Participatory Budgeting for a Stronger City

Budgets are the new battlegrounds. While cities debate how to spend unprecedented amounts of federal relief funds and activists demand reallocation of police budgets to social services, decisions about how to allocate public dollars are drawing increased public scrutiny. It’s often said that budgets are moral documents that display a city’s priorities. There are ways for citizens to influence how local money is spent and advocate for their communities, but few citizens are able to take advantage of them in practice. This is a missed opportunity for everyone. When city residents participate in municipal decision-making, the resulting policies are more in line with community wants and needs compared to policies dictated by a central planner. Inviting the people into the process makes for stronger, more democratic, and more effective city governments.

Many cities have decided to do just that by introducing participatory budgeting (PB). Though the exact design of PB differs across cities, in all versions, citizens directly vote on projects they want the municipal government to fund. Most programs have limited jurisdiction and determine a small portion of the city budget. Despite its modest reach, PB can have a big impact on the civic health of urban communities. A recent study of PB in Taipei by Nai-Ling Kuo, Ting-Yu Chen, and Tsai-Tsu Su found that adoption of PB improved most Urban Governance Index (UGI) indicators, making the government more efficient and accountable while providing new avenues for public engagement. It shows citizens exactly how their tax dollars are spent and demonstrates what a truly transparent and responsive government can achieve.

Even before PB, Taipei had structures meant to ensure community representation at the highest levels of government. The city holds regular forums where neighborhood leaders meet with the mayor and other city officials to advocate for local priorities. The mayor makes the final decisions and local representatives report back to their constituencies. While this is an opportunity for community input, many sub-borough chiefs often end up proposing their own projects, reporting that “though the residents in [their] community are well-educated” and interested in the outcome, “[they] don’t say anything” (Kuo, Chen, and Su, 2020).

Participatory budgeting was designed to complement, not replace, Taipei’s forums and give citizens a voice unmediated by sub-borough chiefs. PB expanded eligibility beyond voters to anyone over the age of 16 living, working, or studying in the city. After submitting a proposal, the author and community members met to discuss and refine the details, making it more likely to be approved by a local majority. Final proposals were posted for community vote, and the winners were incorporated directly into the budget without the need for mayoral approval. In the first two years of the program, 134 PB proposals made their way into the city budget.

If Taipei and other cities already have community-focused representation, is there a place for PB? Does it truly add value, or is it just a public relations tool? It is possible that PB is redundant: diverting tax dollars and citizen participation that could be more effective in existing public forums, meetings, and elections. PB could also be misused by a vocal minority, or by elected leadership steering PB proposals to their own favored constituencies or pet projects.

Despite these concerns, Kuo, Chen, and Su found that Taipei’s PB pilot accomplished the city’s goals, expanding open government and opportunities for civic engagement. Many of the participants were retirees or stay-at-home parents – two groups that traditionally hold less political power and receive less attention from their elected representatives. Participating in PB allowed these Taipei residents to make their concerns heard and educate themselves about the functioning of the government, empowering them to advocate for their community’s needs even beyond the PB process. PB can also make politicians more attuned to public opinion, expanding the benefits of community engagement beyond PB’s limited jurisdiction.

While both PB participants and sub-borough chiefs had similar budget priorities, the complementary processes delivered better results that more accurately represented community needs. Both groups prioritized infrastructure projects; an unsurprising outcome, given how fundamentally a city’s built environment shapes day-to-day life. At the yearly forums, sub-borough chiefs advocated for proposals that would bring the greatest overall benefit to the borough and did not explicitly advantage specific groups. PB proposals, even when addressing similar concerns, tended to be smaller and even more localized. Community members advocated for projects that addressed inconveniences in their immediate surroundings, especially those faced by children, the elderly, or disabled residents. These proposals delivered solutions to problems that the neighborhood’s representatives missed.

Though many proposals targeted specific constituencies, most participants found that the PB process created more inclusive proposals and were not co-opted by special interests. The collaborative, discussion-oriented approach helped the community come to consensus and ensure that minority concerns were addressed. Sub-borough chiefs themselves noted that the proposals that emerged from PB were well-designed, practical, and had already benefited from community conversations that addressed competing interests. The “collective discussion and voting used in PB allows people to punch above their weight,” elevating grassroots concerns to the highest levels of government. Kuo, Chen, and Su, 2020)

Despite PB’s localized success, the impact in Taipei is still limited, representing less than one percent of city expenditures and only 57,486 voters in a city of 2.6 million. While the central city government continues to make most budget decisions, PB’s complementary role is valuable in allowing citizens to raise concerns that may be otherwise missed. It has also spurred more open government initiatives in Taipei, including a more accessible platform for its annual budget report and a mechanism to proactively canvass public opinion. By expanding PB and other avenues for public participation, city governments can more fully and accurately reflect the values of their constituencies and establish a better, more democratic city for all.