The problem of low participation in participatory budgeting from the perspective of adoption of innovation

Abstract

Information and Communication Technology based tools for e-participation, which significantly lowered the entrance cost for citizens, augured widespread presence of citizens in the policy formulation process. However, even after years of practice, citizen engagement in e-participation remains low, especially in relatively new democracies, contributing to imbalance and misrepresentation of citizens’ opinions. We present insights from the area of innovation adoption and propose an analytical framework for assessing e-participation initiatives’ potential for eliciting wide citizen participation. In our study we examined participatory budgeting in 18 major Polish cities and established that local authorities often fail to make participatory budgeting a successful innovation in terms of inclusion and diversity by overfocusing on needs and expectations of those who participated in the process (10% of population). Officials assessing the success of participatory budgeting only through the lens of its early adopters risk not addressing the needs of the remaining 90% of the population.