Participatory budgets across scales Enhancing

Transcript:Participatory budgets across scales Enhancing:
Participatory budgets across scales Enhancing Fiscal Transparency through Participatory Budgeting in the EU European Economic and Social Committee Panel 1: Challenges, opportunities and best practicees of participatory budgeting Roberto Falanga | Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon 11 Sep 2024 Transparency and participatory budgeting Fiscal transparency is central to public management and democratic accountability through the disclosure of financial information including budgetary data Access to and understanding of clear and comprehensive information, plus creation of shared meanings within the wide public - focus on marginal groups Participatory budgeting can meet goals of transparency as a democratic innovation – i.e., by improving democratic values and governance Citizens access information and decide how to allocate a share of the budget; Collective decisions are made through voting; Public funds are spent in line with citizens’ preferences. Trade-offs Several agencies advocate for more transparency in PBs via: More effective use of public resources More public trust towards political institutions More support for awareness in wide society More training for civil servants The Recommendation EC 12/2023 suggests more participation at all levels of governance, but… … the Open Budget Survey (2023) highlights insufficient legislative frameworks and oversight mechanisms for fiscal transparency and participatory budgeting across the EU A blindspot remains on why participatory budgeting delivers relatively little PBs in Portugal Portugal has implemented PBs at the three main levels of governance: municipal, regional, and national. The dissemination started in the early 2000s, peaked in in the 2010s and decreased after the pandemic Along with diverse territorial scopes, Portuguese PBs have embraced thematic (e.g., environmental) and actor-oriented approaches (e.g., youth) PBs on multiple scales PBs on local, regional, and national levels have communicated little with each other. Implications on: Processes: overlapping remits and constituencies  perceived inefficiency of public spending  citizen fatigue Outcomes: low rate of projects’ implementation  mistrust towards public authorities regardless of the level of governance The implementation of PBs on multiple scales barely met the dynamic, often messy, relations among different levels of governance Time to open a shared reflection on the connections among multiple scales by looking through levels of governance Regulating PBs across scales It is worth recognising the various levels of governance intercepted by PBs, from local to EU level Need to acknowledge the implications for fiscal transparency A regulation of PBs that approaches multiple scales for transparent and accessible information More evaluation for a more transparency