Basic Report

Participatory budgeting(PB) system is a decision-making process in which citizens decide how to allocate a part of municipal budget. It contributes to democratic deliberation to increase levels of public participation and to achieve participatory democracy. This report presents the crucial strategies for local governments to achieve the improvement of participatory budgeting system while adopting PB system in local government. It provides several steps of strategies to consider participatory budgeting system in local governments.
   First, the participatory budgeting system must develop and diversify the methods of public engagement to enlarge the scope of citizen participation in municipal budget system. In Korea, PB mostly has been involved to the particular budget allocation only in their own neighborhood so far. PB can be involved to more varied topics of public budgeting other than allocation of local resources for particular subjects in their neighborhood such as the planning and execution, and the determination of budget allocation of the citywide budget cycle.
   Second, neighborhood budget committees or neighborhood committees of local governments have to be well-organized and functional to be a crucial role of the PB system in the local level. For example, the neighborhood budget committees can be expertise to reflect their local citizens’ particular unmet needs. Therefore, neighborhood committees must enhance the representation of diverse nature of local communities, too.
   Third, PB might be successful only when local governments facilitate their own local PB platforms reflecting diverse nature of local communities. It is critical to lead as many locals as possible to participate in local communities to collect citizens unmet needs. The local PB platforms can be set up in online and offline to draw citizens of the local communities into the local committees process.
   Fourth, the support from central government for local government is critical to institute their own local PB platforms to reflect diverse local nature of local communities. Local committees have limit of their own financial or human resources to prepare for local PB platforms. The financial or systematic support from central government would increase the possibility of successful PB in local governments.