Participatory Budgeting

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic process in which residents directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. Each year, residents brainstorm ideas, turn them into proposals, and vote to decide which proposals to fund. Started in Brazil in 1989, PB has been used for over 7,000 public budgets globally, for cities, states, nations, schools, universities, and other institutions.

Plan your PB process

This graphic and video from the Participatory Budgeting Project explain how PB works:

1. Brainstorm ideas

1. Brainstorm Ideas

Residents share and discuss ideas for projects.

2. Develop Proposals

2. Develop Proposals

Volunteers develop the initial ideas into feasible proposals.

3. Vote

3. Vote

Residents vote on which projects to fund.

4. Fund Winning Projects

4. Fund Winning Projects

The government funds and implements the top projects.

Participatory Budgeting in Action

Helsinki, Finland

Presents information about Helsinki's process, including dates of meetings, instructions to participate, and status of projects.

Rosario, Argentina

Case study of PB in Rosario, Argentina including origin, design, and level and demographics of participation.

New York City, USA

A video that introduces PB by telling the story of two budget delegates in New York City.

Taoyuan, Taiwan

A video about the Participatory Budgeting for Migrant Workers case in the city of Taoyuan, Taiwan.

Participatory budgeting involves local authorities and citizens cooperating in determining the allocation of public money – the budget. This helps municipalities to realize their economic potential, and citizens to secure access to essential services.

- Mamadou Bachir Kanouté, Executive Director Enda ECOPOP (Dakar, Senegal)

Participatory budgeting is more than just deciding how a portion of the city’s budget should be spent. It is about engaging people in city issues, getting them to understand the trade-offs that have to be made in local spending decisions, improving communication between people and local government, and including marginalized groups in local decisions.

- Enid Slack, Institute of Municipal Finance and Governance, Canada

Featured Resources

Participatory Budgeting: Spreading Across the Globe

This report sums up the current state of our understanding of PB. It focuses on several important aspects of PB and how it has evolved...

72 Frequently Asked Questions about Participatory Budgeting

A UN-Habitat manual that aims to answer, in a direct and practical way, questions about how to best implement a participatory budgeting process.

Reading The News, You'd Think Democracy Is Retreating Everywhere. Good News: The Opposite Is True

An accessible mainstream article in the magazine Newsweek that highlights the rise of participatory democracy, even as it seems that other institutions of democracy are...

PB Scoping Toolkit

A toolkit developed by the Participatory Budgeting Project for officials and staff at governments and institutions that are interested in launching a PB process, to...

Sample Playbook

Review key design questions that you will need to answer to plan a participatory budgeting program, and sample answers to these questions. To create a plan that works for your situation, start your own PB playbook. The playbook will walk you through the most important questions to answer when designing a process. Each step of the way, we will share recommended options and information to help you decide. At the end, you will have a plan for your process.

Plan your PB process