World Bank Research: Participatory Budgeting Enhances Engagement and Tax Revenue

A sophisticated new World Bank study by Michael Touchton, Brian Wampler, and Tiago Peixoto has shown that participatory budgeting offers voters and governments a potential win-win by expanding both citizen engagement and tax revenues.  (Participatory budgeting is a deliberative process by which citizens decide how to allocate government money and is increasing popular even among large municipalities like the city of New York.)

It’s a remarkable finding–one which, because of the rigor of the study’s methodology, is likely generalizable beyond the study’s Brazilian context.

For an article summarizing the paper, click here.  For the full paper, click here.

The paper’s findings are adding further impetus to EnCiv’s efforts to develop online participatory budgeting tools.