The World Atlas of Participatory Budgeting is the main analysis reference for these processes on a global scale. The work carried out by over a hundred authors, from all continents, enabled the most extensive and complete mapping of these initiatives, produced new knowledge, and calls on the international community to debate them. The pages that make up this publication are an invitation to take a journey through the world of participatory budgeting, with the certainty that there will be no lack of interesting reasons and surprising news.
The World Atlas of Participatory Budgeting is an unusual publication, due to its object, due to its ambition and due to the results it has achieved, as well as due to having emerged from the voluntary collaboration of more than 100 authors, from 65 countries.
A project of this nature, particularly considering its scope, is not without errors. The final product is neither perfect nor complete, but the results produced are certainly globally consistent and credible. The conclusions provided, regarding the major trends in participatory budgeting around the world, are highly reliable, although always subject to further improvements and inputs.
The research carried out is based on a simple and straightforward approach, based on a shared concept of participatory budgeting, a questionnaire and indicators that are common to all those involved, as well as a fairly extensive survey of cases, as set out below.
The Atlas is based on a technical definition of the PB, which has three core features:
To be a process that involves all or part of the budget of an institution;
To ensure that the priorities to be implemented with the value at stake are decided by the citizens concerned;
To ensure the full implementation of the deliberations of the participants.
This approach undertakes that all authors identify participatory budgeting that are considered deliberative, according to which the community has the power to propose and to determine which projects are to be implemented, thereby excluding from this analysis the consultative drifts that sometimes occur in some territories.
This approach, which is more methodological, was adopted as the preferred one in order to avoid conceptual positions that resort to more theoretical or vague terms, subject to interpretation that sometimes differ according to the political and institutional cultures of each country.
Nonetheless, the proposed definition needs to be further clarified to allow for the differentiation of the processes on the basis of two variables, which are usually neglected in more classical interpretations of PBs:
- Type of Institution.
Although most initiatives are promoted by local governments, it is important to consider experiences organised by the different levels of governments, such as regional, state, and national governments. Likewise, processes developed by other public or private entities were also contemplated, such as universities, schools, associations, professional organisations and companies;
- The participants.
Within the enormous variety of existing PB models, the most common is still the universal access model, which, as the name indicates, is a process open to individuals from a given territory or institution. However, initiatives aimed at more specific audiences were also taken into account in the Atlas, such as those aimed at certain social groups, such as young people, women, immigrants, etc.; or to more precise audiences, such as students of a school, employees of an organism, members of an association, among other options. Also included in this scope are the so-called mini-publics, normally made up of members representing a community, selected by drawing lots.
