Denmark

There is no legislation at the regional level. In municipal terms (local government) Participatory Budgeting was introduced as a policy of experimental character.

Social innovations that have emerged in an intent to re-inventing local democracy:

Innovation: Local meetings as a re-invention of the participatory Greek Democracy

PB as an internal planning exercise for public prioritization in Faaborg-Midtfyn municipality from 2016-1019, ending 2019. Not continuing; Process oriented and 100% facilitated by citizens. Every year evaluated on local level and creatively idea generated and developed into a better approach; Key focus was on Developed methods for facilitating bigger meetings and taking common decisions not by vote, but by consent; The narrative was the Greek democracy method, meetings every two weeks, roles, rounds and rules.

Innovation: Boosting local community self-management

Haderslev municipality from 2017 and continuing; Splitting the PB up in small portions offered every local community within the municipality; To get the PB-fund the Local communities had to develop and present a process design that involves citizens from ideas to decisions; That PB initiative boosted the local community’s self-management competencies.

Innovation: Target group PB processes

Kolding municipalities introduced the PB method for the segment of retired citizens, to increase coherence between the segment of 60+, and also PB as a tool for integrating foreign immigrant youth and Danish students (Kolding Council); Designed a special process that structured a facilitated brainstorming process, project development period and facilitated decision making process. Innovation: Whole year PB planning schedule Hedensted municipality developed a plan for the whole year, “A Year-wheele”, structuring what had to be done month by month. From 2013 and continuing; PB is used to develop the rural small communities and is offered every three years. That means they are rotating PB between 27 local communities in the municipality, 9 every year.

Innovation: Thematic PB

Århus Municipality has experimented with themes for every PB since 2015; In 2015 the theme was ‘fighting loneliness’, 2016: ‘neighborship with refugees’, 2017: ‘creating associations’, 2018: ’togetherness’, 2019: ‘social inclusion’, and continuing; PB as climate action and prevention by giving people a say over how an urban grass pitch should be transformed into a park to cater both for excess rainwater and for people’s leisure time. (Gladsaxe Council).

1. Denmark is very digital. Every citizen has a personal and official e-box (inbox), a digital platform where the official institutions (state and municipalities) are communicating with every citizen. Many Participatory Budgeting decision making processes use this opportunity to create a digital decision-making voting procedure. But the biggest successes (small in numbers though) has been open face-to-face meetings facilitated by a professional, and not using voting, but sociocracy rounds and consent.
2. Denmark is a country with a very high trust in the political system and politicians. The trust in the system is falling but still high. That means we are not doing Participatory Budgeting because we don’t trust the system and want people to experience some kind of self-governing. PB doesn’t give meaning in the same way as it does in England or Brazil. Maybe that is the reason why PB is on its way out again. After many years of centralization- bigger municipalities, fewer regions, more power to the parliament and EU - we see that the small local communities are waking up. On a very local level our small communities are starting to re-organize themselves, to take back some kind of power, what they lost in the name of centralization. Maybe PB in that context local community strengthening - will find a new and even stronger participatory approach in the upcoming years. I think so. But at the moment PB is not a trendy political issue in Denmark.
3. Participatory Budgeting in Denmark is fairly simple and following the ‘community pot’-model (from UK) with a typical allocation of 75.000-150.000 DKK 10-20.000 EUR) per cycle. Typical processes are about local events, material and activities for the community. This figure is slightly on the low side to truly mobilize Danish communities.

There is no national motivation for implementing PB experiences in Denmark. All PB are driven by consultants and followingly by a process of citizen empowerment driven, surprisingly, by the city councils. At some occasions citizens associations have requested / suggested a process. Second, the amounts set aside (too small) cannot compete with other pots and opportunities for Danish Civil Society, which have quite a few funding options. This means that many find PB a cumbersome process to go through ‘just to get a few benches and a sports track”. Third, local democracy is often conceived as working quite well, especially among the target groups who would be the same people engaging in a PB process. Going via PB is not always considered attractive which means that mobilization is possibly the biggest challenge in Denmark. Also, there is little incentive for new democratic experiences. It might change in the future, but maybe in another way and with a new title. Participatory budgeting was translated into Danish with a word similar to ‘citizen budgeting’ (borgerbudget), not using the word ‘participatory’. Maybe the Danish word is a barrier. It doesn’t tell what it is about. The number of people participating in PB has been from 1-10% of the population in a community. The bigger the community, the lower the percent.