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This study focuses on the relationship between NGOs’ active participation in municipal budgeting and their perception of budget efficiency. Our research estimates the relationships among transparency, trust in the municipality, NGOs' active participation, responsibility, and budget efficiency perception via the structural equation model. The findings indicate that active participation plays a key role in the model and directly affects the perception of budget efficiency. Besides, increased active participation, NGOs' responsibility, and trust positively affect budget efficiency perception. Transparency mediated through active participation and trust affects the perception of budget efficiency. Trust, transparency, and responsibility positively affect active participation.

A controversial issue in the public management literature is the role attributed to women. Analyzing the existing literature, few works have been written about how the presence of women is valued in the public sector. From this analysis, several discriminatory elements are still present, and gender equality seems to be far away. However, this objective must continue to be pursued, also considering the relevance given to the gender equality issue by the United Nations in the Sustainable Development Goals. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to implement political, economic and societal legislation, programs and policies to minimize the differences between men and women. In this perspective, Gender Budgeting (GB) could be an interesting field of research. It consists of a systematic review about how women benefit from public sector expenditures, an adjustment of budgets to ensure equality of access to public sector expenditures, enhancing productive capacity and meeting social needs. However, GB could be adopted differently and could produce several results. In particular, the implementation of GB as a participatory tool is still nowadays a challenge and could be fascinating to analyze, considering the various benefits that a participatory approach could imply. One of the main reasons for the lack of direct citizens involvement in GB is that it was initially developed from a macro-perspective at the national budget. On the other hand, other participatory tools, such as the participatory budget, originate at the local level. Therefore, examining the existing literature and focusing on two different processes, but with some overlapping characteristics elements, namely participatory budgeting and gender budgeting, the present research aims to create a participatory GB framework, investigating the insertion of a participatory perspective in the process, specifically women’s engagement, not neglecting the relevance of digitalization to this end.

The participation of citizens (especially women) in the budgeting process could be crucial in promoting gender equality enhancing the female role in society (Steccolini, 2019; Pastore, Tommaso, 2020). People's engagement in the budgeting process could privilege equality in accessing different capabilities, focusing on the needs and expectations rather than merely analysing how the resources have been allocated (Gunluk-Senesen, 2021; Rubin, Bartle, 2021), as in standard gender budgeting (Klatzer, Addabbo, Alarcon-García, O’Hagan, 2018). Furthermore, the inclusion of digital tools could enable women’s engagement in gender budgeting, as in the participatory budgeting experiences (Stortone, Cindio, 2015; Sampaio, Peixoto, 2014). Therefore, the present research investigates the integration of a participatory perspective in gender budgeting, highlighting the relevance of digital technologies in enhancing citizens’, specifically women’s, engagement (Stortone, Cindio, 2015). This study is ascribable to a conceptual paper in that it led to the development of a new model, building on theories and concepts identified and tested through empirical research (Jaakkola, 2020). Therefore, reviewing the existing literature about participatory budgeting (Papadopoulos, Warin, 2007; Sintomer, Herzberg, Allegretti, Röcke, Alves, 2013; Bartocci, Grossi, Mauro, 2019), gender budgeting (Klatzer, Addabbo, Alarcon-García, O’Hagan, 2018; Gunluk-Senesen, 2021) and digital tools’ effect on citizens’ engagement (Stortone, Cindio, 2015; Sampaio, Peixoto, 2014), a new “participatory” gender budgeting framework is created. The peculiarity of this research lies in its comprehensive approach in studying gender budgeting and its “participatory” view, in line with the paradigm of public management called New Public Governance (Osborne, 2006), which calls for greater involvement of citizens. This is pursued through digital tools that can enhance the government's capability to intercept citizens' needs and perceptions (Grossi, Biancone, Secinaro, Brescia, 2021). The most significant contribution consists of developing a comprehensive model that integrates gender budgeting, usually a posteriori, with citizens’ participation and engagement, typical of participatory budgeting. The nexus between gender budgeting and participatory budget has been already analysed in the past (Ng, 2016). However, no work seems to integrate these processes with digitalisation, suggesting some practical measures, such as introducing a platform for collecting citizens’ proposals.

Participatory budgeting (PB) is often discussed as a tool to support active participation of citizens in the decision-making in the matters of the distribution of public resources. However, little was said about the possibility that the choice of a voting method used in the voting phase of the PB process could affect the participation in PB. In the Czech Republic, the Democracy 2.1 (D21) voting method is often used in municipalities implementing PB and additionally, it is promoted as a method to encourage more people to vote. This article aims to determine Czech municipalities with the D21 method and its modification, and to evaluate the impact of choosing these voting methods on participation rate in PB. The study suggests that the choice of a voting method is relevant for citizens´ engagement in voting. Based on the empirical findings, the D21 method and its modification are associated with a higher voter turnout in PB than another voting method. Further, the results underline the influence of external organizations offering online platforms for voting.

This is the pre-registration of a replication of the survey experiment described in "Participation in Participatory Budgeting" among a representative sample of the Dutch population recruited by the surveying company Dynata. The hypotheses, design and analysis plan are the same, except for: (a) the population (general Dutch population); (b) the introduction to the vignette to fit with the new population of citizens; and (c) the analyses (i.e. (i) there is no manipulation check in the survey so we cannot account for responses to such a question in the analyses; (ii) we can only run as a robustness check a regression analysis with controls for age, gender, and level of education).

The present study uses a survey experiment to assess to what degree the amount of money available in participatory budgeting (PB) affects citizens' propensity to participate in several ways: voting, 'liking,' posting arguments, and submitting a project proposal. The survey will be administered among people who indicated they would like to receive updates on Benoordenhout Begroot -an online PB process that took place in The Hague, the Netherlands.

This article explores how participatory budgeting (PB), which is described as a travelling policy innovation, has been interpreted in different urban governance contexts, particularly how local settings that are created by contexts and practices enable participation in PB. Travelling policy innovations are sets of ideas or experiments that aim at renewing governance practices and are adopted globally. PB engages citizens to discuss, prioritize and decide about the use of public funds. With empirical data from the cities of Tampere, Łódź, and the Greater Manchester area the article demonstrates that settings of participation in PB are conditioned by (1) socio-political context, (2) objectives setting, (3) resourcing, (4) decision-making and (5) relationship-building. Based on an interpretive view on policy studies, it is argued that these settings enable participation in PB in three ways. Firstly, they influence the continuity of PB; secondly, they suggest particular roles for participants; and thirdly, they formulate the level of interaction. This is demonstrated with three operationalisations of PB, such as pop-up PB, traditional PB and do-it-yourself PB. publishedVersion

Der Bürgerhaushalt gilt als eines der am häufigsten eingesetzten Open Government Verfahren in Deutschland und dient der Beteiligung der Bürger an der Entscheidungsfindung zur Verwendung öffentlicher Mittel. Ungeachtet der wachsenden Nachfrage der Bürger nach politischen Beteiligungsrechten bleibt die Nutzung des Verfahrens regelmäßig hinter den Erwartungen von Politik und Verwaltung zurück. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es Barrieren aufzuzeigen, die der Nutzung entgegenstehen und Maßnahmen zu diskutieren, die geeignet scheinen, Beteiligungsbarrieren zu überwinden. Participatory budgeting is one of the most frequently used open government procedures in Germany and aims to involve citizens in decision-making on the use of public funds. Despite the growing demand from citizens for political participation, the use of the procedure regularly falls short of the expectations of politics and public administration. The aim of this thesis is to identify barriers to its use and to discuss measures that seem suitable to overcome barriers to participation in participatory budgeting.

Citizen Participation and Participatory Budgeting in Alytus City Municipality. Back in 2018 the city of Alytus became the first municipality in Lithuania to adopt a democratic innovation known as participatory budgeting. The aim of the paper is to find out what kind of perception do members of Alytus city council have about citizen participation and how do they try to expand citizen participation in the city of Alytus. The paper presents some of the main ideas of representative democracy and participatory democracy as well as several typologies of citizen participation which create a theoretical framework for this paper. To answer the question of this paper 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with the city council members. The answers are analysed in the light of a theoretical framework that has been constructed earlier. As it appears from the analysis, the perception of members of Alytus city council on citizen participation are rather close to some main ideas of participatory democracy. Local politicians admit that the participation of citizens is of high importance, although, the importance of council members should not be diminished either. It appears that the majority of participatory initiatives comes from above – the political level, with the exception of Jaunimas park's case, where the initiative came from the local community. In the view of normative theories on citizen participations, the mechanisms of participation that are present and were initiated by the local politicians in Alytus do not have very high levels on the ladder of participation. When talking about participatory budget, from the analysis, it can be seen that the city council members desire for current model to develop towards the so called ideal model of „Porto Alegre adapted to Europe“, which is known for fostering meetings at the neighbourhood level. The paper can help to further the research about citizen participation in Lithuania. Some of the insights can be useful and applied during another case study of a Lithuanian municipality or when making a comparative study of several Lithuanian cases. Another question that could be addressed in the future is do the citizens of Alytus share the same sentiments about participation as the local politicians do.

Citizen participation is one of the national values in Kenya and is also a principle of public service. This study examined the key factors affecting public participation in budgeting process in the County Government of Nandi in Kenya. The study also sought to identify the key socio-cultural factors affecting public participation in the budgeting process in Nandi County. The study adopted a descriptive survey design targeting Community Based Organizations’ (CBOs) members who are residents of Nandi County, CBO officials and officials from the Treasury and Economic Planning department in the County Government of Nandi. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select members of Community Based Organizations who were administered with structured questionnaires. The study found out that public participation enhances the quality of the budgeting process. The study also found out that stakeholders’ involvement in budgeting process enhances accountability and transparency. Pearson correlation test found that there was a statistically significant positive relationship (R = 0.513) between stakeholder’s involvement and budgeting process since p < 0.05 (p = 0.014). It was also found that socio-cultural factors could also affect public participation in the budgeting process and using Pearson correlation test to determine the effect of socio-cultural factors on participatory budgeting process, the study found a weak positive relationship (R = 0.203) between Socio-cultural factors and budgeting process since p < 0.05 (p = 0.203).&nbsp

In the first chapter of this book, different levels or phases of public participation were discussed and we found that Afghanistan is at the initial levels of public participation; enough information is still not provided to the public to enable constructive and meaningful participation in budgeting, planning and oversight. In this chapter, public participation in budgeting and planning at the provincial and central levels is discussed in detail. At the central level (Kabul), ministries and parliament are the key organs responsible for making the budget process participatory; at the provincial level, provincial councils, provincial development committees, and municipalities are key organs in relation to public participation in budgeting, planning and oversight. The role of legislature and executive ministries in public participation is discussed separately in Chaps. 8 and 7 respectively. Afghanistan has a centralized governance system, and owing to a low capacity and security problems in the provinces, public participation is good at the center as compared with the provinces. Citizen participation takes place mainly in the planning and budget formulation phases of the budget process, and in the implementation and oversight phases of the budget, citizen participation is relatively weak or does not take place at all.

This study examines the relationship between approaches of public participation and capital budgeting process. The objective of this study is to determine factors that have caused the lack of public deliberation in Kurdistan budgeting system. It also aims to identify the impacts of deliberation, communication, and information in capital budgeting process. The study administered 465 questionnaires and interviewed 11 budget experts and government officials. The correlation coefficient and regression analysis used to examine relationships. The findings indicated strong positive correlations between deliberation, communication, information and capital budgeting process. The regression analyses demonstrated a unique significant contribution of public participation in capital budgeting process. This study revealed the leading factors that caused lack of deliberation embraces money shortages, political parties interference, corruption, weakness of civil society organizations, lack of trust, and the deployment of classical financial system. The study also revealed that budget communication effectively stimulates capital budgeting process. Additionally, access to budget information promotes good governance, minimizes corruption and the misuse of public budget. It also facilitates the implementations of other participatory approaches and creates an informed and active citizenry. To alleviate public dissatisfaction, service problems, corruption, illegitimate budget decisions, and the misuse of public budget, the Kurdistan government must involve citizens in decisions making through informed, deliberative, and consultative programs. This study becomes a notable policy implication to improve Kurdistan budgeting system.

Participatory gender budget (PGB) has been in practice in China since 2005. Three PGB models have evolved: the “outsider model”, the “insider model” and the “integrated model”. Among the three, Zhejiang's Wenling experiment is unique due to its introduction of the “democratic consultation meeting”; it has accelerated the fulfilment of government's commitment to gender equality, executed some adjustments to the government budget, enhanced equal resource distribution and empowered women in the budget-making process.

Previous studies have identified several predictors of citizen participation in local budgeting, including environmental factors, engagement mechanisms, and the role of public administrators. However, none has studied the interaction effect among these factors. This study seeks to fill this research gap. It argues that the utilization of interactive engagement mechanisms and political environment will have direct impact on the level of citizen participation in budgeting. These relationships are then moderated by municipal managers’ intention to incorporate citizens. Data from a survey of New Jersey municipal administrators were used to test the hypotheses, with controlling for demographic variables in seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) models.

Much of the current U.S. academic literature on participatory budgeting is preoccupied with direct citizen involvement in budget formulation, reflecting a particular normative theory of democracy. In this essay we suggest that U.S. academics can learn from a contemporary international community of practice concerned with “civil-society budget work”-a quasi-grassroots, quasi-pluralist movement with member organizations throughout the developing world-as well as from the budget exhibits mounted by the New York Bureau of Municipal Research at the turn of the last century. The budget-work movement employs third-party intermediation and advocacy, through all phases of the budget cycle. U.S. academics and budget-work practitioners can learn from each other, and this represents an unexploited opportunity for all concerned. We propose a program of locally based action research and trans-local evaluative synthesis.

This chapter examines the links between participatory budgeting and gender budgeting discourses, analysing similarities, differences and tensions. What can actors involved in participatory processes learn from a gender discourse, and what can actors working to achieve gender equality learn from discourses on participation? Assuming the main objectives of gender responsive budgeting are gender equality, greater transparency, empowerment of disempowered social groups and more effective budgeting, this chapter discusses the challenges and opportunities for social change in these processes in light of the German experience.