Conference Agenda

Underlying problems: Originally started in 1989 in Porto Alegre (Brazil), Participatory Budgeting (PB) has been spreading all over the world. In 2008 it had already reached hundreds of implementations in Europe (Sintomer et al. 2008). Since then, the number of European cities which implemented PB at least once has been growing. However, literature proved that on many occasions PBs are interrupted, and referred to instability as «a key element to understand participatory budgeting» (Alves and Allegretti 2012). This raises questions about the conditions for the irreversibility of the process. Indeed, one of the problems nowadays, with all participatory procedures, is that they tend to be ad hoc projects (Chwalisz 2019) which rarely manage to become part of communities’regular political cycles (Chwalisz 2019; Dryzek 2017). Or, as other authors put it, to become «ordinary government tools» (Allulli 2011, 444). That is, participatory policies are only rarely «institutionalized».

Research question: Based on the above-mentioned problems, the paper wants to ask the following research question: what (combinations of) factors can explain the institutionalization status of Participatory Budgeting in Italy in 2023?

Research design and methodological orientation: First of all, the work will explore the topic with regard to the 17 biggest cities in Italy. The historical and theoretical reasons for this focus on big cities will be explained in the complete version of the paper. After determining for each of these cities the degree of institutionalization of PB in 2023, a set of possible explanatory factors for the presence (and the absence) of the outcome will be established, relying on previous empirical and theoretical research, and on the knowledge of the Italian political-administative context.

Relevant theories and theoretical/analytical approaches: Previous theoretical and empirical research tells us that a number of factors may have an influence on the presence and absence of the outcome (the institutionalization status of Participatory Budgeting in Italy in 2023). Among these, favourable political conditions in the city; favourable local goverment’s financial conditions; the presence of a strong civil society; favourable Regional conditions, measured as the presence of Regional legislation forcing or encouraging local governments to institutionalize/implement/experiment participatory policies; the presence of explicit political will, expressed by Mayors, to institutionalize PB; the presence of constant, strong participatory leadership/tendencies; and the rootedness of PB, measured as the presence of experiences with PB before 2014 (the reasons for the choice of this year will be explained in the full version of the paper). These factors will have to be measured and calibrated properly, in order to work as solid foundations for the implementation of a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). QCA will lead to detect the (combinations of) conditions which are necessary and/or sufficient for both the presence and the absence of the outcome.

First hypotheses and propositions: The conditions which are expected to play a role in either the presence or the absence of the outcome have already been listed in the “Relevant theories and theoretical/analytical approaches” section. The presence of each of these factors is expected to have a positive effect on the presence of the outcome. The only exception is the factor “rootedness of PB”, whose possible effect on presence of the outcome is ambigous. On the one hand, one could think that, when a city already experienced PB in a far past, the policy has had enough time to consolidate and get institutionalized by 2023. On the other hand, public administrations which already tried PB a lot of a long time ago might have realized PB does not fit the context’s needs, or have been unsatisfied with policy’s results, and turned to something else.

Expected findings and results: As QCA teaches, it is extremely rare, in social and political science, to find a single condition which is necessary for the presence of the outcome, so this will not be expected. Instead, I do expect to find possible combinations of condinations which are necessary for the presence of the outcome. When it comes to sufficience, I once again expect to find at least two, and possibly more than that, combinations of conditions able to explain the presence and the absence of the outcome.

Problems and challenges the author may face in the research: The main challenges which are likely to be faced in the research relate to the measurement and the calibration of the relevant explanatory conditions. Here, by «calibration» it is meant the process of turning raw data gathered during the measurement process into levels of belonging in sets. The process of calibration represents a crucial step during the implementation of a QCA. When it comes to the measurement process, some problems may arise because data concerning phenomena quite far in the past will be needed, and they may well prove hard to collect. As far as the calibration process is concerned, the biggest challenge, with regard to some explanatory factors, will probably have to do with the detection of meaningful and clearly justifiable thresholds, given the lack of previous empirically or theoretically relevant knowledge.

Participatory Budgeting has been widely discussed, and often celebrated in scholarly literatures on public policy and democratic practice. It is now a part of governance in at least 1,500 cities worldwide. Yet the enthusiasm for it belies important democratic challenges, in particular, those tensions arising between resource distribution through Participatory Budgeting and through existing budget allocation mechanisms. This tension is more clearly resolved when the latter process is compromised, for example, in the presence of corruption. But a puzzle emerges when existing budgeting processes are functioning well. The question remains as to why do politicians supplement representative institutions with those more directly dependent on citizen priorities. Focusing on the case of New York City, where Participatory Budgeting is funded through earmarks, my argument considers how incumbent political decision makers maximize political and economic benefits under imperfect information by setting the policy agenda and distributing political resources geographically in exchange for votes. I present a novel dataset of projects funded by council member’s discretionary funding from 2013 to 2020 and Participatory Budgeting proposals, both funded and non-funded. I illustrate how political incumbents can potentially exploit Participatory Budgeting to gain an electoral competitive advantage when other mechanisms of credit claiming are lacking and budget constraints are present. This research provides critical insights into the manners in which democratic innovations might fail to deliver their promise due to their elite-driven nature, as well as the limits of empowerment and legitimacy through participation in government.