What is Participatory Budgeting (PB)?
There is no single definition, because Participatory Budgeting differs greatly from one
place to the next. The present Manual will attempt to reveal this diversity. Nevertheless,
in general terms, a Participatory Budget is "a mechanism (or process) through
which the population decides on, or contributes to decisions made on, the destination
of all or part of the available public resources."
Ubiratán de Souza, one of the primary people responsible for the Participatory Budget
in Porto Alegre (Brazil) proposes a more precise and theoretical definition that can
be applied to the majority of the Brazilian cases: "Participatory Budgeting is a process
of direct, voluntary and universal democracy, where the people can debate and
decide on public budgets and policy. The citizen’s participation is not limited to the
act of voting to elect the executive or the legislators, but also decides on spending
priorities and controls the management of the government. He ceases to be an enabler
of traditional politics and becomes a permanent protagonist of public administration.
The PB combines direct democracy with representative democracy, an achievement
that should be preserved and valued."5 In fact the Participatory Budget is a
form of participatory democracy, in other words a combination of elements of direct
or semi-direct democracy with representative democracy.