Participatory budgeting for public involvement in environmental sustainability at a Thai university

Abstract

Participatory democracy where the public influences and feels involved in policy making is an ideal in democratic societies. In this paper, principles of participatory democracy are implemented at a Thai university through participatory budgeting focusing on environmental sustainability projects. On a general education course, students generated and proposed projects for environmental sustainability at the university. All university members were invited to vote on which projects should be actually implemented within the constraints of a limited budget. The study focuses on the public’s bases for selecting projects to implement and their reactions to being invited to take part in participatory budgeting. A corpus-informed analysis of the public’s responses shows that participants engaged in thoughtful community-oriented consideration of the projects and were overwhelmingly positive about their involvement. These findings suggest that participatory budgeting is a valuable tool for raising awareness of and promoting involvement in environmental sustainability.