Participatory Budgeting in Angola: Nongovernmental Contributions from Development Workshop Angola and Acção para o Desenvolvimento Rural e Ambiente

This systematic review explores the role of participatory budgeting (PB) in enhancing public finance systems and improving policy effectiveness within local governance contexts. Drawing upon the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 framework, this study synthesizes findings from 92 peer-reviewed articles and high-quality institutional reports published between 2000 and 2024. The review investigates how PB contributes to fiscal decentralization, budget transparency, equitable public expenditure, service delivery, social inclusion, and civic engagement. Through a rigorous analysis of empirical and theoretical contributions, the review highlights the multidimensional value of PB in realigning public spending with local needs and promoting democratic accountability. Key findings indicate that PB strengthens the alignment between public resource allocation and community-defined priorities, reduces corruption through participatory oversight mechanisms, and fosters institutional trust by enhancing transparency and inclusiveness. The evidence shows that PB not only empowers marginalized populations—such as women, youth, and ethnic minorities—but also encourages sustained civic learning, social cohesion, and citizen-state collaboration. However, successful implementation of PB is contingent upon several enabling conditions, including strong political commitment, sufficient administrative capacity, legal frameworks that institutionalize participatory practices, and the presence of an active and organized civil society. Comparative analysis across Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America reveals that while PB principles are globally adaptable, their effectiveness varies depending on local political culture, institutional maturity, and infrastructural readiness. The review also underscores the potential of digital PB platforms in expanding access and participation, though challenges remain regarding inclusivity and the digital divide. Despite promising impacts, the review identifies notable research gaps, such as the absence of longitudinal impact assessments, limited integration of intersectional frameworks, and the underrepresentation of PB practices in fragile, post-conflict, or authoritarian contexts. Furthermore, most evaluations focus on output measures (e.g., number of projects funded) rather than long-term governance or developmental outcomes. By consolidating diverse strands of literature, this review underscores PB’s transformative potential as both a governance mechanism and a fiscal tool. It calls for more context-sensitive, interdisciplinary research to fully understand PB’s long-term contributions to inclusive development, democratic renewal, and sustainable public finance reform.

Almost 20% of the Czech population could participate in a project-oriented municipal participatory budget (PB) in 2019. The general pattern is quite similar across the municipalities: PB takes place outside of the standard budget process and it only allocates small resources. Analysis of 133 PB cases in 59 municipalities between 2014 and 2019 reveals huge experimentation regarding who can participate, how to vote, and how to utilise ICT during the process and for communication. PB promoted networking of active citizens and civil society organisations, many creative or original proposals were realised, and experimentation with the D21 voting took place. Participation in PB is lower than participation in the general election. Despite an increase in the number of participating municipalities, there are only a handful of municipalities with really performing PB processes and a growing number of downgrading municipalities. Many municipalities observe a decline in the number of submitted proposals.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore elites' prevalence in the process of participatory budgeting (PB) in a Ukrainian municipality.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on the elite control and capture literature to examine the occurrence of unintended consequences resulting from the process of PB. Data for this case study are derived from document analysis and semi-structured interviews.FindingsThis study demonstrates how the involvement of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) promoted PB in a Ukrainian municipality. In the process of orienting politicians and administrators to PB, its normative benefits tend to be prioritised, whilst very little attention has been paid to making inhabitants aware of their role in the process of participatory decision-making. Although PB is intended to propagate good governance and accountability, it has in fact turned out to be a means of promoting corruption and furthering the personal interests of rent-seeking actors.Practical implicationsThe paper demonstrates how elites can capture and control PB in the context of emerging economies, thereby preventing its propagated benefits of ensuring equality, justice and emancipation in local communities from being realised.Originality/valueExploring PB in Ukraine, the authors urge that caution should be exercised with regard to the wholesale adoption of externally/NGO-propagated ideas. Each emerging economy context is distinct, and an appreciation of this uniqueness is key to the success of PB reforms in different countries.

Background . Participatory budgeting is an innovative tool for public engagement that contributes to the democratization of local financial management. In Ukraine, this mechanism is considered an important element of strengthening local democracy and transparency in the decision-making process. However, despite positive trends, the development of participatory budgeting remains limited due to the fragmented regulatory framework, lack of consistency in its implementation, and low level of public awareness. The article presents an analysis of the current regulatory framework for the budget participation in Ukraine, key problems were identified and ways to solve them were proposed, taking into account international experience. Methods . The research was conducted using qualitative and quantitative analysis of the regulatory acts governing participatory budgeting in Ukraine. A case-study method was employed, specifically analyzing participatory budgeting models in Brazil, Poland, and other countries. The assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the regulations was based on expert surveys of local government officials, non-governmental organizations, and researchers. A crucial research tool was the review of literature, international recommendations, and reports on the implementation of participatory budgeting. Results . The analysis showed that Ukraine lacks a special profile law that would regulate the participatory budgeting process. Instead, various subordinate regulations operate, which cause heterogeneity of practices in different regions. International experience demonstrates that successful participatory budgeting systems are based on clear legislative norms and active public involvement. Among the strengths of the current system in Ukraine, initiative at the local level can be highlighted, while among the weaknesses is the lack of a systemic approach and uncertainty about responsibility for project implementation. Conclusions . For the effective implementation of participatory budgeting in Ukraine, it is necessary to adopt a separate law that clearly defines the rights and responsibilities of all stakeholders. Increasing public awareness and utilizing digital technologies to ensure transparency and engagement are also crucial. The adoption of best practices from international experience will enable Ukraine to build a sustainable and inclusive system of participatory budgeting

Brazil is home to some of the most successful experiences in participatory local government. The proliferation of civil society organizations in Brazil during the transition to democratic rule was accompanied by the development of new political values and strategies that fostered institutional renewal at the municipal level. Brazil's 1988 constitution decentralized political authority, thereby granting municipal administrations sufficient resources and political independence to restructure policymaking processes. Coalitions of civil society organizations and political reformers have taken advantage of this flexibility to experiment with new institutional types. The political strategies of civil society organizations are often driven by the need to find immediate solutions to dire social problems and by a broader interest in increasing the access of ordinary citizens to key decision-making venues. The strategies of the political reformers, often led by the left-of-center Workers' Party (PT), have been based on transforming how and to whom public goods are distributed. Scholars in the theoretical debate on democratization have missed key linkages among civil society activists, local participation, governing coalitions, and institutions because they have conceived of only two mutually exclusive options, the demobilization of civil society in posttransition settings and the emergence of counterinstitutional civil society organizations of a social movement type. These theoretical frameworks are unable to show how Brazil's civil society is linked to efforts to expand the institutional terrain on which citizens compete for political resources. This article identifies cases in Brazil where civil society organizations challenge old practices, such as clientelism and patronage, while simultaneously offering concrete alternatives for new practices, strategies, and institutions. The specific political strategies developed by civil society organizations during Brazil's transition to democracy fostered the creation of deliberative policymaking institutions. One institutional type, participatory budgeting, incorporates citizens into deliberative decision-making venues. Political activity within civil society has led to significant political and social change in municipal government in Brazil, belying claims that Brazil finds itself trapped in a deadlocked democracy.' Participatory budgeting was initiated in 1989 in the municipality of Porto Alegre

Restricting NGOs: From Pushback to Accommodation

Participation of Non-Resident Students in the Creation of Participatory Budget in Wroclaw

Self-help or public housing? Lessons from co-managed slum upgrading via participatory budget

This chapter analyses the opportunities created by participatory institutions to expand accountability and the concurrent intertwining sets of interests among the relevant actors that may actually limit that expansion. It considers Brazil's best-known participatory experience, participatory budgeting (PB, Orcamento Participativo), in the municipalities of Sao Paulo, Recife, and Porto Alegre. This innovative institutional format incorporates citizens and municipal administrative officials into a policy-making process in which citizens directly negotiate over the distribution of public resources. To address the interplay of institutions and interests, this chapter focuses on the ways in which PB realigns the relations between the political decision-makers and civil society, and more specifically between mayors and Citizens and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). The chapter draws on the three variants of the 'accountability' debates: societal, vertical, and horizontal. The case studies analysed in this chapter cut across the three types of accountability. Keywords: accountability; Brazil; Citizens and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs); Mayors; participatory budgeting (PB); participatory institutions; Porto Alegre; Recife; Sao Paulo

Recently, participatory budgeting (PB) has received widespread attention and has been widely adopted and implemented all over the world. Although the vast part of the literature on PB demonstrates the international prestige and diffusion of PB as a research object, little attention has been paid to understanding the endogenous factors that affect PB’s functioning and outcomes achieved or the way in which it limits success. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the growing debate by exploring how PB, as a democratic governance tool, has been translated within the public sector. Based on a policy translation framework, this study focuses on Taipei City in Taiwan, which was the pioneer to initiate experiments towards PB. Using several data sources, including personal involvement of PB programmes, document analysis and in-depth interviews with experts, policy planners, and council members, a closer analysis of how the translation took place in Taipei City could help to identify mechanisms underlying the PB construction in practice.

This study aims to analyse the amendment process of the resident participatory budgeting ordinance of the Suwon City Government by applying Kingdon's Policy Stream Framework, and to explore ways to activate the participatory budgeting system. This study examines the three streams in the Kingdon’s Policy Stream Framework influenced by the revision of the participatory budgeting ordinance and identifies who played a leading role. In particular, this study analyses to resolve the structural limitation of the system and suggests ways to revitalize the system. As a result, it is necessary to audit the political stream of Kingdon’s 3 policy stream in order to legislate a new system such as the participatory budgeting system. The political stream is the most influential in deciding whether to introduce participatory budgeting. It is also important to make a cooperative network among local government, local council and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in order to solve the structural limitations of the participatory budgeting system, such as the lack of professionalism and representatives of the residents.

Participatory budgeting (PB) is designed to leverage local knowledge about community needs and translate spending preferences into tangible community development action by giving communities control over key budgetary resources. Moreover, PB participants learn about decision-making processes in development policy and can organize to pursue their communities’ interests beyond the PB process by engaging with government and civil society. PB advocates hope that infrastructure, service delivery, and, ultimately, well-being will improve for underserved communities and groups that have been historically excluded from the perspective of representative democracy. This article presents the theoretical logic connecting PB to community development and summarizes the global evidence from studies that test the theoretical propositions above. We find evidence for PB’s impact on community development performance in several important contexts. However, we also note that many hypotheses have yet to be tested in rigorous, large-N, comparative studies. There is thus considerable room to evaluate PB’s impact in the future.

Participatory governance programs, which institutionalize government—civil society interactions through the promotion of public deliberation and decision making, are being adopted by local governments to harness a wide range of outcomes believed to be positively associated with citizens' and civil society organizations' active involvement in public life. This article draws from an original survey administered to 833 individuals elected to leadership positions in Brazil's municipal-level participatory budgeting program. Analysis of these data using a series of outcome variables and a set of individual- and municipal-level variables demonstrates that civil society organization (CSO) leaders now engage in direct negotiations with other CSOs, form alliances with other CSOs and carry these practices into other institutional venues, which helps to undercut traditional clientelistic practices while also empowering citizens and enhancing the quality of democracy. Further, citizens living in communities that directly benefit from public works won through participatory budgeting are empowered by credible state commitment. Citizens not directly affiliated with a CSO continue to rely on their direct connections to government officials, thus demonstrating that individuals' type of involvement in civil society has a significant impact on how participatory governance arrangements can affect basic state—society relationships.

PurposeIn this paper, the authors focus on participatory budgeting (PB) as an organizational issue in local government. The aim of this study is to analyze the premises of PB becoming institutionalized in local governance by scrutinizing the factors that enable or disable PB as a collaborative innovation process, and that in turn build innovative capacity. The authors study how the collaborative innovation process constructs the innovation capacity of local government and further how this enables PB to institutionalize in local government. With this study, the authors deepen the understanding of PB as a collaborative innovation process that may encounter obstacles and hindrances, but also enablers and drivers for creating and transforming sustainable collaborative practices in local government.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the authors present a case study from one Finnish local government, the city of Lahti. The authors employ multifaced empirical data collected from the city of Lahti in two PB rounds between 2019 and 2022. Data include surveys for citizens and employees and municipal councilors and altogether 24 interviews with employees and councilors. The authors also gathered data by observing the PB process in Lahti, taking parts in workshops and meetings between 2019 and 2022. Municipal documents were likewise used as data in this study.FindingsThe institutionalization of PB in a local government organization requires organizational innovation capacity, not only individuals who are keen, motived and committed to work on PB. However, the Lahti case shows that successful PB results from the citizens' viewpoint can on one hand be reached while simultaneously the sustainability of PB needs more organizational commitment and support that materializes into managerial activities. The authors found that adequate resourcing is a key question in the institutionalization of PB.Originality/valueIn the present study, the authors approach the often-neglected topic of PB from the professional viewpoint in public administration. The originality of the empirical setting is the multifaced data collection during the first two rounds of PB in Lahti. It is highly relevant to analyze PB in its early stages as the organizational difficulties and resistance are at the time at their highest. This study offers a unique perspective on to the initialization of a novel participatory method in a city where no such efforts on this scale have been implemented before.

BackgroundThere has been growing interest in the contribution of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to international health research. One strength that NGOs may bring to research involves the potential value of service delivery experience for indicating relevant research questions, namely through their involvement in service delivery, NGO staff may be aware of frontline knowledge gaps, allowing these staff to identify questions that lead to research with immediate relevance. However, there is little empirical evidence on research agendas within NGOs to assess whether their service delivery experience does lead to relevant research or conditions that affect this. This article examines the identification and selection of research questions within NGOs to explore the role of their service delivery experience in generating relevant research agendas.MethodsThe article reports comparative case study research on four NGOs in Malawi, including two international and two Malawian organisations. Each NGO conducts research and undertakes service delivery and advocacy. Data collection included interviews, focus groups, observation and document review. Analysis involved thematic coding and use of diagrams.ResultsThe case NGOs’ experiences suggest that using service delivery to identify research questions does not always match NGOs’ aims or capacities, and does not guarantee relevance. First, NGOs do not want to rely only on service delivery when developing research agendas; they consider other criteria and additional sources of ideas when selecting questions they see as relevant. Second, service delivery staff are not always well-placed to identify research topics; indeed, involvement in hectic, target-driven service delivery can hinder input to research agendas. Third, NGOs’ ability to pursue questions inspired by service delivery depends on control over their research agendas; relationships with external actors and financial autonomy affect NGOs’ capacity to undertake the research they see as relevant. Finally, the perceived relevance of research findings varies between audiences and depends on more than the research question.ConclusionsThe findings suggest limits to the value and feasibility of a research agenda based on service delivery experience. Based on the analysis, the conclusion outlines strategies to support an effective role for NGOs’ service delivery experience in development of research agendas.