How Participatory Budgeting Can Support Education and Learning

In this dispatch, we examine participatory budgeting’s potential to develop participants’ civic knowledge, skills and attitudes, as well as  the conditions that make these impacts possible, based on research from nine countries.

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic process of deliberation and decision-making over budget allocations. It has been implemented in thousands of cities and towns around the world. Like many other participatory and deliberative processes, PB is time intensive. Participants may engage in one or more stages—from idea collection and proposal development to voting and evaluation—over a period of weeks or months.

What impact does this engagement have on participants’ civic education and learning more broadly?

Our review of research from nine countries reveals PB’s potential to develop participants’ civic knowledge, skills and attitudes, as well as the conditions that make these impacts possible. In other words, participatory budgeting serves as a “school of democracy.”

These findings can inform participatory and deliberative processes organized not only by governments, but also by schools, universities and other institutions, which are increasingly adopting PB to engage students, teachers, parents and community members.

PB participants acquire civic, political and deliberative knowledge and skills

In Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Rosario, Argentina, PB participants reported substantial increases in their knowledge of politics, community needs and citizens’ rights. Through a combination of formal meetings, community tours and informal feedback sessions, participants learned about the inner workings of city hall and the mechanisms and regulations used to allocate public funds. Studies in Maribor, Slovenia; Reykjavík, Iceland; Boston and Chicago, United States; Guelph, Canada; and Cluj, Romania also found that PB participants reported significant gains in civic knowledge.

In addition to an improved understanding of the functioning of government and public decision-making, participants also gain political and deliberative skills. These include experiences in monitoring government actions, contacting government agencies and officials, ranking priorities and developing proposals for local projects, as well as analytical skills such as interpreting official documents and “reading” municipal political dynamics. Participants also benefit from strengthened social, leadership and communication skills.

PB participants adopt new attitudes and values, and build mutual trust with their peers, governments and educational institutions

Studies also confirm PB’s capacity to nurture democratic values and trust in peers and institutions. Participation in PB promotes tolerance, an orientation toward the common good and a disposition to solve conflicts.

Research on PB in primary schools in Andalusia, Spain, and Arizona, United States shows that these impacts are possible beginning at a young age. PB processes that facilitated engagement and collaboration of diverse groups led students to interact more positively with their peers. The processes also resulted in greater psychological empowerment and sense of well-being. Moreover, participants developed greater trust in government institutions.

In Arizona, students participating in a recent pilot project on inclusive school PB reported improved relationships with teachers and classmates. Project proposals also reflected the priorities of students with disabilities. More research is needed on the long-term impacts of these initial outcomes on the school climate.

Positive impacts depend on participants’ prior experiences, roles played in the process, intensity of participation and duration of engagement

Participants will not benefit equally from the impacts of PB. Learning tends to be greater among participants with less prior experience with civic engagement, political participation and opportunities for leadership. In addition, participants who take on leadership roles during the process (e.g., by becoming a steering committee member, delegate, councillor or other types of change agent) experience more positive transformation than those who take on more peripheral roles.

These impacts are also correlated with the intensity and duration of participation. More intense participation is associated with acquiring greater knowledge of government institutions and self-efficacy, as well as with an increased likelihood of voting, working with others to solve problems and volunteering for community projects—the longer the engagement, the stronger the impact. In Andalusia, when the process was repeated for a second year, psychological empowerment and group identification increased.

For practitioners organizing participatory and deliberative initiatives, these findings highlight the importance of engaging participants who have traditionally been excluded from civic activities and in designing processes that encourage frequent and sustained participation.

Different PB designs and approaches to implementation can narrow or widen the civic engagement gap

The civic engagement gap refers to the varying degrees of opportunity people have to participate in community and political spaces. Historically marginalized groups are often excluded from civic opportunities. When this gap begins at a young age, it can lead to less civic engagement later in life.

In terms of design, processes that rely on self-selection or the recruitment of individuals with leadership experience (e.g., student council members) are more likely to widen the civic engagement gap. On the other hand, processes that emphasize outreach to marginalized groups or use randomization methods to select participants are more likely to narrow the gap by reducing self-selection bias. Schools can provide an ideal setting for a cost-efficient, quasi-random selection because students are already divided into classrooms.

Providing both informal and formal channels for learning can facilitate positive change. When PB was implemented in Rosario, Argentina, informal mechanisms that encouraged repeat interactions with other participants were credited for much of the learning. At the same time, the impact of informal democratic learning increases significantly when PB is paired with formal channels, such as curriculum and pedagogical interventions in the classroom.

Recommendations for Practice and Further Research

These findings have important implications for advocates, practitioners and researchers in the following ways:

• Advocates can use this research to emphasize to government officials and other decision-makers that PB increases the public’s ability and desire to engage with government, which can boost trust in public institutions.
• PB program implementers should design the process to include sufficient time for deliberation and teamwork, and work to reduce learning gaps by using random selection of participants.
• Researchers should pursue more longitudinal studies to track the impact of PB on participants over time, conduct more of these studies in educational institutions and evaluate the quality of deliberation in PB processes.

For more recommendations, consult the research brief.

These findings reveal how incorporating the mechanics of deliberative processes can improve learning from PB, as well as how PB can contribute educational strategies to other participatory and deliberative models. As with deliberative minipublics, learning is a central element of PB, and random selection of participants can make learning outcomes more equitable. PB research also shows that informal learning can be as powerful as structured learning opportunities, even though more time and resources are typically dedicated to the latter. The PB research also uncovers and maps learning outcomes that other participatory and deliberative processes can inspire, such as boosting a wide range participants’ skills and knowledge, reducing polarization and narrowing the civic engagement gap.

By using these findings to improve participatory and deliberative processes, we can turn them into more powerful schools for democracy.

About the Series

In this series of dispatches, members of the Global PB Research Board share key insights into the potential of participatory budgeting to drive social and political change, based on research conducted around the world. The series is the product of a collaboration between the Deliberative Democracy Digest and People Powered: Global Hub for Participatory Democracy.

About the Authors

Andrés Falck is the executive director of Coglobal. Andrés has supervised PB in 10 Spanish municipalities and has cooperated with local governments to implement and monitor participatory initiatives in the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Nicaragua. He has coauthored several studies on children and youth participation.

Daniel Schugurensky is the founder and director of the Participatory Governance Initiative at Arizona State University. He has conducted research on participatory budgeting since 1999, especially in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Costa Rica, Canada and the United States.

Patricia García-Leiva is professor at the Department of Social Psychology, University of Malaga. She teaches group psychology in the degree of social work, and in the official master of research and social and community intervention. She has been working on PB since 2009, including collaborations on national and international projects.

Nikhil Kumar is a research and policy associate at People Powered: Global Hub for Participatory Democracy, where he develops courses and materials, produces online content and curates resources for participatory democracy practitioners. Previously, he worked with the Eurométropole of Strasbourg, France and the city of Helsinki, Finland. Nikhil holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.