# **4. Participation**

## **Participatory budgeting refers to the devolution of decision-making authority and**

**monitoring to local actors** . Public participation in the budget process can take place at different stages of the cycle, including budget preparation, implementation and oversight. The purpose is to increase transparency, tap into local sources of information, improve accountability of elected officials and public service deliverers and encourage innovation. Participatory budgeting creates incentives for public involvement and strengthens civil society through an institutional mechanism that can contribute to building an empowered citizenry including the poor (Baiocchi, Heller, Chaudhuri and Silva 2006).

**Participation by the community ranges from direct democracy to indirect delegate models.** _Direct democracy_ is where citizens are entitled to participate directly in neighborhood meetings to prioritize publically funded projects where each participant can vote and in some cases also be elected as a delegate or councilor. Conversely, in _indirect democracy_ or community-based representative democracy, citizens’ perspectives are carried out through delegate councils or leaders through social movements or neighborhood associations. Participation can take place through approving the budget or in some cases it has been argued, through simple consultations with citizens where the executive and legislative branches make the decisions. The decisionmaking bodies in participatory budgeting (PB) are often built on preexisting social and political frameworks such as neighborhood associations. Alternatively, they can be formed expressly for the purpose of PB through creating a PB council that establishes the decision making system, resource allocation criteria, when and how often plenary meetings will take place along with their agendas, and the finalized budget to present to the municipal councils.

According to Cabannes’ (2004) analysis of participatory budgeting based on 25 municipalities in Latin America and Europe, PB varies by population size, municipal resources, styles of participation (popular participation vs. local government), degree of consolidation of the experiences and amount of funds allocated to PB. Baiocchi, Heller, Chaudhuri and Silva define direct participation as citizens participating in open decision-making forums such as neighborhood assemblies, and delegative participation as new forms of representation through delegate councils.

## **_4.1 Influence of participation on citizen behavior_**

**The logic behind the practice of participatory budgeting influencing citizen behavior is that participation in decision making makes people more likely to comply because they have a say in the process** . Dal Bo, Foster and Putterman’s (2010) experimental findings suggest that individuals are more cooperative and compliant when they are allowed to participate. The results showed that democratically selected policies had a greater impact than policies that were imposed in a non-democratic way. Participatory processes led to greater cooperation both in civic responsibilities (e.g., paying taxes) and in complying with policies related to people’s work and livelihood (e.g., farmer cooperation with irrigation policies).

**Participatory budgeting increased knowledge about taxes and public services and subsequently led to increased tax revenues** . Innovations in budgeting that incorporated direct

12