User:Chena11356/Participatory budgeting by country

Hero49states - Spain
Original: There are participatory budgeting projects in the Valencian Community: in Valencia (since 2015); and in Catalonia: Barcelona (since 2020).

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Participatory budgeting projects in Spain accelerated in the early 2000s, typically as a result of left-wing party advocacy. Left-wing municipal governments established participatory budgeting exercises in "Sevilla, Albacete, San Sebastián, Getafe, Leganés, Sabadell, Leganés, Segovia, Torrellano, Elche, Algeciras [and] Novelda." Other municipalities that have implemented participatory budgeting at some point include "Puente Genil, Cabezas de San Juan and Rubi." As one of the first participatory budgeting experiments in Europe, participatory budgeting in Córdoba was influenced by other participatory exercises and originated from resistance to the Franco dictatorship in the 1970s and the experience in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Although participatory budgeting experiments across Spain seemed to provide deliberate spaces for participation of citizens, Ganuza and Francés (2014) suggest that these experiments decreased in number through 2010 because municipal governments did not change their decision-making processes to accommodate greater citizen involvement. For example, the experiment in Córdoba was pushed by the municipal government and associations and only impacted up to 5% of the municipal budget. Pineda Nebot (2009) elaborates that local governments across Spain struggle to coordinate between citizens who recommend specific spending priorities and the bureaucracy that implements the budget.

In more recent times, participatory budgeting has resurged and expanded to some major cities, including Barcelona and Madrid. After left-wing parties won the Madrid municipal elections in 2015, a participatory budgeting experiment began, but the practice has faced problems with clear communication, transparency, and utilization of latest technology. For example, Pineda Nebot and Pires (2017) believe that many of the experiments in Spain do not provide sufficient information about previous budgets or space for citizens to design the rules of debate to have better deliberations, though they suggest that adopting technological innovations could improve the process. In the other hand, Ganuza and Francés (2014) and Sintomer et al. (2008) believe that some Spanish experiments of participatory budgeting are successful at creating deliberative spaces compared to in other parts of Europe since Spanish citizens tend to have a greater role in deciding the municipal budget. Looking at municipalities in the province of Barcelona, Parés (2011) agrees with previous research that find that participatory budgeting in Spanish municipalities with smaller populations have been more successful.