Participatory budgeting

From Freepedia

Participatory budgeting is an attempt to allow citizens to participate in the decision on how public budgets should be spent. The typical participatory budget problem is to select a set of projects among many with different costs when the budget is restricted and people have different opinions on their benefits. The first experiment of participatory budgeting was performed in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1989. As of 2003, more than 200 municipalities are estimated to experiment participatory budgeting.

In Porto Alegre, a portion of the municipal budget is set aside for public use that is determined during a series of meetings. The meetings, which are held annually, include representatives from each sector of the corporatist system. All participants must agree upon how to allocate funds in the budget; this induces co-operation and typically generates a cue that empowers groups that are typically left out of the budgeting process.

A number of English language reports on participatory budgeting opportunities in the UK, and links to people working on it worldwide, can be had at the resources page of www.participatorybudgeting.org.uk