Ecuador

National Legislation

Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador (art. 100); Organic Law of Citizen Participation (art 64, art, 67 - 71); Organic Code of Territorial Organization, Autonomy and Decentralization (art. 304); Organic Code of Public Planning and Finance (art. 8). All national regulations mention the mandatory use of annual Participatory Budgeting at all different levels of government. However, the main normative is the Organic Law of Citizen Participation.

Local Legislation

According to the national normative, local governments must adapt, by law, citizen participation systems, which should include Participatory Budgeting regulations. All local governments implement this mechanism. However, only one local government has developed and articulated this process extensively in its legislation, this is the municipality of Metropolitan District of Quito, through the Ordinance of Metropolitan Law of Citizen Participation and Social Control and its regulation. The rest of local and provincial governments implement this mechanism following a guide developed by the fifth function of the Ecuadorian State, the Council of Citizen Participation and Social Control. Yet, do not have specific regulations (ordinances/regulations) in order to develop Participatory Budgeting processes.

The Metropolitan District of Quito has led the innovation filed regarding Participatory Budgeting since 2006, by using technological process in order to achieve real participation. Yet, it requires an annual evaluation and adjustment, but it fulfill and surpass the international and national parameters. Since 2016, year in which the Metropolitan Ordinance of Citizen Participation and Social Control was promulgated, an integral and articulated system was created that integrates methodological processes in order to define Participatory Budgeting experiences, and to solve the representation and legitimacy crisis of neighborhood leaders through the homogenization of a citizen assemblies system (from the basis: neighborhood, parochial, zonal assemblies and Quito assembly). Until now, there are more than 800 neighborhood assemblies that integrate the first level of articulation of the system; every one of them send four (4) representatives in order to conform the 65 parochial assemblies, being in total 3,200 representatives. In the last ones, Participatory Budgeting was defined through 65 deliberative sessions. Hence, it was decided that P.B should be a binding process in which the citizenship can decide at least 60% of the investment budget in each zone for the execution of infrastructure and social projects. It is noticed that the system has accomplished an execution that exceeds 87% of the amount of more than 25 million dollars per year, due to the participation of the citizens (monitoring committees) in the control and inspection phase of the projects.

The different levels of government tend to take the Quito experience as an example of Participatory Budgeting initiative, due its innovation regarding the use of digital platforms for the monitoring phase of the process. The main reason for it is because the Metropolitan System of Citizen Participation and Social Control of the Municipality of Quito is constantly being reviewed and analyzed, which is an important characteristic of this case. Nevertheless, according to the participatory tradition as well as the Ecuadorian social dynamic, adults and elders are the main group participating within these processes since the neighborhood leadership do not allow dynamism of other type of group such as young people. Therefore, on October 1st of 2018, the municipality of Quito implemented the digital platform called “Quito Decide” based on the CONSUL system of the municipality of Madrid, that seeks the participation of the youth and young adults in the monitoring phases, also it is aimed to create a hybrid process incorporating face-to-face (assemblies) and digital participation in order to increase the number of people participating in this annual democratic process.

Although the implementation of Participatory Budgeting in Ecuador is mandatory, according to the national regulation; it could be noticed that there are gaps in the implementation of these processes, meaning that there are not minimum parameters that guarantee the implementation of the law.