Participatory governance and its effectiveness: challenges and opportunities

The general aim of this paper is to explore possible links between decision-making
in public sector, citizen involvement, and the effectiveness of public policies. This historical
moment, characterized by the succession of two crises, namely the financial one of 2008 and
that of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-21, seems to require the promotion of a new
administrative culture in public administration as well as management tools that can promote
sustainable public policies and community participation. The promotion of this change could
be applied through the concept of participatory governance, which is put into effect when the
community becomes the central subject of public policies through tools of direct democratic
participation. From this perspective, stakeholders should not only be the recipients of
transparent and accountable information from public bodies but also the central subjects of
governmental decision-making processes. In theory, participatory budgeting may be the ideal
tool for the realization of participatory governance. Participatory budgeting originated in the
late 1980s with the well-known experience of Porto Alegre. After that, it spread to the rest of
the world through a process that was not always uniform or linear. In recent years, it has
regained the attention of scholars and new cases of concrete application. Therefore, the
present study aimed to answer the following research questions by discussing the most
relevant theories and analyzing empirical research results:
- What is the level of diffusion of participatory governance and participatory budgeting in
Italian local municipalities?
- What are the main reasons behind the adoption of participatory budgeting?
- How could participatory governance influence the decision-making process of public bodies?
A two-step research approach was adopted for this study. The first step was a web-based
survey on participatory budgeting experiences in Italian municipalities. In total, 136
experiences with participatory budgeting processes between 2015 and 2020 were identified.
The second step involved the selection of a sample population of municipalities with relevant
experiences of participatory budgeting (based on its persistence over time, the amount of
financial resources addressed to participatory processes, and the number of people involved).
In this step, individual research interviews were conducted with the people in charge for the
participatory policies, in order to investigate issues related to the motivations and
effectiveness of participatory budgeting practices. The results show that, although there has
been a recent increase in the use of participatory tools, some doubts emerge about their real
effectiveness in influencing decision-making processes. Nevertheless, the diffusion of a new
culture of participation seems to favor, for the future, the development of participatory
processes characterized by a greater degree of effectiveness.