The challenge of increasing turnout at participatory budgeting: The Parisian perspective of “getting toward citizens”

ABSTRACT

A common problem for participatory budgets’ organizers is making people participate in them. Some organizers think and act to enhance participation. However, literature has paid little attention to that phenomenon. Thus, this study aims to explore how organizers address this issue through an in-depth case-study (the participatory budget of Paris). The research question is: What was the Paris PB organizers’ perspective toward participation from 2014 to 2020? There is a supplementary question: To what extent were their efforts to increase turnout effective? I used a mixed-method approach to answer these questions. First, I hypothesized that they had developed a perspective, a set of coordinated actions, and views about their problem of participation. I discovered the perspective of “Getting toward citizens”: being active to make (more) people vote. I then assessed the effectiveness of their efforts to increase turnouts.

KEYWORDS:

• Democratic innovations
• participatory budgeting
• participatory democracy
• public participation
• turnout

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two reviewers for their constructive feedback in order to produce an article more focused and of better value for the scientific community; the editors for the quality of their support; and the participants of the panel “Participer, faire participer dans les dispositifs locaux” of the Septièmes journées doctorales du Gis Démocratie et Participation, organized by the Gis Démocratie et Participation & the Université de La Rochelle at La Rochelle (France) held the 22-24 may 2023, for their suggestions on an earlier draft of this research.

Disclosure statement

I was hosted and financed partially by Paris City Council from January 2017 to January 2020, as part of the collaborative contract of research relative to the Convention Industrielle de Formation par la REcherche n°2016/1355. Paris City Council was neither consulted in the production of this research nor was pre-approval sought before publication, since no such process is required once the contract has been over for more than 6 months.

Geolocation information

Paris (France). Latitude: 48.866667. Longitude: 2.333333

Notes

1. https://www.pbatlas.net/world.html accessed 2022 October 24. However, this number is to be treated with caution because every implementation is a transformation of the original model (Ganuza & Baiocchi, 2012).

2. Pradeau and I suggested this definition: “A participatory democracy device in which a public authority elaborates all or part of its budgetary choices with the participation of its constituents through elements of direct democracy, deliberative democracy and representative democracy” (Arhip-Paterson & Pradeau, 2022).

3. Based on the programs of these events, I concluded that the issue appeared in at least 5 of the 7 meetings. I did not include the 2023 annual meeting because it was not held at the time of the writing.

4. The PCC labeled two other participatory processes as participatory budgets. The PCC created and implemented a “Youth and schools’ participatory budget” for public schools in 2016. The three main Parisian social landlords implemented participatory budgets since 2017, which neither the city nor the districts were part of (they were informed, at best). These two processes are not part of Paris PB or within the purview of this article.

Additional information

Funding

The data collection for this work was conducted under the collaborative contract of research relative to the Convention Industrielle de Formation par la REcherche n°2016/1355, financed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche et de la Technology, and Paris City Council.