European inventory of
societal values of culture

Sintomer, Röcke & Herzberg - Participatory Budgeting in Europe

Sintomer, Y., Röcke, A., & Herzberg, C. (2016). Participatory Budgeting in Europe. Democracy and Public Governance. London: Routledge. ISBN: 978-1-4724-6789-8

This book offers a comprehensive overview of participatory budgeting in Europe. Beginning with the history of the concept in the 1980s in Brazil, the book follows the different experiments with participatory budgeting in Europe. The authors show that European countries developed quite different versions of participatory budgeting to aim for the overarching goal of more inclusive citizen participation in government and administration. They specifically emphasise that participatory budgeting may lead to a modernization of the administration in order for it to become more citizen-oriented and make stronger citizen involvement possible.

Focusing on the first decade of European participatory budgeting, the book attempts to assess the effects it has had on democracy, the modernization of local government, social justice, gender mainstreaming, and sustainable development. It presents a range of initiatives in ten different countries, providing detailed comparisons of European cases that expose similarities and differences between political cultures. Such a strong empirical basis enables a discussion of the theories of deliberative and participatory democracy. This discussion reveals contradictory tendencies between political systems, public administrations, and democratic practices.