Is COVID-19 a Driver for e-Participation? Insights from Participatory Budgeting in Poland.

This paper explores how COVID-19 has impacted e-participation, i.e., participation by electronic means, in public decision-making, specifically in certain forms of local community budgeting. We expound the concept of e-participation and its sub-concepts and investigate these as applicable to participatory budgeting. 34 managers in five City Halls in Poland were interviewed on their views and experiences with moving public interactions on-line during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly as these interactions relate to participatory budgeting. The findings indicate that COVID-19 has indeed accelerated the digitalization of the participatory budgeting procedures, and to some extent may have increased community participation in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]