The City of Paris has been running the largest scale Participatory Budgeting process in Europe. As part of an international study visit to Paris in December 2016 by representatives of Glasgow and Fife Community Planning Partnerships, enabled by What Works Scotland, a report by "Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme"(APUR) into the types of projects proposed in 2015… Read More
Documents
Downloadable reports, briefings and research papers
10 principles for fiscal transparency: A GIFT to open government?
There are many reason to use Participatory Budgeting. Such as to inspire citizens to take greater responsibility within their community, or to strengthen the democratic mandate of elected officials. A significant additional reason is to promote open and transparent government, at all levels. As a piece of municipal ‘graffiti’ in Brazil, the home of Participatory… Read More
Review of 1st Generation Participatory Budgeting in Scotland
A new paper reviewing the evidence about participatory budgeting processes in Scotland up to June 2016. Written by WhatWorks Scotland it examines the growth and development of the first generation of participatory budgeting in Scotland in order to generate insight to support the strategic and operational leadership and delivery of future participatory budgeting. Scotland has… Read More
Mainstreaming Participatory Budgeting: Ideas for delivering PB at Scale
This briefing has been produced in response to Scotland’s Community Choices programme and aims to support public sector organisations wishing to develop ‘mainstream’ Participatory Budgeting(PB) initiatives. It complements the recent Guide to Participatory Budgeting Grant-making released in September 2016 It is relevant to any organisation working in the UK with an interest in furthering democratic… Read More
Grant Making Through Participatory Budgeting: A ‘How To’ Guide.
Grant making through Participatory Budgeting: A ‘How To’ Guide for Community Led Organisations and community engagement workers. Launched in September 2016, this guide was written by PB Partners, at the request of the Scottish Government, to support the £2m Community Choices programme. Specifically written with community led organisations in mind but also useful for front… Read More
Guidance on E-PB from the PB Unit
One of the jobs the UK PB Network does is save and make available the valuable work done on PB over many years. So we re-publish many toolkits produced in the days of the the PB Unit, that ran from 2008 to 2012. One of these, not previously on this site is the first coherent… Read More
SQW’s Evaluation of Participatory Budgeting in England 2011
In 2011, just as the New Labour sponsored English National Strategy for PB was winding down, the evaluation of the programme undertaken by SQW was published. Though its no longer readily available on UK government websites, unless you know where to look. Therefore a copy of the report "Communities in the Driving Seat" has been… Read More
Chicago Participatory Budgeting produces its own online rule book
Chicago was the first significant participatory budgeting programme in the USA. Under the guidance of Alderman Joe Moore, who was also a participant on a learning exchange to the UK in 2013 that spurred on new PB work in Scotland it has expanded and become more structured, and there is now a well developed website… Read More
How do we know our participatory budgeting is working? Measure it!
A shared language to evaluate PB processes. That was the goal. How best to compare and contrast, and also validate the effectiveness of participatory budgeting(PB) has been addressed in the USA through a new research programme. There are many measures of success in PB but with the release of 15 key metrics for PB evaluation… Read More
Decaffeinated Participation: Where has the social justice in Participatory Budgeting gone?
Archon Fung of Harvard University is one of the leading academics in the field of participatory democracy, and in a newly published article doesn’t pull his punches, calling many participatory programmes running worldwide PB-Lite… a form of decaffeinated politics, that are missing some essential ingredients. Fung believes "Social justice receded from the agenda of participatory… Read More