Citizens are the beneficiaries of the services managed by the five pillars, but their participation in the decisions of governments are increasingly important.

One of the main forms of citizen participation is the so-called participatory budget.

“Participatory budgeting (PB) is a process through which citizens participate directly in budget formulation, decision-making and monitoring of budget execution. It creates a channel for citizens to give voice to their budget priorities.
PB directly involves local people in making decisions on the spending priorities for a defined public budget. This means engaging residents and community groups representative of all parts of the community to discuss spending priorities, make spending proposals and vote on them, as well as giving local people a role in the scrutiny and monitoring of the process”.

Local governments make tools available to their community so neighbors can participate directly in distributing public resources destined for that community. They are the neighbors who present proposals for improvements in their community that is then put to the election of all community members. Obtaining transparency, commitment, and participation from the region’s neighbors indirectly increase trust in the government that manages them.  In the city of La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina, the participatory budget was successfully carried out periodically since 2008.

It is directly related to the dimension of smart governance since it allows the citizen to be involved in government decisions. This report presents a contextualization of the participatory budget and the success story of the city of La Plata. The next web lecture also explains the case study, the actual process, and the implementation.

Note that our assignment for this module is also about participatory budgets!

Main Takeaways

• The Participatory Budget consists of a process of direct, permanent, voluntary and universal intervention in which the citizens, together with the government, deliberate and decide what public policies must be implemented with part of the municipal budget.
• Citizens are the beneficiaries of the services managed by the five pillars (Social, Economic, Environment, Governance and Urban Infrastructure), but their participation in the decisions of governments are increasingly important.  
• The decisions of local governments have a direct impact on the daily life of citizens. Consequently, it is essential to support the direct participation of citizens in local political decisions.