Participatory Budgeting|My essay solution

Instructions

In our course text, the author describes a number of budget frameworks, including current services budgeting, fixed-ceiling budgeting, open-ended budgeting, hybrid techniques, performance budgeting, planning-programing budgeting, and zero-base budgeting.

One type of budget he does not mention is participatory budgeting, perhaps because it is used mostly at the local level. Please investigate the Participatory Budget Project website and conduct research on your own to learn more about PB.

For full credit, please answer all of the following questions and cite your sources:

1. Do you think participatory budgeting would be useful in the city where you live, have lived at one time, or hope to live someday?
2. Are there particular types of expenditures you think PB would be more suitable for than others?
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the PB approach?
4. Of the budgeting systems described in Chapter 7 (Fixed-ceiling budgeting, performance budgeting, etc.), which do you think would be most compatible with participatory budgeting? Explain why.

SOLUTION

Part 1: Investigating Participatory Budgeting

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic process that involves citizens in deciding how to allocate public funds. PB originated in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989 and has since been adopted in over 1,500 cities worldwide. The Participatory Budget Project (PBP) is a nonprofit organization that promotes PB in the United States and Canada. According to the PBP, PB is “a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget.”