusively assert that the greater level of resources results in changes in well-being, we believe that we can safely assert that additional resources generally have a positive effect. ...
Participatory Budgeting (PB) incorporates citizens directly into budgetary decision-making. It continues to spread across the globe as government officials and citizens adopt this innovative program in the hopes of strengthening accountability, civil society, and well-being. Governments often transform PB’s rules and procedures to meet local needs, thus creating wide variation in how PB programs function. Some programs retain features of radical democracy, others focus on community mobilization, 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. The book first develops six “PB types,” then, to illustrate patterns of change across the globe, four empirical chapters present a rich set of case studies that illuminate the wide differences among these programs. The empirical chapters are organized regionally, with chapters on Latin America, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and North America. The empirical chapters demonstrate that there are temporal, spatial, economic, and organizational factors that produce different programs across regions but similar programs within each region. A key finding is that the change in PB rules and design is now leading to significant differences in the outcomes these programs produce. We find that some programs successfully promote accountability, expand civil society, and improve well-being, but, that we continue to lack evidence that might demonstrate if PB leads to significant social or political change elsewhere.
... Existing evidence from PB's forerunner programs (KDP and PNPM) suggests that the growth of civil society was strong, but we do not yet know how PB design has affected PB across the broader universe of 74,000 villages. In South Korean cities, government programs that support participation and implement projects selected by citizens have had an empowering effect on civil society as well (Hong & Cho, 2018;. More research on this outcome is needed. ...
... The limited evidence from Indonesian cities indicates that resources allocated at the neighborhood level are insufficient to make meaningful differences in social well-being. Preliminary evidence from South Korea suggests that PB programs allocate greater resources to poor neighborhoods (Hong & Cho, 2018;No & Hsueh, 2020). Although we cannot conclusively assert that the greater level of resources results in changes in well-being, we believe that we can safely assert that additional resources generally have a positive effect. ...
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.
... To enhance e-participation, the Seoul Metropolitan Government introduced the OPEN (Online Procedures Enhancement for civil applications) system, which helps citizens apply for service and monitor the approval processes online in real-time until the decision on the application is finalised. The OPEN system significantly reduces corruption in Seoul local governments (Hong & Cho, 2018;Shim & Eom, 2008). This example demonstrates that an effective and citizen-controlled e-participation system is useful to combat corruption. ...
... For example, Seoul Metropolitan City, which is a leading example of successful e-participation, invites citizens to continuously monitor and evaluate government decisions. In addition to providing an open channel for citizen input on government decisions, Seoul has created schools to educate residents about their citizenry rights and integrated citizen forums into the council's monitoring and auditing systems, which ensure citizen control over public functions (Hong & Cho, 2018). In the same way, some scholars suggest educating citizens to let them know how to use e-participatory tools (Zhao & Xu, 2015), and also to educate critical thinking skills to understand policy-making documents to make e-participation meaningful (Macintosh et al., 2009). ...
The national‐level data extracted from the World Bank, Transparency International, and the United Nations databases were analysed in this study to examine the contribution of e‐participation in improving governance factors through its influence on corruption, voice and accountability, and government effectiveness. The analysis has provided a mixed outcome in improving governance through e‐participation, showing a significant relationship between e‐participation and corruption‐perception, and government effectiveness. Meanwhile, the relationships between e‐participation and voice and accountability are insignificant. This finding indicates that the present form of e‐participation in ensuring citizens’ voices for holding service providers accountable may have some limitations. The findings have implications for international organisations and government institutions to redesign their e‐participation methods and tools to warrant citizens’ voice and ensure accountability of service providers at the national level. Using the national level data extracted from the World Bank, Transparency International, and the United Nations databases this study examines the contribution of e‐participation in improving governance factors through its influence on corruption, voice and accountability, and government effectiveness. The analysis has provided a mixed outcome in improving governance through e‐participation. It shows a significant relationship between e‐participation and corruption‐perception, and government effectiveness, but no significant relationship with voice and accountability.
... Civic engagement in policymaking is linked to a range of positive outcomes, including more democratic decision-making, a greater sense of responsibility for public matters, the input of diversity of opinions, and a higher degree of legitimacy of decisions De Graaf 2010, 2017). When the local decision-making process is inclusive of a wide range of stakeholders, particularly those who are most disadvantaged in society, improved equity through more redistributive policy outcomes may be achieved (Hong and Cho 2018). This is especially important for local decisions about affordable housing, where concerns over potential negative outcomes, particularly fears about crime and poverty, costs for services and education, and perception of decreased property values often derail local affordable housing efforts (Nguyen, Basolo, and Tiwari 2013;Scally 2013). ...
... The messages of local governance and the transfer of power often centre on empowerment of local communities through decision-making, improvement of services through competition, and promotion of civic participation and social action (Buser 2013). This use of local knowledge through a bottom-up, participatory approach is linked to more equitable policy solutions (Fung 2006;Hong and Cho 2018) The shift to local, stakeholder-led models is both linked to and dependent on social capital. Putnam (1993) defines social capital as 'those features of social organisation, such as trust, norms and networks that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions". ...
Small towns possess many of the components needed for stakeholder-led governance models, including strong social ties, frequent interactions and social norms that support participation in civic life. This study seeks to better understand civic engagement with housing decision-making in rural small towns. We examine the diversity of actively engaged stakeholder groups and the ways in which stakeholder participation is related to community characteristics using survey responses from representatives of 164 small towns within one Southeastern state. For the small towns in our study, population size, limited administrative capacity and access to human capital resources were associated with fewer engaged stakeholder groups. Relatively few stakeholder groups were involved in housing decision-making on average and those experiencing the greatest disadvantage were likely not at the table. This research adds to the limited body of research on civic engagement by exploring stakeholder engagement in housing decisions and policies in small towns using a unique dataset. Our study highlights the ways in which the potential for civic engagement in small towns is hindered, limiting the capacity and equity of housing policy among rural communities that likely have an array of housing problems. Understanding how and why local governments in small towns engage stakeholder groups for housing planning and decision-making is an area for future research.
... In addition, although inclusiveness (the total number of residents participated) may be negatively associated with the level of engagement (the average attendance rate of participating citizens and the average number of items proposed per participant), both the participatory budgeting committee's engagement and inclusiveness were positively associated with budget reflection (the proportion of total participatory budgeting proposed items adopted by the local legislature) (Hong, 2015). Furthermore, participatory budgeting had a redistributive effect by allocating a greater amount of public funds for low-income neighbourhoods (Hong & Cho, 2018;No, 2018b). ...
... The implementation-themed studies presented the institutional characteristics of Korean participatory budgeting processes that have not yet been fully exposed to the international participatory budgeting community. The outcomes-themed studies showed the efforts to seek the policy outcomes of participatory budgeting, in addition to the recent participatory budgeting studies written in English (Hong & Cho, 2018;Touchton et al., 2017). On the other hand, the studies about the fiscal outcomes of participatory budgeting shed light on developing the scholarly discussion about how citizen engagement through participatory budgeting could improve the performance of government budgeting and financial management (Bourdeaux, 2008;Lu et al., 2015;Park, 2019). ...
This study aims to expand the collective knowledge on participatory budgeting by drawing insights from studies of Korean participatory budgeting. From a review of 93 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2003 and 2017 in the Korean language, we present a bibliometric network, a review of the research methods, and the themes of the studies. The findings suggest that participatory budgeting studies in South Korea developed upon both studies of participatory budgeting from Porto Alegre, Brazil, and studies of public budget participation mechanisms rooted in the United States. In addition, the findings demonstrate the distinctiveness of Korean participatory budgeting practices and studies, such as institutionalisation and diffusion, and impact factors that enabled successful participatory budgeting implementation.
... Several benefits of PB have been outlined, including building a sense of community, fostering the feeling of being a good citizen, discharging civic responsibilities and enhancing the democratic values, knowledge and skills of key stakeholders, particularly politicians and bureaucrats (Hong and Cho, 2018;Fung, 2006). In western democracies, the adoption of PB has been linked to political emancipation and the revitalisation of local democracy. ...
This report examines the first stage in the design of a new Blue and Green Infrastructure (BGI) Strategy for Colchester Borough, which is in the early phases of development. Closely connected to ‘green infrastructure’, BGI refers to an integrated approach to managing, improving and/or reintroducing natural and semi-natural green (vegetation) and blue (waterways) spaces. Whilst we are used to thinking about ‘grey’ infrastructure, BGI moves our focus to nature-based features situated in built-up areas. Types of blue-green infrastructure include green roofs and walls, parks, cemeteries, private gardens, allotments, verges, greenways, forests, grasslands, wetlands, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Blue-green infrastructure is important for climate change mitigation and adaptation, promoting biodiversity, human health and wellbeing, and developing prosperous communities (Brown and Mijic, 2019; Natural England).
... As one of the variants of public budgeting, PB aims to empower community by fostering citizen participation in the management of public resources (Madaha, 2021). Simply put, it provides an institutional platform for the opinions of community groups to be heard (Hong & Cho, 2018). ...
... Such an approach could facilitate the planning of city projects that address prevailing challenges and enable the inclusion of communities in all matters pertaining to public and political affairs. Alternatively, and from a prospective standpoint, Hong and Cho (2018) suggest that the implementation of participatory budgeting can contribute to improving equity in resource allocation, albeit it may be less effective than bureaucratic decision-making in achieving public objectives. The authors propose the 'social pressure hypothesis' as an explanation, contending that the influence of social pressure during discussions in public forums can lead participating citizens to make decisions geared towards resource redistribution. ...
The objective of this study is to identify the fundamental determinants of citizen participation within the framework of the "Let's Take Control" initiative, implemented by the General Comptroller's Office of Manizales Municipality during 2020-2021, with a specific focus on fostering public participation in Fiscal Control. Utilizing a two-stage mixed-method methodology, the research encompasses surveys administered to citizen observers, municipal officials, and the general population, followed by a descriptive exploratory analysis. Subsequent to data collection, a series of statistical analyses is conducted, including chi-square and ANOVA tests, along with Ordinary Least Squares Linear Regression. Additionally, a Generalized Linear Model (GLM) is estimated. The findings unequivocally demonstrate a positive impact on citizen participation facilitated by the "Let's Take Control" strategy. Furthermore, positive correlations emerge between participation frequency and variables such as invitations to participation exercises, age groups of participants, and their socioeconomic strata within events organized by the General Comptroller's Office of Manizales Municipality-Colombia.
... The per capita values are obtained from the ratio between mean investment in every PB cycle and population (data from 2011 census). We chose to refer to the entire population, rather than voting population only, because PB decisions can have impacts on every citizen (Cabannes & Lipietz, 2015;Hong & Cho, 2018). The third dimension presents investment's percentage, which is deemed to offer evidence on the political power of citizens within PBs. ...
Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic innovation that allows citizens to deliberate about a share of the public budget. Portugal was one of the most influent countries in this field in the last decade, as PB was implemented at multiple levels. However, few studies have made in‐depth research on the financial dimensions of PB, which raises interest as to whether and how citizens' voice has had a significant impact on policy‐making. To fill in this gap, this article considers the financial asset of local, regional, and national PBs in Portugal up to the disruption of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Our methodological approach relies on both quantitative data analyzed through Geographical Information Systems and descriptive statistics, and qualitative data retrieved from document analysis. Findings are discussed through four different stages of dissemination in the country, and show that despite significant advancements in this field, impacts in the financial dimensions lay behind expectations.
... Hal tersebut telah dibuktikan secara empiris bahwa partisipasi anggaran yang tinggi akan menurunkan potensi ketidakefektifan dan ketidakefisienan dalam pelaksanaan anggaran (Rahim & Rahim, 2019) (Dunk, 1993) (Irfan et al., 2016). Sebaliknya, aspirasi warganegara harus diwadahi secara tepat dalam pengambilan kebijakan untuk menghindari penurunan kepercayaan masyarakat terhadap pemerintah akibat pelaksanaan kebijakan yang tidak terkoordinasi dan jauh dari prinsip keuangan negara yang efektif dan efisien (Hong & Cho, 2018). Secara ideal partisipasi pubik pada dasarnya terdiri dari kegiatan menginformasikan kebijakan ke publik, mendengarkan respon dari publik dan menemukan pemecahan masalah serta membuat kesepakatan (Creighton, 2005). ...
One of the arts in budgeting is finding a balance between ideal conditions and government decisions. Public participation is expected to be able to provide a solution to this dilemma. Public involvement in the preparation of the APBN in Indonesia is still relatively stagnant. The constrain is that there is no mechanism for the public to channel
feedback in the formulation of the Budget process. Therefore, this research is to identify a weak Indonesian OBI score and recommendation. By using qualitative methods, especially considering the institutions and business processes, the author formulates a
mechanism in the framework of the Budget preparation cycle. The result of the study is that there are two mechanisms for public participation. The first mechanism is public participation in conjunction with the process of formulation of the APBN. It will fulfill
the requirements of the OBI formalities, although it has limited time to accommodate follow-up actions. The second mechanism is public participation as a part of the performance budget and the policy evaluation process. It will start from the stipulation of the budget bill in the previous year until the beginning of the formulation of the Budget
process. The benefit is the government easily accommodated the follow-up action in budget priorities. Both alternatives require regulatory improvements both in terms of business processes and institutions.
... In practice, some participatory institutions struggle to fulfill their egalitarian promises by replicating clientelist dynamics in contexts of weak civil society (Baiocchi, Heller, and Silva 2011;Montambeault 2015), lacking sufficient authority to deliver benefits (Mayka 2019b;Wampler 2007) or disproportionately including male or middle-class participants (McNulty 2013;Parthasarathy, Rao, and Palaniswamy 2019). Despite these challenges, a growing literature reveals that participatory institutions can indeed produce policy changes that reduce inequality in health care and housing (Donaghy 2011;Touchton, Sugiyama, and Wampler 2017) and promote equitable distribution of security resources (Hong and Cho 2018). ...
Can democratic participation reduce inequalities in citizenship produced by policing? We argue that citizen participation in policing produces a paradox, which we call asymmetric citizenship. For some citizens, expanding participation in policing expands citizenship by enhancing state responsiveness to demands. Yet citizen participation in policing often produces demands to repress marginalized groups, thereby contracting their citizenship rights. We theorize that formal spaces for citizen participation in policing produce asymmetric citizenship through three mechanisms: (1) defining some groups as “virtuous citizens” and labeling marginalized groups as “security threats,” (2) gatekeeping to amplify the voice of “virtuous citizens” while silencing marginalized groups, and (3) articulating demands for police repression of marginalized groups to protect the rights of “virtuous citizens.” We illustrate the framework through a qualitative analysis of São Paulo’s Community Security Councils. Our analysis elucidates mechanisms through which democratic participation can reproduce, rather than ameliorate, inequality in policing.
... Dudley et al. (2018) argues that while public agencies do work to engage the public into government business, there are still many challenges to achieving meaningful public participation. Similarly, Hong and Cho (2018) argues that few scholars have produced evidence to support benefits of DCP. Roberts (2008, p.7), on the other hand, expressed some dilemmas of DCP including headers' size, excluded or oppressed groups, perceived risk, technology and expertise lack. ...
Governments are expected to introduce public policies to empower citizens to engage in government business for various reasons including trust building. This chapter presents enablers/barriers before direct citizen participation (DCP) in Turkey by employing interviews conducted with higher public administrators at the ministerial level. The results reveal that DCP is mostly used for informing and consultation purposes rather than fostering a citizen deliberation. The main barriers before DCP are found as centralized bureaucratic structure, lack of administrators' awareness for DCP, and a lack of participation culture. The authors argue that DCP could be fostered where public officials are curious rather than institutionalized.
... A sizeable and growing literature exists on public participation in decision making, especially in the area of public budgeting (Miller et al. 2019). This literature has mainly investigated: participation methods, and particularly the different selection, communication, decision, and authority devolution modes (Nabatchi 2012;Shybalkina 2021); the role played by the actors involved (Liao & Schachter 2018;Zhang & Feeney 2018); the conditions for a successful implementation (Barbera et al. 2016;Gordon et al. 2017); and the outcomes of citizen participation (Brun-Martos & Lapsley 2017;Hong & Cho 2018). In this last respect, scholars encourage public involvement as a way to build trust, legitimacy, and political support (Irvin & Stansbury 2004), as well as public interest and value (Nabatchi 2010;Reich 1990). ...
This study investigates the conditions under which transparency contributes to citizens’ understanding of financial reporting and examines how this enhanced understanding is associated with public participation. To this end, a survey experiment was conducted in which two attributes of financial reporting transparency (i.e., content clarification and presentation format) were the manipulated variables, whereas citizens’ understanding and public participation were the outcome variables. Results demonstrate that the provision of explanations to clarify obscure technical jargon does have a positive effect on citizens’ understanding. A similar effect was found for the provision of graphical and visual representations. However, the study reveals that there is no additional benefit in simultaneously providing both explanations of technical jargon and visual aids. Furthermore, findings show that the levels of public participation are highest among the individuals who felt they understood the financial information the best, but yet possessed the lowest level of actual understanding.
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... As part of the PFM agenda, PB seeks to enable the engagement of multiple actors in resource allocation and promotes operational efficiency by selecting projects and programs that deliver outputs and outcomes relevant to grassroots needs: recognizing the crucial role of local citizens and communities (Grillos 2017). PB contributes to a sense of community, fostering the feeling of being a good citizen and delivering on civic responsibilities (Hong and Cho 2018;Brun-Martos and Lapsley 2017). In addition, the democratic values, knowledge, skills and responsibilities of major stakeholders-politicians, bureaucrats and citizens-are expected to be enhanced in the process of implementing PB (Rocke 2014). ...
The principle of participatory budgeting (PB), as a mechanism to foster the involvement of local communities in sub-national public financial management (PFM) systems, rarely generates strong opposition given its inherent ability to embed ‘pro-poor’, equitable, and/or inclusive approaches to the allocation of public resources. Yet, and somewhat paradoxically, the depth and/or extent of its implementation and efficacy in many countries are seen to be limited in scope or lacking in dynamism. Drawing from a fieldwork of PB practices in selected municipalities in Benin and insights from different actors in the field (elected representatives, government officials, community groups, civil society organisations, donors), we add to existing expositions on PB’s emancipatory features, in terms of the space and voice it can offer for local engagement. At the
same time, we see the need for a step change at the PFM supra-national policy and national/sub-national levels to ensure PB can be developed in a more strategic, sustainable and inclusive way - while minimizing the risks of ‘PB capture’. Our key recommendations are (i) the incorporation of PB within broader PFM frameworks and PEFA assessments at national level, and improving PEFA’s proposed subnational government indicator on public consultation, (ii) the promotion of a community of practice, by PEFA partners and the development agencies, to share good experiences and mechanisms, with the involvement of international PB networks, (iii) the need to embed a PB feedback process at national/sub-national levels to foster a cycle of learning, sustainability and inclusion within the community.
... Segundo, en la dimensión cultura política barrial, los procesos deliberativos entre vecinos coadyuvan a construir una mejor ciudadanía, ya que el escuchar los argumentos de otros, se modifica la perspectiva propia y se obtiene una de naturaleza colectiva de los problemas y soluciones (Mansbridge, 1995). Tercero, en cuanto a la dimensión cultura política de la ciudad, la interacción entre barrios de distintos niveles socioeconómicos lleva a que, en ocasiones, los vecinos de mayor poder adquisitivo cedan sus demandas para que se inviertan recursos públicos en la satisfacción de las necesidades básicas de los barrios más vulnerables (Hong & Cho, 2018). ...
Este artículo explora la cultura política inherente en presupuestos participativos. La calidad de la participación ciudadana está en función de una cultura política solidaria, la cual produce una infraestructura cooperativa propicia para que dicha participación sea más efectiva. La investigación se basa en una encuesta a 176 personas en vivienda en los municipios de Etzatlán y Acatlán, Jalisco, México, y se matizan algunos datos con resultados de entrevistas semiestructuradas. Se concluye constatando una vinculación interdependiente entre la cultura política solidaria (a nivel familiar), las prácticas organizativas (a nivel de barrio) y la deliberación pública (a nivel municipal).
... Higher levels of racial, ethnic, and economic inequality correspond to a compounding of political influence among privileged social groups (Schaffner, Rhodes, & La Raja, 2020). Conversely, participatory approaches to local government that include representation of a broader group of stakeholders are linked to more equitable policy solutions (Hong & Cho, 2018). ...
Many rural small towns are facing a shortage of rental housing affordable to low-income households at a time when the stock of existing affordable housing is increasingly vulnerable. Previous research suggests that local decision-makers in small towns may be reluctant to advocate for an increase in affordable housing due to their proximity to residents, local power dynamics and racial inequality. This study uses survey data from 164 decision-makers in rural, small towns in Georgia to examine perceptions of housing affordability and the need for rental housing for low-income households compared to place-level data on rental housing supply, demand, affordability and other community characteristics. Many communities in the study have housing market and economic conditions that are likely affecting their lower-income residents, however increasing affordable rental housing was not an identified need for the majority of respondents in the study. Our analysis found no clear pattern between the data-based indicators of housing need and decision-makers’ assessments of changes needed in housing for low-income renters. Small town politics may contribute to this lack of awareness or acknowledgment of housing need. Further research about the factors that shape perceptions of and actions on housing issues among leaders in rural small towns.
... For example, Hagelskemp and her co-authors demonstrates that the implementation of participatory budgeting in New York City was associated with a reallocation of city council members' discretionary funds (2020). Other studies emphasize outcomes associated with public services for low-income populations, with PB improving service delivery (Author, 2014;Gonçalves, 2014;Hong & Cho, 2018;No & Hsueh, 2020). This article builds on this growing body of large-N work to evaluate how participatory institutions may affect tax collection. ...
Governments around the world often struggle to collect tax revenues, thus undermining their ability to build functioning states, deliver basic public goods, and improve human development. This problem is especially acute in the Global South. Within the broader context of representative democracy, many local governments increasingly adopt participatory institutions in the hope that they will improve government responsiveness, service delivery, and their electoral opportunities. We address gaps in knowledge on participatory institutions and tax collection by asking two critical questions: to what extent (if any) do these reforms improve local governance? And how would we know? We draw from an original database on Brazilian Municipalities that includes fiscal, political, and state capacity variables. We find that municipal governments that adopt participatory institutions generate higher tax revenues than comparable governments without these institutions. This article thus provides a novel, thorough assessment of how new participatory institutions affect governance and revenue‐generation.
... grantmaking is often criticized as a reflection of the preferences or perspectives of an insular group of foundation staff or board members. Ostrower and Stone (2006) observed that the Tools broader redistribution of public resources in some cases (Hong & Cho, 2018). ...
... The final category to be analysed concerns revitalisation projects. From its beginnings, participatory budgeting was designed to boost social inclusion and support the groups which are marginalised or at risk of marginalisation (Shybalkina -Bifulco, 2018), although the impact of such initiatives on redistributive effect has not been clearly evidenced and requires further analysis (Hong -Shine, 2018). Still, among its other objectives, participatory budgeting is supposed to serve to eliminate inequalities inside the city and tensions between the city -centre and outskirts in order to stimulate more sustainable development, so revitalisation initiatives to support marginalised neighbourhoods and communities affected by underinvestment should play an important role. ...
The paper refers to the social innovation of participatory budgeting which has become a very popular tool for stimulating citizen participation at the local level in Poland. It focuses on the major cities, defined as capitals of the voivodeships or regions. Based on the data concerning 2018 participatory budgeting editions in the eighteen cities, it describes the funding, organisation of the process, forms of voting and voter participation as well as the nature of projects selected and implemented. According to the amended Act on the Local Self-Government, organisation of participatory budgeting will only be obligatory for Polish cities from 2019. Despite that fact, it has already become quite popular and broadly applied in local communities. However, citizens’ participation and involvement in the process seems quite low, suggesting a need for experience sharing and improvement of the initiative. Also, project selection reflects the influence of various social groups within urban communities, rather than assisting groups which are at risk of marginalisation.
Budżet obywatelski pojawił się w Polsce w 2011 roku, szybko zdobywając uznanie władz gmin w kraju. W kolejnych latach inicjatywy polskich samorządów zaczęły przyciągać uwagę lokalnych włodarzy z zagranicy. Przykładem są Niemcy, gdzie znane już od końca lat 90. XX wieku budżety obywatelskie przeżywają renesans popularności.
Celem niniejszej książki jest ukazanie kluczowych uwarunkowań, które kształtowały procesy dyfuzji budżetu obywatelskiego w Polsce i w Niemczech, wpływając na zakres funkcji pełnionych przez ten instrument partycypacji publicznej.
Płynące z badań autora wnioski wpisują się w debatę nad przyszłością budżetu obywatelskiego jako narzędzia polityki lokalnej – zarówno w Polsce, jak i na świecie.
Purpose
Participatory budgeting's (PB’s) proponents hope that bringing development projects to historically underserved communities will improve well-being by extending infrastructure and services. This article details the logic connecting PB to well-being, describes the evolution of PB programs as they spread around the world and consolidates global evidence from research that tests hypotheses on PB's impact. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Unstructured literature review and comparative case study across five global regions.
Findings
The authors find evidence for PB's impact on well-being in several important contexts, mostly not only in Brazil, but also in Peru and South Korea. They also find that very few rigorous, large-N, comparative studies have evaluated the relationship between PB and well-being and that the prospects for social accountability and PB's sustainability for well-being are not equally strong in all contexts. They argue that PB has great potential to improve well-being, but program designs, operational rules and supporting local conditions must be favorable to realize that potential.
Originality/value
This is one of the few efforts to build theory on where and why the authors would expect to observe relationships between PB and well-being. It is also one of the first to consolidate global evidence on PB's impact.
Public resource redistribution is an important means of social income regulation, which maintains social income equality by transferring payoffs to low-income groups, usually in the form of taxes and social services. Originally studied as a means of maintaining social equality, redistribution has also been used to address social dilemmas through evolutionary game theory in recent years. However, the definition of low-income groups in previous studies is not comprehensive. They are used to studying the inequality generated by participants during the game but ignore the inequality caused by initial endowment differences. At the same time, is it beneficial to the whole that redistribution requires the rich to subsidize the poor, but leads the rich to choose defection (tax evasion, etc.)? How should the redistribution mechanism work to reduce inequality while facilitating the spread of altruistic behavior? To explore whether the redistribution mechanism can reach a balance between promoting cooperation and maintaining equality of payoffs, we develop a generic public resource redistribution framework based on heterogeneous populations by a spatial public goods game model. We control redistribution preferences for willingness to cooperate and initial endowments by parameters α and β. With a heterogeneous population, we find that helping the poor through redistribution mechanisms does not have significant positive effects and may even result in exploitation of the rich; focusing on participants’ willingness to cooperate rather than total investment can promote cooperation, enhance overall payoffs and reduce inequality.
Regular participation of citizens in governance and policy processes has been considered critical to the functioning of the democratic model of governance. While recent studies have documented the emergence and evolution of participatory governance in Western countries, little is known about the influence of citizens’ participation on e‐governance in African countries. Leveraging an original survey conducted in Cameroon on citizens’ participation in and satisfaction with a Facebook‐based e‐participation initiative, this study explores how participation in the governance process through the Internet has affected African citizens’ trust in their local and national governments. The results first suggest a weak positive association between citizens’ e‐participation and their trust in governments. However, further decomposition of the positive association between satisfaction, performance, and trust shows that their relationships are critically enhanced by citizens’ participation in e‐governance, suggesting that the trust‐enchancing impact of e‐participation is likely to be dominated by indirect effects. The results also indicate that the moderating mechanism is likely to differ between citizens’ trust in the local and national governments, which sheds light on the understanding of the effects of e‐participation for both academics and practitioners. Summary at a glance: Novel participatory governance initiatives such as e‐participation enhances citizens' trust in the local government primarily by strengthening the trust‐enhancing effect of satisfaction with the participatory program and perception of the government performance. 1Novel participatory governance initiatives such as e‐Participation could enhance trust in the government, but such an effect is likely to be precipitated indirectly. 2e‐Participation positively affects people’s trust in their government primarily by reinforcing the trust‐enhancing effect of satisfaction with the participatory program and perceived performance of the government. 3The effect of e‐Participation on trust in government is also positively moderated by citizens satisfaction with the participatory program and perceived performance of the government. Novel participatory governance initiatives such as e‐Participation could enhance trust in the government, but such an effect is likely to be precipitated indirectly. e‐Participation positively affects people’s trust in their government primarily by reinforcing the trust‐enhancing effect of satisfaction with the participatory program and perceived performance of the government. The effect of e‐Participation on trust in government is also positively moderated by citizens satisfaction with the participatory program and perceived performance of the government.
El estudio presento como objetivo general del presente estudio es determinar la relación entre la gestión de procesos y los indicadores en el desempeño de su municipalidad distrital de Bambas, 2022, para ello se basó en el tipo basica, con enfoque cuantitativo, por presentar resultados numéricos, con diseño no experimental – Correlacional y alcance transversal, trabajando con una población de 20 trabajadores y la muestra se conformó por la misma cantidad, seleccionada de manera no probabilística a criterio del investigador, aplicando como técnica la encuesta y como instrumento el cuestionario, realizando la validación por 3 expertos y la confiabilidad por el método de Alfa de Cronbach, obteniendo un valor de 0.896 para el cuestionario de la gestión por procesos y de 0.880 para el cuestionario de indicadores de desempeño, llegando a la conclusión: Se determinó relación significativa (Rho = 0.940) entre la gestión de procesos y los indicadores en el desempeño de su municipalidad distrital de Bambas, 2022, mostrando que las acciones que se realicen en la gestión por procesos son beneficiosas para que se logre en cumplimiento de los indicadores de desempeño. Quedando demostrada la hipótesis general del estudio.
How a participatory process with inclusive structural design allocates resources toward poor neighborhoods : the case of participatory budgeting in Seoul, South Korea
This study examines the relationship between inclusiveness with respect to the structural design of the participatory process and resource allocation outcomes in participatory budgeting. Empirically, this article examines the case of participatory budgeting in Seoul, South Korea, where redistribution is not an explicit goal. Findings suggest that creating organizational structures that enable and encourage public participation has led Seoul’s participatory budgeting to distribute public funds toward poor neighborhoods.
Points for practitioners
Participatory budgeting is an exemplar practice of public participation in the government decision-making process. It is a local budgeting practice that allows the public to participate, discuss, deliberate, and decide where and how to spend public money. This study highlights the importance of designing inclusive organizational structures in participatory budgeting to encourage public participation. Empirical results underscore the link between inclusive organizational structures and more equitable allocation outcomes.
Transparansi APBN merupakan sebuah awal dari proses untuk meraih sebuah kepercayaan atau negara. Mengutip pernyataan yang disampaikan oleh International Budget Partnership, trust dari rakyat dan dunia internasional bagi Pemerintahan sebuah
organisasi internasional yang telah menjadi mitra sejak beberapa tahun lalu, “Governments are the stewards, not the owners, of public funds”. Oleh karenanya, kami meyakini bahwa kami harus terus berjuang untuk mencapai sebuah kepercayaan tertinggi dari publik selaku pemberi amanat, serta melaksanakannya dengan penuh tanggung jawab. Sejalan dengan hal tersebut, penting bagi Pemerintah untuk mendeteksi indikator transparansi APBN, mulai dari tahap penyusunan sampai dengan pengawasan. Dalam hal ini, kemauan kuat dan sinergi kelembagaan menjadi kunci untuk memenuhi komitmen tersebut. Pengukuran transparansi anggaran dilakukan oleh lembaga internasional berdasarkan standar internasional yang menjadi kesepakatan banyak negara
Sejak era reformasi keuangan negara pada tahun 2003, asas transparansi anggaran sudah
masuk dalam asas profesional yang mewarnai sistem keuangan negara di Indonesia. Proses
ini semakin lengkap seiring reformasi birokrasi di Kementerian Keuangan yang dimulai
secara struktural pada tahun 2007. Lahirnya Undang-Undang Nomor 14 Tahun 2008 terkait
Keterbukaan Informasi Publik turut membuka sekat-sekat kewenangan Badan Publik untuk
menyediakan, memberikan dan/atau menerbitkan Informasi Publik yang berada di bawah
kewenangannya kepada Pemohon Informasi Publik, selain informasi yang dikecualikan.
Peringkat Open Budget Index Indonesia yang terus meningkat, bukan menjadi hasil akhir upaya
peningkatan transparansi anggaran di Indonesia. Hasil Open Budget Survey yang dilakukan
oleh International Budget Partnership merupakan cermin objektif untuk melihat kekurangan
dan kelebihan Indonesia dibandingkan negara lainnya. Dari sisi capaian, masih banyak ruang
yang perlu diperbaiki. Dari sisi pemenuhan materi, masih ada ruang untuk perbaikan seperti
penyajian aset nonkeuangan dalam Nota Keuangan dan capaian kinerja K/L di LKPP. Sementara
itu, dari sisi partisipasi publik, perlu dibangun saluran partisipasi publik.
Dengan hadirnya buku “Satu Dekade Transparansi APBN” diharapkan dapat menjadi bahan
refleksi bagi Pemerintah atas capaian peningkatan transparansi anggaran yang berkelanjutan
selama sepuluh tahun terakhir. Refleksi tersebut dapat digunakan untuk menyusun strategi
peningkatan transparansi anggaran periode berikutnya. Sementara itu, buku ini juga diharapkan
dapat menjadi bahan bagi masyarakat dalam memberikan saran dan kritik yang konstruktif
kepada Pemerintah untuk meningkatkan transparansi anggaran di Indonesia.
We use a panel of Korean municipalities to examine the impact of participatory budgeting on local government expenditures. We find that participatory budgeting systematically alters the pattern of local spending. Municipalities using participatory budgeting reallocate resources toward more immediate and visible expenditures and away from long-term development expenditure. We also find evidence that participatory budgeting affects the municipal budget by a greater amount than the expenditures directly allocated through participatory budgeting. Our findings indicate that participatory budgeting leads to the reallocation of local public spending by increasing information flows between policymakers and service users.
Research on mechanisms that lead to the successful involvement of citizens, particularly citizen advisory panels, in policy-making processes is limited. In this paper, we use unique longitudinal data to examine how power and information asymmetries within a citizen advisory group influence a policy-making process and its outcomes. We studied the case of a public hospital where the hospital management involved a citizen advisory panel (CAP) and the general public to help decide what hospital services should be cut. We found that female CAP members perceived more power asymmetry while male CAP members experienced more process satisfaction. Older CAP members perceived more information asymmetry. Our findings show that the policy-making management team’s commitment to the process can reduce skepticism by citizens regarding the value of their involvement and facilitate decision quality and process satisfaction. Policy makers were able to effectively share technical policy information with citizens in an easily digestible format over time and to achieve effective citizen participation in the policy-making process.
Public participation, responsive regulation, and other policy formulations are intended to draw governments down from their ivory towers and into engagement with the people. However, they paint at best, a hazy picture of who “the people” are. This superficial representation is felt, among other collectives, by people living in poverty, who not only face hunger, often accompanied by poorer health and lower life expectancy, but whose social exclusion typically goes unrecognized by the authorities. The legal framing of poverty—and, as a result, states' policy approaches to its alleviation—focuses on the material core, representing a very thin conceptualization that fails to address the social dimension. Furthermore, practical avenues for incorporating citizens' views into lawmaking—which might enrich understanding—are lacking when it comes to people in poverty. Combined with a blatantly hegemonic stance, the resulting ignorance around poverty and “the poor” generates welfare laws that are woefully out of touch with reality, and legislative thinking that perpetuates, rather than alleviates, poverty. This paper seeks to make a twofold contribution: (i) to demonstrate this situation with a deep empirical inquiry into the legislative process of one legal provision within the Israeli welfare law regime, juxtaposed against qualitative field-research findings and (ii) to introduce the inventive and groundbreaking “poverty-aware” paradigm, constructed in social-work discourse, to illuminate and explain the empirical findings and point to potential procedural–institutional reform, to pave the way for poverty-aware legislation.
Citizen participation in decision making has been widely lauded as a method for improving societal outcomes. Deliberative discussion, in particular, is believed to be more transformative than a mere aggregation of individual preferences, leading to more socially optimal decision making and behavior. I report the results from a laboratory experiment with 570 subjects in Nairobi, directly testing the effect of participation in deliberative group decision making on collective outcomes. Participants engage in a group task to earn compensation toward a shared group fund. Randomly assigned treatments vary according to whether decision making over the task to be completed involves: (1) external assignment; (2) non-deliberative majority voting; or (3) consensus through deliberative discussion. I find that deliberation improves collective decision making. Deliberation is also associated with changes in preferences, greater agreement with decision outcomes, and greater perceived fairness. Evidence for behavior change is weaker, but there is some support for further research into the relationship between preference change and behavior change.
Since the New Administration perspective was introduced by Dwight Waldo, equity has played a key role in public administration and public policy studies. Much research has focused on employment, politics, jurisprudence, voting and many other issues, while neglecting the role of public services. As gross societal inequities in the world still abound, this article aims at mapping the structure of the knowledge on equity in public services as well as the main conceptualizations and determinants of equity. Quantitative (bibliometrix) and qualitative (narrative) analyses are combined in the analysis of 145 articles from 69 journals. The greatest concentration areas and main drivers of equity (i.e. representative bureaucracy, administrative burden, horizontal and vertical decentralization, privatization, co‐production and performance management) are identified. The review contributes to the advancement of social equity in public administration scholarship and practice by improving the conceptual clarity of the term and by mapping the various literature streams.
Purpose
This paper analyses participatory budgeting (PB) in two Indonesian indigenous communities, illustrating how the World Bank sponsored neo-liberal model of “technical rational” PB is overshadowed by local values and wisdom, consisting of sophisticated, pre-existing rationalities for public participation.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting a qualitative and interpretive case study approach, the study draws on data from semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and periods of participant observation. The paper utilises Weber's characterisations of rationality to analyse the PB process in indigenous communities.
Findings
The co-existence of both formal (technical) and substantive rationalities leads two Indonesian indigenous communities to execute participatory budgeting pragmatically. The formal budgetary mechanisms (Musrenbang), cascaded down from central and local governments, are melded with, and co-exist alongside, a tradition of public participation deriving from local cultural values and wisdom (Rembug warga). Reciprocal relationships and trust based on a pre-existing substantive rationality result in community members adapting budget practices while also preserving their local culture and resisting the encroachment of neo-liberal initiatives. The paper offers deeper analysis of the unintended consequences of attempting to implement technical rational accounting reforms and practices in indigenous settings.
Originality/value
The paper provides important insights into the way the interplay between formal and substantive rationality impacts on accounting and budgeting practices in indigenous communities. Our study also presents a unique case in emerging economy contexts in which neoliberal initiatives have been outmanoeuvred in the process of preserving indigenous values and wisdom. The informal participatory mechanism (Rembug warga) retained the community trust that neoliberalism systematically erodes.
Local government reformation had been introduced in Suriname in 2003, with the main objective of achieving sustainable development goals based on the local settings, effectively and by entertaining the ideas of every citizen, regardless of their background. Despite the successful program implementation phase, the introduced mechanisms, such as public hearings, are now ineffective. Two previous studies presented the underpinning issues from the lens of the community, which is considered the users of the public hearing organism. Through the qualitative research approach, semi structured interview questions were applied for collecting and analyzing the perspectives from the District Commissariat, the District and Resort Councils, whom are considered responsible for operating and maintaining the public hearing's mechanism. This research complements the previously identified problems from a user's point of view, while presenting possible solutions to increase public participation in policy-making at the local level. For this study, the Wanica SouthEast Administrative Region was selected because of the presence of ideal ingredients for sustainable development, which can be activated through participatory tactics to achieve prosperity for the local population. The findings of this study show that the system is deteriorating. There is a significant shortcoming in communication and awareness at all levels, but also the inability of the council members and political interference cause public disparagement and leave empty seats at the mandatory annual public gatherings. Acute areas for improvement are proposed, such as proficiency of the key officials of the system, namely the District Commissioner, as well as the District and Resort Councils, while the entire scheme, including the functioning of the whole decentralization structure and the councils, should be evaluated on the short run.
Governments are expected to introduce public policies to empower citizens to engage in government business for various reasons including trust building. This chapter presents enablers/barriers before direct citizen participation (DCP) in Turkey by employing interviews conducted with higher public administrators at the ministerial level. The results reveal that DCP is mostly used for informing and consultation purposes rather than fostering a citizen deliberation. The main barriers before DCP are found as centralized bureaucratic structure, lack of administrators' awareness for DCP, and a lack of participation culture. The authors argue that DCP could be fostered where public officials are curious rather than institutionalized.
A growing body of literature explores the process of coproduction by citizens and government employees in providing goods and services, yet research that attempts to link coproduction to organizational performance offers contradictory findings. It is possible that these conflicting results are a consequence of trying to compare distinct categories of coproduction. This study identifies types of coproduction, classified by which organizational tasks citizens can influence during stages of policy design and implementation, and tests whether these types have different effects on student proficiency in Mathematics and English Language Arts using data from New York City schools between 2007 and 2009. This study then tests the degree to which different types of coproduction moderate the negative effect of environmental turbulence on performance. Results confirm that types of coproduction have varying effects on organizational performance and can reduce, and even eliminate, the negative effect of a turbulent environment on student outcomes.
How does democracy work to improve well-being? In this article, we disentangle the component parts of democratic practice—elections, civic participation, expansion of social provisioning, local administrative capacity—to identify their relationship with well-being. We draw from the citizenship debates to argue that democratic practices allow citizens to gain access to a wide range of rights, which then serve as the foundation for improving social well-being. Our analysis of an original dataset covering over 5,550 Brazilian municipalities from 2006 to 2013 demonstrates that competitive elections alone do not explain variation in infant mortality rates, one outcome associated with well-being. We move beyond elections to show how participatory institutions, social programs, and local state capacity can interact to buttress one another and reduce infant mortality rates. It is important to note that these relationships are independent of local economic growth, which also influences infant mortality. The result of our thorough analysis offers a new understanding of how different aspects of democracy work together to improve a key feature of human development.
This article addresses two interrelated critiques of participatory-deliberative democratic institutions: that they are beset by problems of scale and that they achieve weak policy impact. This article tests these criticisms through the case of the UK Sustainable Communities Act (SCA), a multi-level process that is relatively strongly institutionalized. The evidence lends qualified support to these critiques. The article differentiates between contextual factors, related to the attempt to institutionalize participatory-deliberative processes within existing socioeconomic and political structures, and design factors to do with institutional and process design. The case of the SCA calls for caution about the claim that multi-level participatory-deliberative processes can overcome problems of scale and policy impact, but the question remains open. The article ends by suggesting that expectations of direct policy impact might be too high. Rather than determinants of policy, multi-level participatory-deliberative processes might function best as agenda-setters.
Direct democracy continues to grow in importance throughout the United States. Citizens are increasingly using initiatives and referendums to take the law into their own hands, overriding their elected officials to set tax, expenditure, and social policies. John G. Matsusakaâs For the Many or the Few studies a century of budget data from states and cities to provide the first comprehensive, empirical picture of how direct democracy is changing government policies. Based on a century of evidence and the most recent theory, Matsusaka argues against the popular belief that initiatives empower wealthy special interest groups that neglect the majority view. Examining demographic, political, and opinion data, he demonstrates how initiatives led to significant tax and expenditure cuts over the last 30 years and that these cuts were supported by a majority of citizens. He concludes that, by and large, direct democracy in the United States has worked for the benefit of the many rather than the few. âFor the Many or the Few is a valuable contribution to our understanding of American democratic institutions and public policy and an important book.ââJournal of Politics âJohn G. Matsusakaâs valuable, accessible book represents one of the few studies that attempt to test how policy outcomes are affected by the initiative process and to examine whether policies produced by the initiative reflect what the public actually wants.ââPolitical Science Quarterly
In a classic study, Haley and Fessler showed that displaying subtle eye-like stimuli caused participants to behave more generously in the Dictator Game. Since their paper was published, there have been both successful replications and null results reported in the literature. However, it is important to clarify that two logically separable effects were found in their original experiment: watching eyes made the mean donation higher, and also increased the probability of donating something rather than nothing. Here, we report a replication study with 118 participants, in which we found that watching eyes significantly increased the probability of donating something, but did not increase the mean donation. Results did not depend on the sex of the participants or the sex of the eyes. We also present a meta-analysis of the seven studies of watching eye effects in the Dictator Game published to date. Combined, these studies total 887 participants, and show that although watching eyes do not reliably increase mean donations, they do reliably increase the probability of donating something rather than nothing (combined odds ratio 1.39). We conclude that the watching eyes effect in the Dictator Game is robust, but its interpretation may require refinement. Rather than making people directionally more generous, it may be that watching eyes reduce variation in social behavior.
Introduction 2 Defining terms – engagement of individual citizens, not organised stakeholders 3 Policy context 3 Changing levels of supply and demand for engagement opportunities 4 Conceptual issues: the pros and cons of public engagement 5 Sharpening the existing tools for public engagement 10 Beyond public engagement: the move to user and community co-production 19 Co-governance innovations 22 Benefits and limitations to co-production 28 Conclusion: pointers to the way forward in public engagement and 31 co-production Acknowledgements 33 References 33
We evaluate the role of a new type of democratic institution, participatory budgeting (PB), for improving citizens' well-being. Participatory institutions are said to enhance governance, citizens' empowerment, and the quality of democracy, creating a virtuous cycle to improve the poor's well-being. Drawing from an original database of Brazil's largest cities over the last 20 years, we assess whether adopting PB programs influences several indicators of well-being inputs, processes, and outcomes. We find PB programs are strongly associated with increases in health care spending, increases in civil society organizations, and decreases in infant mortality rates. This connection strengthens dramatically as PB programs remain in place over longer time frames. Furthermore, PB's connection to well-being strengthens in the hand of mayors from the nationally powerful, ideologically and electorally motivated Workers' Party. Our argument directly addresses debates on democracy and well-being and has powerful implications for participation, governance, and economic development.
The voter initiative is increasingly important in policymaking and continues to generate controversy, yet little statistical evidence is available concerning its actual policy effects. The purpose of the book, from which these notes are taken, is to provide empirical evidence on three central questions about the initiative: (1) Does the initiative matter at all for policy? (2) If so, in what ways does it change policy? (3) Are these changes consistent with the wishes of the majority of the electorate, or are special interests able to use the initiative process to distort policy away from what the majority wants? The focus of my investigation is state and local fiscal policy from the beginning to the end of the 20th century. I have distributed the introductory chapter and one substantive chapter. I plan to present additional background institutional information in the seminar, and crucially evidence that pertains to question (3). It will become apparent on reading the manuscript that it is a work in progress. Any feedback will be appreciated.
Models indicate that opportunities for reputation formation can play an important role in sustaining cooperation and prosocial behavior. Results from experimental economic games support this conclusion, as manipulating reputational opportunities affects prosocial behavior. Noting that some prosocial behavior remains even in anonymous noniterated games, some investigators argue that humans possess a propensity for prosociality independent of reputation management. However, decision-making processes often employ both explicit propositional knowledge and intuitive or affective judgments elicited by tacit cues. Manipulating game parameters alters explicit information employed in overt strategizing but leaves intact cues that may affect intuitive judgments relevant to reputation formation. To explore how subtle cues of observability impact prosocial behavior, we conducted five dictator games, manipulating both auditory cues of the presence of others (via the use of sound-deadening earmuffs) and visual cues (via the presentation of stylized eyespots). Although earmuffs appeared to reduce generosity, this effect was not significant. However, as predicted, eyespots substantially increased generosity, despite no differences in actual anonymity; when using a computer displaying eyespots, almost twice as many participants gave money to their partners compared with the controls. Investigations of prosocial behavior must consider both overt information about game parameters and subtle cues influencing intuitive judgments.
This paper examines civic governance in Porto Alegre in terms of deliberative democratic
Should citizens be encouraged to deliberate about matters of politics? A review of several literatures about group discussion yields a mixed prognosis for citizen deliberation. Group discussion sometimes meets the expectations of deliberative theorists, other times falls short. Deliberators can, as theorists wish, conduct themselves with empathy for others, equality, and open-mindedness. But attempts to deliberate can also back fire. Social dynamics can often account for both discussions that appear deliberative and for those that clearly fail to meet deliberative criteria. In the beginning was the group. This is the fundamental truth about human nature and politics, and neither modem nor contemporary political theory has yet come to tenns with it (Alford. 1994, p. 1).
As the tasks of the state have become more complex and the size of polities larger and more heterogeneous, the institutional forms of liberal democracy developed in the nineteenth century—representative democracy plus techno- bureaucratic administration—seem increasingly ill suited to the novel problems we face in the twenty-first century. "Democracy" as a way of organizing the state has come to be narrowly identified with territorially based competitive elections of political leadership for legislative and executive offices. Yet, increasingly, this mechanism of political representation seems ineffective in accomplishing the central ideals of democratic politics: facilitating active political involvement of the citizenry, forging political consensus through dialogue, devising and imple- menting public policies that ground a productive economy and healthy society, and, in more radical egalitarian versions of the democratic ideal, ensuring that all citizens benefit from the nation's wealth. The Right of the political spectrum has taken advantage of this apparent decline in the effectiveness of democratic institutions to escalate its attack on the very idea of the affirmative state. The only way the state can play a competent and constructive role, the Right typically argues, is to dramatically reduce the scope and depth of its activities. In addition to the traditional moral opposition of liber- tarians to the activist state on the grounds that it infringes on property rights and
T his article presents an experiment in which 49 Indonesian villages were randomly assigned to choose development projects through either representative-based meetings or direct election-based plebiscites. Plebiscites resulted in dramatically higher satisfaction among villagers, increased knowledge about the project, greater perceived benefits, and higher reported willingness to contribute. Changing the political mechanism had much smaller effects on the actual projects selected, with some evidence that plebiscites resulted in projects chosen by women being located in poorer areas. The results suggest that direct participation in political decision making can substantially increase satisfaction and legitimacy. R ecent years have witnessed a trend in the devel-oping world toward local participation in gov-ernment decision making (Stiglitz 2002; World Bank 2004). What this trend means in practice is that decisions about local public good provision are increas-ingly delegated to local assemblies, such as the Gram Panchayat in India and the Conselho do Orçamento Participativo in Brazil. Although these forums provide for local input, only a small fraction of the popula-tion typically attends, leading to concerns that they may be prone to capture by local elites (Bardhan 2002; Bardhan and Mookherjee 2006). This article investigates an alternative political mechanism for deciding on local pubic goods— plebiscites, where citizens vote directly at an election for their most preferred projects. Proponents of di-rect democracy argue that it has two main virtues (Matsusaka 2004). First, direct democracy allows vot-ers a way to circumvent representative institutions that may have been captured by elites or other special interests. Second, compared with meetings, elections allow an order of magnitude more citizens to partici-pate directly in political decision making, and this in-creased participation may enhance the legitimacy of political decisions, even if the decisions themselves do not change (Lind and Tyler 1988). To investigate these two hypotheses, I conducted a randomized, controlled field experiment in 49 Indo-nesian villages, each of which was preparing to ap-Benjamin A. Olken is Associate Professor,, three anonymous referees, Daniel Treisman (the co-editor), and numerous seminar participants for helpful comments. Melissa Dell provided exceptional research assistance. Special thanks are due to Susan Wong and Scott Guggenheim for their support and assistance throughout the project. The field work and engineering survey would have been impossible without the dedication of Suroso Yoso Oetomo and the SSK-PPK field staff. This project was supported by a grant from the Indonesian Decentralization Support Facility (DSF), with support from the UK Department for International Development (DfID) and the World Bank. All views expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of DSF, DfID, or the World Bank.
It is widely argued that increased community participation in government decision making produces many important benefits. Dissent is rare: It is difficult to envision anything but positive outcomes from citizens joining the policy process, collaborating with others and reaching consensus to bring about positive social and environmental change. This article, motivated by contextual problems encountered in a participatory watershed management initiative, reviews the citizen-participation literature and analyzes key considerations in determining whether community participation is an effective policy-making tool. We list conditions under which community participation may be costly and ineffective and when it can thrive and produce the greatest gains in effective citizen governance. From the detritus of an unsuccessful citizen-participation effort, we arrive at a more informed approach to guide policy makers in choosing a decision-making process that is appropriate for a community's particular needs.
Many theorists have long extolled the virtues of public deliberation as a crucial component of a responsive and responsible democracy. Building on these theories, in recent years practitioners - from government officials to citizen groups, nonprofits, and foundations - have increasingly devoted time and resources to strengthening citizen engagement through deliberative forums. Although empirical research has lagged behind theory and practice, a body of literature has emerged that tests the presumed individual and collective benefits of public discourse on citizen engagement. We begin our review of this research by defining "public deliberation"; we place it in the context of other forms of what we call "discursive participation" while distinguishing it. from other ways in which citizens can voice their individual and collective views on public issues. We then discuss the expectations, drawn from deliberative democratic theory, regarding the benefits (and, for some, pitfalls) assumed to derive from public deliberation. The next section reviews empirical research as it relates to these theoretical expectations. We conclude with recommendations on future directions for research in this area.
Civic engagement and collaborative public management are concepts that are defined broadly, making theoretical explication challenging and practical application of empirical research difficult. In this article, the authors adopt definitions of civic engagement and collaborative public management that are centered on the citizen and the potential for active citizenship. Following a historical review of civic engagement in the United States, a conceptual model of five approaches to civic engagement is offered. Citizen-centered collaborative public management is enhanced through these approaches. The authors suggest the need for further empirical research on collaborative public management that is grounded in citizenship action.
William Nylen begins by discussing North Americans’ love-hate relationship with politics and politicians, then shows how Brazilians feel the same way (as do many citizens of democracies throughout the world). He argues that this is so because contemporary democracies have increasingly trickled up and away from so-called ‘average citizens’. We now live in a world of ‘Elitist Democracies’ essentially constructed of, by and for moneyed, well-connected and ethically-challenged elites. Fortunately, there are alternatives, and that’s where Brazil offers valuable lessons. Experiments in local-level participatory democracy, put into practice in Brazil by the Workers Party show both the promise and the practical limitations of efforts to promote ‘popular participation’ and citizen empowerment.
This paper examines a participatory budgeting process in the city of Surakarta (Solo), Indonesia. Using newly digitized records of the infrastructure spending results from three distinct phases of the process (proposal, prioritization, and implementation), I assess the degree to which the resulting geographical distribution of spending allocations targets the poor. I find a poverty-related bias in the distribution of infrastructure projects funded by the program. While results vary across neighborhoods, on average, sub-units with more poor people receive a smaller percentage of funding than would correspond to their share of the general population. Furthermore, although the implementation stage exhibits significant divergence from the decisions made during the more public proposal and prioritization processes, the small group of elected officials in charge of implementation are not to blame for the bias. I find no evidence that deviations from decisions made during public meetings are based on something other than legitimate technical considerations. Instead, the bias originates in the proposal stage, with the poorest sub-units less likely to submit proposals in the first place. I conclude that the literature would benefit from more studies that look at differences across stages of decision-making within a particular process. Whereas contextual differences across settings may be difficult to change over the short-run, identifying procedural differences and points of vulnerability across a single process can help to diagnose problems which have the potential to actually be resolved by policy-makers.
Can we design institutions that increase and deepen citizen participation in the political decision making process? At a time when there is growing disillusionment with the institutions of advanced industrial democracies, there is also increasing interest in new ways of involving citizens in the political decisions that affect their lives. This book draws together evidence from a variety of democratic innovations from around the world, including participatory budgeting in Brazil, Citizens’ Assemblies on Electoral Reform in Canada, direct legislation in California and Switzerland and emerging experiments in e-democracy. The book offers a rare systematic analysis of this diverse range of democratic innovations, drawing lessons for the future development of both democratic theory and practice.
In 1999, the UK government set force-specific 10-year targets for recruiting new police officers from ethnic minorities. Using these targets as instrumental variables, this study finds that this policy mandating an increase in the share of ethnic minority officers in a given force is associated with a decrease in the number of crimes in the area under the force's jurisdiction during the 10-year period. It is argued that greater representativeness and diversity within a public organization improves organizational integrity, which influences bureaucrats' attitudes and behaviors towards minority citizens. In the context of policing, diversity can mitigate the institutionalized practice of officers acting on implicit assumptions about minorities being inherently more unlawful than whites: police representativeness is associated with a decrease in the over-representation of black individuals among those subject to " stop and search. " Such a change may make minority citizens more willing to cooperate in the co-production of public values, facilitating the attainment of organizational goals.
In recent years a rich outpouring of case studies on community decision-making has been combined with a noticeable lack of generalizations based on them. One reason for this is a commonplace: we have no general theory, no broad-gauge model in terms of which widely different case studies can be systematically compared and contrasted.
Among the obstacles to the development of such a theory is a good deal of confusion about the nature of power and of the things that differentiate it from the equally important concepts of force, influence, and authority. These terms have different meanings and are of varying relevance; yet in nearly all studies of community decision-making published to date, power and influence are used almost interchangeably, and force and authority are neglected. The researchers thereby handicap themselves. For they utilize concepts which are at once too broadly and too narrowly drawn: too broadly, because important distinctions between power and influence are brushed over; and too narrowly, because other concepts are disregarded—concepts which, had they been brought to bear, might have altered the findings radically.
Many investigators have also mistakenly assumed that power and its correlatives are activated and can be observed only in decisionmaking situations. They have overlooked the equally, if not more important area of what might be called “nondecision-making”, i.e. , the practice of limiting the scope of actual decisionmaking to “safe” issues by manipulating the dominant community values, myths, and political institutions and procedures. To pass over this is to neglect one whole “face” of power.
A broad range of procedural mechanisms designed to promote public involvement in regulatory decision making have been instituted at all levels of government. Depending upon the literature one consults, one could conclude that these procedures (1) enhance regulatory stringency by fostering access by previously underrepresented groups, (2) reduce regulatory stringency by institutionalizing access by regulated industries, (3) could either increase or decrease stringency depending on the relative strength of organized interests in the agency’s external environment, or (4) have no effect. This study investigates whether mechanisms designed to promote public involvement in administrative rulemaking affect the stringency of US state environmental regulation. The results suggest that requirements to provide public notice of agency rulemaking do not have a significant effect on the regulatory compliance costs imposed on industry, but mechanisms that provide direct access to rulemaking processes serve to decrease these costs. This effect is evident for access both to the agencies promulgating environmental regulations and to external entities reviewing these regulations. For promulgating agencies, the effect does not appear to be conditional on the relative power of societal interests. The results provide some evidence, however, that political officials respond to the strength of environmental and industry groups when reviewing agency regulations.
Prior research on citizen participation has noted a tension between fostering an inclusive policymaking process and simultaneously maintaining a competent pool of participating citizens. This study investigates the implications of this trade-off by testing the impact of measured levels of inclusiveness and participating citizens' knowledgeability on two performance metrics: citizen engagement and process efficiency. Results indicate that although inclusiveness may be negatively associated with the level of engagement, both knowledgeability and inclusiveness are positively associated with process efficiency. Overall, the findings suggest that policymakers can pursue the democratic ideal of opening policymaking to the citizenry while still maintaining an efficient process.
The New Public Service describes a set of norms and practices that emphasize democracy and citizenship as the basis for public administration theory and practice. This article revisits some of the core arguments of the New Public Service and examines how they have been practiced and studied over the past 15 years. The authors conclude that neither the principles of the New Public Service nor those of the New Public Management have become a dominant paradigm, but the New Public Service, and ideas and practices consistent with its ideals, have become increasingly evident in public administration scholarship and practice.
In their continued considerations of political inequality, urban scholars are especially concerned with less visible influences surrounding community decision making, and have employed such concepts as potential power, nondecision making, and anticipated reactions. However, these concepts leave some patterns of influence unexplained. There is also a dimension of power in which durable features of the socioeconomic system confer advantages and disadvantages on groups in ways that predispose public officials to favor some interests at the expense of others. Public officials make their decisions in a context in which strategically important resources are hierarchically arranged. Because this system of stratification leaves public officials situationally dependent on upper-strata interests, it is a factor in all that they do. Consequently, system features lower the opportunity costs of exerting influence for some groups and raise them for others. Thus socioeconomic inequalities put various strata on different political footings.
Public participation in administrative decision making has been widely advocated by both theorists and practitioners of public
administration. Despite the importance of citizen engagement, we know little about its impact on the performance of government
agencies. Is participation only normatively desirable or does it have some practical value attached to it? We draw on data
from U.S. state transportation agencies to test the relevance of two theoretical perspectives about the effect of public participation
on organizational performance. The traditional perspective holds that there is a trade-off between democratic and administrative
decision making. A competing perspective suggests that citizen input provides administrators with valuable site-specific information
and contributes to more efficient and effective public programs. We find strong support for the latter perspective. Our results
show that there is not necessarily a trade-off between the values of democracy and bureaucracy, with clear implications for
the theory and practice of democratic governance.
While various descriptive and prescriptive citizen participation models suggest ways to improve citizen participation, none has been subjected to large‐scale empirical tests. This article develops and tests an organizational theory model that explores the conditions under which citizen involvement as a general strategy can improve administrative decision making. The new model focuses on organizational variables that are more directly subject to managerial influence, such as political support, leadership, red tape, and hierarchical authority, as well as variables related to participant competence and representativeness. Hypotheses are tested with data collected from a national survey of local government managers. The results suggest that public management matters for citizen participation. The conclusion calls for integrating quantitative designs with normative and qualitative citizen participation research.
Public managers and researchers devote much attention to the benefits of coproduction, or the mixing of the productive efforts of public employees and citizens in public service design and delivery. One concern, however, is the distributional consequences of coproduction. This article proposes that disadvantaged citizens may be constrained by a lack of knowledge or other resources necessary to contribute to and benefit from the coproduction process. From this assumption, the authors develop the theoretical argument that if coproduction programs were designed to lift constraints on disadvantaged citizens, they might increase both efficiency and equity. This claim is tested using a field experiment on educational services. A coproduction program providing immigrant parents with knowledge and materials useful to their children's early educational development had a substantial positive impact on the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children, thereby diminishing inequity. Economically, the program was more efficient than later compensation of low‐performing children.
Political scientists often theorize that an explanatory variable should have “no effect” and support this claim by demonstrating that its coefficient's estimate is not statistically significant. This empirical argument is quite weak, but I introduce applied researchers to simple, powerful tools that can strengthen their arguments for this hypothesis. With several supporting examples, I illustrate that researchers can use 90% confidence intervals to argue against meaningful effects and provide persuasive evidence for their hypothesis.
Participation has undergone a communicative shift, which has favoured the organization of new participatory processes based on classic principles of deliberation theory. These experiments go beyond traditional protest: they include a communicative element with the aim of defining a public politics, which places them alongside models of deliberative governance. The present work sets out the characteristics of these new instruments (participatory budgeting, PB) in order to find out which problems deliberative governance initiatives are faced with. The conclusions tell us that the inequalities in participation are significant. Nevertheless, PB enables most participants to make effective use of their opportunities for deliberation. From this standpoint, the challenge for deliberative governance does not seem to be the deliberative capabilities of individuals, but rather the design of participatory procedures and the participation of individuals. We may question whether the administration can guarantee impartial political spaces that are as inclusive as possible.
This paper investigates whether the use of participatory budgeting in Brazilian municipalities during 1990–2004 affected the pattern of municipal expenditures and had any impact on living conditions. It shows that municipalities using participatory budgeting favored an allocation of public expenditures that closely matched popular preferences and channeled a larger fraction of their budgets to investments in sanitation and health services. This change is accompanied by a reduction in infant mortality rates. This suggests that promoting a more direct interaction between service users and elected officials in budgetary policy can affect both how local resources are spent and living standard outcomes.
The multifaceted challenges of contemporary governance demand a complex account of the ways in which those who are subject to laws and policies should participate in making them. This article develops a framework for understanding the range of institutional possibilities for public participation. Mechanisms of participation vary along three important dimensions: who participates, how participants communicate with one another and make decisions together, and how discussions are linked with policy or public action. These three dimensions constitute a space in which any particular mechanism of participation can be located. Different regions of this institutional design space are more and less suited to addressing important problems of democratic governance such as legitimacy, justice, and effective administration.
How can the processes of public participation be improved? This study uses interviews and focus-group discussions to look for some answers. The results suggest that improving public participation requires changes in citizen and administrator roles and relationships and in administrative processes. Specifically, we need to move away from static and reactive processes toward more dynamic and deliberative processes. The article suggests some practical steps to achieve these changes.
A normative literature in political science and public administration calls for enhanced citizen participation in public decisions. However, this approach overlooks the environment that shapes administrative behavior, an oversight likely to hamper reform efforts targeted at achieving the normative goals of participation. The administrative perspective is important because public managers shape participation forums and determine whether public input has an impact on decisions. In organizing participation, administrators are likely to be guided by an instrumental view of relative costs and benefits. Washington, D.C.’s Citizen Summit illustrates the primacy of the instrumental perspective but demonstrates conditions of compatibility with normative goals. In this case, public managers perceived administrative costs to be low relative to instrumental benefits, such as the quality of public input and a need to increase governmental legitimacy. They also applied innovative participation technologies to reduce administrative costs and raise instrumental benefits, reinvigorating the frequently criticized public hearing.
Can we design institutions that increase and deepen citizen participation in the political decision making process? At a time when there is growing disillusionment with the institutions of advanced industrial democracies, there is also increasing interest in new ways of involving citizens in the political decisions that affect their lives. This book draws together evidence from a variety of democratic innovations from around the world, including participatory budgeting in Brazil, Citizens' Assemblies on Electoral Reform in Canada, direct legislation in California and Switzerland and emerging experiments in e-democracy. The book offers a rare systematic analysis of this diverse range of democratic innovations, drawing lessons for the future development of both democratic theory and practice.
Low voter turnout is a serious democratic problem for five reasons: (1) It means unequal turnout that is systematically biased against less well-to-do citizens. (2) Unequal turnout spells unequal political influence. (3) U.S. voter turnout is especially low, but, measured as percent of voting-age population, it is also relatively low in most other countries. (4) Turnout in midterm, regional, local, and supranational elections--less salient but by no means unimportant elections--tends to be especially poor. (5) Turnout appears to be declining everywhere. The problem of inequality can be solved by institutional mechanisms that maximize turnout. One option is the combination of voter-friendly registration rules, proportional representation, infrequent elections, weekend voting, and holding less salient elections concurrently with the most important national elections. The other option, which can maximize turnout by itself, is compulsory voting. Its advantages far outweigh the normative and practical objections to it.
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We present a group-based approach to the study of deliberation. Deliberation occurs in groups, yet many studies of deliberation do not take the group as a unit of analysis. We argue that group composition and the attendant social dynamics to which they give rise are an important aspect of deliberation. We offer several examples of ways to study these effects, including the interaction of gender composition and the group's decision rule in the context of an experimental study of decisions about justice, the effect of racial composition in simulated juries, and the effect of ideological composition in local meetings. We examine the consequences of these factors on a variety of outcomes, including individuals' private opinion, individuals' behaviour, and group decisions. In conclusion we discuss the implications that group effects have for empirical and normative theories of deliberation.
This paper explores the influence of local community groups on agency decisionmaking at hazardous waste sites nationwide. The central purpose of this research is to examine the relative influence of two forms of public participation at Superfund sites: Community Advisory Groups (CAGs) and Technical Assistance Grants (TAGs). When citizens mobilize and become involved in the decisionmaking process via CAGs and TAGs, are outcomes systematically different when compared to hazardous waste sites where citizen groups are not active? I utilize a treatment effects regression analysis to isolate the impact of these groups on remedy selection at Superfund sites while adjusting for the non-random formation of local interest groups. The results suggest that even when controlling for other factors that may guide agency decisionmaking, such as site characteristics, the Environmental Protection Agency is more likely to choose health protective clean-up approaches when CAGs and TAGs have formed at Superfund sites. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management
Citizen participation in the local budget process is not prevalent, despite encouragement from scholars and professional organizations. This case study of two Kansas cities that have used a variety of input mechanisms in the budget process analyzes the effectiveness of citizen budget participation. Limited effectiveness was found, which may largely be due to the timing of the input, unstated or unclear goals, implementation difficulties, and political and environmental constraints. Citizen input appears to have had little effect on budget decisions, and neither city has institutionalized participation in the process. However, the input mechanisms serve other purposes, such as education and support for specific proposals. Describing the benefits as well as the difficulty of involving citizens in a meaningful way is beneficial to other governments as they wrestle with the issue of defining the citizens' role in the budget process.
Although some countries have managed toobtain balanced budgets or even budgetsurpluses in recent times, public debts ofmany OECD countries remain at high levels.Since structural reforms of public spendinghave only infrequently taken place in mostcountries, fiscal pressure will increaseagain in the future due to society''s ageingand the accompanying increases in socialtransfer spending. Constitutionalrestrictions on debt levels and legal rulesof the budgetary process, such as a strongrole of the minister of finance, aresupposed to be helping against the debtbias inherent in political decision-makingprocedures. In addition to such top downbudgetary procedures, this paperinvestigates the impact of referendumapproval of budget deficits by the voterson the level of public debt in a crosssection of the 134 largest Swissmunicipalities in 1990.
Considerable concern has been expressed in recent years about declines in voter participation rates in the United States and in several other major democratic countries. Some feel low participation rates introduce a ‘class bias’ into the political process and thereby worsen the outcomes from it. Little empirical work exists, however, that measures the effects of lower participation on the welfare of a country. This paper begins to fill this void. It presents cross-national evidence that high levels of democratic participation are associated with more equal distributions of income. The paper’s results also imply, however, that this reduction in income inequality comes at a cost. High participation rates are related to larger government sectors which in turn lead to slower economic growth. We also present evidence of the ‘capture’ of government by upper income groups in Latin and Central American countries.
In political economics, the impact of institutions on income redistribution is mainly studied by comparing different forms of representative democracy. In this article, we analyze the influence of direct democratic institutions on redistribution first focusing on welfare and nonwelfare spending using yearly panel data for Swiss cantons. Then, we estimate a model, which explains the determinants of actually achieved redistribution measured by Gini coefficients. While our results indicate that less public funds are used to redistribute income, inequality is not reduced to a lesser extent in direct than in representative democracies for a given initial income distribution.
Summary Participatory governance is said to enhance governance, citizens' empowerment, and the quality of democracy, creating a virtuous cycle to improve the well-being of the poor. However, there is limited empirical evidence for this relationship. Drawing from an original database of Brazil's 220 largest cities, we assess whether the adoption of a participatory budgeting (PB) program is associated with changes in social spending or changes in several indicators of well-being. We find that PB municipalities spend a slightly higher share of their budget on health and education programs, but there is little evidence that this shift in budget priorities affects measurable outcomes.