Participatory Governance in Pune & Berlin

Advancing Direct Democracy

- Matthias Schnabel

Participatory Governance is a phenomenon that is
constantly gaining more and more recognition all over the
world. The idea is to let citizens take part in decision
making processes in which only officials and politicians
are involved otherwise. A number of economists and
social scientists are researching on what constitutes as
good governance and most times 'Participation' emerges as
one of the indispensable pillars. It is through participation
that transparency and accountability can also be achieved
in the process of governance. But the question is; in a
representative form of democracy, participation varies
under different political, social, economic, administrative
and cultural conditions. So what constitutes as Participation and how far can a government
go in directly involving its citizens in the process of governance.

Participatory Budgeting; an important tool of participatory governance is a democratic
process of deliberation by citizens, civic officials and elected representatives on the issues
that need attention and collectively arriving at decisions that would directly be included in
the budget of the government. This process helps citizens to voice their opinions and decide
on how to allocate part of a municipal or public budget for betterment of their
neighborhoods. Participatory budgeting empowers the citizens to present their demands and
priorities for improvement, and influence through discussions and negotiations the budget
allocations made by their municipalities. It is an opportunity in which the common citizens
can decide about the allocation and distribution of public expenditure in their areas or
regions.

'Janwani' meaning 'voice of the people' has always went the extra mile to ensure that
citizens are included in the decision-making processes concerned with the city of Pune. One
important aspect of work at Janwani is the constant curiosity to learn and this curiosity has
led us to working on a cross-learning paper on what can Pune (the only city in India with a
fully functional participatory budgeting) can learn from Berlin (city with an advanced
participatory budgeting process) and vice versa.

East meets West

Very often, a good way to understand something is to compare it with something else and
draw conclusions from the different or similar attributes discovered. Hence in this paper, we
are comparing Pune and Berlin. Both these cities are very different but they have one thing
in common; both of them have initiated Participatory Budgeting projects in the last 8 years
that are successfully running since their launch.

Janwani's Urban Governance focus area is assessing the development of economy, politics
and administration of these two cities to learn more about which factors have contributed to
the creation and current status of both Participatory Budgeting projects. In the end, we hope
to be able to make suggestions on how Participatory Budgeting projects can be improved in
both these cities.

The Berlin Experiment

Technology has played an important role in strengthening participatory governance and
especially participatory budgeting in Berlin. A strong integration of Internet as a channel for
handing in proposals, rating them and exchanging information about every single suggestion
is one of the notable feature of Participatory budgeting in Berlin. Nevertheless it is still
possible to hand in suggestions via post or at meetings. This broad range of tools enables
people of different age or social classes alike to take part in the Participatory Budgeting.
The representation of every kind of people is important for the legitimacy of a Participatory
Budget.

The citizens can hand in great ideas on how to spend or where to save money. Some
politician or officials might even approve the ideas. Still, the implementation might fail
because no one can be held responsible for the success or failure of the realization of these
ideas in the end. Hence to ensure accountability, the district mayor in Berlin creates a
quarterly accountability report on the progress of every approved proposal. It is published
on the Internet and regional media viz. local newspapers and radio stations.

Perspective

Summaries of other parts of the Janwani study on Participatory Budgeting such as the
theoretical framework or the final conclusion will be published over the next few months.
The complete paper will be published by the end of March 2014. For more information on
the research paper, you can write at: matthias.schnabel01@web.de


Matthias Schnabel is an undergraduate Political Science student from Germany. He is currently
doing a year-long internship at Janwani, Pune working on a research paper assessing participatory
budgeting processes in Pune and Berlin. The paper assesses how participation works under
different adminstrational, political and economic environments.