Participatory Budgeting: a vote on resource allocation

1. Participatory Budgeting: a vote on resource allocation Presentation by Mukunda Julius Senior Program Director

2. OUTLINE • What is PB • Description of PB •  What can PB achieve? • PB short comings? • What does it take to implement a PB • Conclusion

3. What is PB • Around the world, hundreds of governments are opting to open up their budgetary conversation to the community, inviting them to have their say on how money should be prioritised for new investments choices, services and projects.

4. What is PB • Participatory budgeting (or PB as it’s known in casual circles) is a democratic process where community members get the chance to directly determine how best to spend a part of the public budget.

5. Description • Participatory budgeting involves citizens directly in making decisions about budget issues, either on a small scale at the service or neighbourhood level or on a more strategic level at a city or state level.  • In practice, the power delegated to the citizens in the decision processes varies, from providing decision-makers with information about citizen preferences to processes that place parts of the budget under direct citizen control. 

6. Description • The scale of citizen participation has ranged from single neighbourhoods to an entire state (with populations of millions). • Discussions are often limited to new investment rather than discussing spending as a whole. It can be run as a one off process, but long-term benefits tend such as social capital and ownership, require a reoccurring, cyclical process.

7. Description • Many civil society organizations are involved in participatory budget work. • When people talk about “participatory budgeting,” they generally mean one or the other of two things: • 1) government-initiated participatory budget processes, the most famous of which is undertaken in Porto Alegre, Brazil; and • 2) which happens more commonly, efforts by non-governmental groups to increase civil society involvement in and influence on the formulation and expenditure of government budgets (aside from or in addition to any such government-initiated projects).

8. Description • In addition to “participation” by the civil society organizations (CSOs) themselves through their budget work, this latter category includes a wide range of initiatives, such as: • developing and disseminating “citizens’ budgets” to enhance the public’s understanding of the budget; • providing information to legislators to encourage them to push for a more pro-poor, pro-human rights budget; • a range of initiatives that track expenditures of the budget at the national down to local levels, including social audits undertaken by communities, monitoring of government procurement of services in education and other spheres, "citizen report cards" on government services (how well was the budget spent?), and oversight of reports submitted by government auditors to the legislature.

9. FOWODE Gender Budget Work • Mobilizing and organizing communities on issues of government budgets • Formation of Village Budget Clubs (VBCs) • Budget monitoring and tracking exercises conducted by VBCs • Organizing community budget meetings and interface meeting • Organizing CSO into a Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group at the National level

10. What can PB Achieve • International Institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank have declared PB a model for democratic government; their primary points being that PB can: • Give community members a say • Generates social capital • Make for better and more equitable decisions • Develop active and democratic citizens

11. What can PB Achieve • Build communities and strengthens community organizations • Connect organisations with their communities • Make an organisation more transparent, more accountable and more efficient

12. What can PB Achieve • Make corruption harder to sustain • Participatory budgeting can deliver increased transparency and re-establish the legitimacy of government budget decisions. • It has also been shown to build the skills and awareness of participants through the process of deliberation.

13. PB short Comings • Can create unrealistic expectations amongst participants if managed badly • Works best where there are high levels of community activism to begin with

14. PB short Comings • Can undermine the role of elected representatives in certain situations • Doesn't work well where central targets and restricted budgets limit the amount of power that can be given to citizens • The process of citizen involvement in budgets in itself is however costly.  • Setting up a city wide infrastructure of forums and meetings requires a large investment of money and staff time

15. PB short Comings • Poor communication strategies and inadequate information sharing • Poor political mobilization and Limited involvement of stakeholders • Inadequate skills in budgeting and limited knowledge about participatory • Budgeting • Inability by local politicians to separate politics from civic/development issues • Lack of appropriate venue for undertaking participatory budgeting meetings and Poor timing of participatory budgeting Meetings • Monopolization of budget information and work by a few people • Negative political pronouncements that have the effect of discouraging people from participating

16. PB requirements • Need for clear understanding of what PB is about • Do not create unrealistic expectations • Commitment form government to open its budget books • Need for a team of expert to run PB meetings • Identify a known public place for PB meetings • Be as specific and as clearer as possible about civic duty and political duty

17. PB requirements • One of the critical success factors for participatory budgeting is the need to ensure that information is readily available to the public. • Another critical factor for a successful PB is political will , without it becomes difficult to access information an hold meetings • Above all in a country where democratic principals are still wanting, the environment for PB would not be conducive

18. Conclusion • A key issue for a successful PB is how citizens closely cooperate with the government, but not fall into a clientelistic or co-opted relationship with the government. • Citizens must work closely with government officials in order to schedule meetings, obtain information, prepare technical reports, monitor expenditures, and verify the quality of public policy outputs. • Without this close contact and cooperation, participatory programs cannot function well.

19. Thank you for listening