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Vote for your Park: nothing but a bad idea?
(Originally posted here) The London government has launched an initiative called “Vote for your Park”, where Londoners can decide where to allocate ten grants of up to £400,000 for London’s parks....
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Just released: Open Budget Index
(Originally posted here) The International Budget Partnership released today the Open Budget Index (OBI). The UK scores first on the provision of budget information to its public, followed by South...
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From Australia, An E-Participatory Budgeting Experiment
(originally posted at TechPresident) The government of the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), in an attempt to mitigate the effects of the economic downturn and stimulate local economies, has...
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Open Knowledge Festival
I will soon be in Helsinki for the Open Knowledge Festival to give a keynote lecture. The subjects will be citizen engagement, participatory budgeting and technology. This talk will be on the topic...
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Mapping Participatory Budgeting and e-Participatory Budgeting
This is still work in progress. I have been trying to map participatory budgeting and e-participatory budgeting initiatives across the world.There are many more e-participatory budgeting initiatives...
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Open Government: Technology and Citizen Engagement
A talk I recently gave at the World Bank on citizen engagement and technology.
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Participatory Budgeting: Seven Defining Characteristics
I am often asked for definitions of participatory budgeting. Normally, I use the following definition in my texts: “Participatory budgeting (PB) can be broadly defined as the participation of citizens...
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The Guardian on Participatory Budgeting
The Guardian has come up with an interesting piece on Porto Alegre’s participatory budgeting, highlighting some of the benefits (well-known to some) of the process: The effects have been...
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The Effects of Participatory Budgeting on Infant Mortality in Brazil
picture by Blog do MÃlton Jung on Flickr Adding pieces of evidence to the ROI of citizen participation. Highlights are mine: Participatory budgeting, via which the common citizen is given the ability...
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The Benefits of Citizen Engagement: a (Brief) Review of the Evidence
Picture by neotint on flickr. (I am working on a brief literature review on the benefits of participation, focusing on its different types of impact. Most of it (but not entirely) relates to...
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13 New Articles on Participatory Budgeting
A band inaugurates a public work selected through participatory budgeting in Brazil (picture by Prefeitura de Olinda on Flickr). The new issue of the Journal of Public Deliberation (Volume 8, Issue 2 –...
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Unequal Participation: Open Government’s Unresolved Dilemma
( cross-posted from techPresident) In my frequent conversations about open government and citizen participation, the subject of elite capture (or “how representative it is”) is almost unavoidable. Some...
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Civil Society and Participation in Brazil: A Literature Review
This literature review is divided into six sections. The first section briefly describes the theoretical and empirical background of debates about civil society and participation: the democratization...
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The Participatory Turn: Participatory Budgeting Comes to America
So here it is, finally, the much awaited PhD by Hollie Russon-Gilman (Ash Center – Harvard) on Participatory Budgeting in the United States. Below is the abstract. Participatory Budgeting (PB) has...
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Documentary: Participatory Budgeting in Belo Horizonte
Through the Facebook Participatory Budgeting group I came across a documentary about Belo Horizonte’s PB. The documentary, by Joao Ramos de Almeida, provides a unique view of the functioning of one of...
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10 Most Read Posts in 2013
Below is a selection of the 10 most read posts at DemocracySpot in 2013. Thanks to all of those who stopped by throughout the year, and happy 2014. 1. Does transparency lead to trust? Some evidence on...
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When Citizen Engagement Saves Lives (and what we can learn from it)
When it comes to the relationship between participatory institutions and development outcomes, participatory budgeting stands out as one of the best examples out there. For instance, in a paper...
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A Review of the Evidence on Open Budgeting
Brand new. “A Review of the Evidence on Open Budgeting” is a recent report by the World Bank Institute’sCapacity Development and Results team. It explores key questions and existing evidence around...
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New Book on 25 Years of Participatory Budgeting
A little while ago I mentioned the launch of the Portuguese version of the book organized by Nelson Dias, “Hope for Democracy: 25 Years of Participatory Budgeting Worldwide”. The good news is that the...
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Technology and Citizen Engagement: Friend or Foe?
Rio Grande do Sul Participatory Budgeting Voting System (2014) Within the open government debate, there is growing interest in the role of technology in citizen engagement. However, as interest in the...
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