number of PB 

PB worldwide

11690-11825

1 Europe

4577-4676
39,07 - 39,53%

2 south america

3061-3081
26,30 - 26,50%

3 Asia

2773-2775
23,67 - 23,46%

4 africa
​

995-958
8,13 - 8,19%

4 North America​
​

178
1,50 - 1,52%

5 CENTRAL AMERICA & CARIBBEAN

132-142
1,14 - 1,20%

6 Oceania
​

12-15
0,10 - 0,13%

Number of regional/National pb by Continent
​

1 europe​

9/4

2 south america​​

65/0

3 central america​

0/0

4 north america

3/0

5 africa

22-23/1

6 asia

57/2

7 oceania​

2/0

total

158-159/7

​capital cities

​large cities

Number of pb on capital cities/large cities by continent
​

1 europe​

39/15

2 south america​​

51/17

3 central america​

32/0

4 north america

9/9

5 africa

28/20

6 asia

15/29

7 oceania​

0/2

total

176/93

political will barometer
​

with pB law
​

total

6773-6801
57,50 - 57,90%
​

1 europe​

3390-3410
73,00 - 76,30%
​

2 south america​​

2334
75,80 - 76,30%
​

3 central america​

127-135
94,80 - 95,10%
​

4 north america

0
0,00%
​

5 africa

164
​17,12 - 17,17%
​

6 asia

758
27,34%
​

7 oceania​

0
0,00%
​

without pb law
​

total

4917-5024
42,10 - 42,50%
​

1 europe​

1187-1266
23,80 - 24,30%
​

2 south america​​

727-747
​23,80 - 24,30%
​

3 central america​

7
4,90 - 5,20%

4 north america

12-15
100,00%
​

5 africa

791-794
82,83 - 82,88%
​

6 asia

2015
72,66%
​

7 oceania​

178
100,00%
​

A dissemination guided by distinct and sometimes antagonistic purposes 
​_

The data collected allowed us to identify the existence of 11690 to 11825 Participatory Budgeting cases in the 71 countries covered by this Atlas. These figures should be handled cautiously and without the ambition of being an absolute and unquestionable truth. The results achieved have an enormous margin of certainty in the overwhelming majority of countries, but doubts must be assumed in some contexts.

Among these, the most prominent is Japan due to the atypical methodological approaches associated with the practices identified as PB. Japan's experience is as high as 1865, i.e. around 15% of the world's total number of PB, making it the second country with the largest number of initiatives and the first without any kind of legal requirement on the adoption of PB by local governments or others. 

Brazil is another case that deserves particular attention in the calculations. The data presented are for 2016 and point to the existence of 436 local initiatives (3.7% of the world total), however, prior to the enormous setback that PB have experienced after the municipal elections that took place that same year. It is not possible today to know how many active PB there are in the country, and it is expected that the survey currently underway will confirm a significant reduction in the number of cases. 

Spain is the third case that deserves special attention. There is no rigorous and consensual accounting on the PB existing in the country since the 2015 municipal elections, leading to some speculation on the active cases in the present. The data indicated by the authors point to the existence of 350 to 400 cases, which represent about 3% of the world total. However, waiting is necessary to know if the results of this year's local elections, held during the preparation of this Atlas, will produce or not changes in the Participatory Budgeting scenario. 

Excluding the three aforementioned cases, on which doubts are assumed, there is also the certainty that this Atlas does not include all the Participatory Budgeting cases in the World, which is why it is expected that between the possible excess recorded in the figures and the absences verified, a certain balance can be achieved in the statistics presented.  

Regardless of the abovementioned considerations, the data produced are robust enough to allow some conclusions to be drawn on the main trends in the world, as set out below. 
In the first place, it can undoubtedly be concluded that there has been a huge worldwide expansion of PB, exceeding the expectations of the most optimistic. However, it is important to clarify that this is an unbalanced dissemination, both in the territories covered and in the purposes that sustain the emergence of these processes, with direct implications for participatory models and certainly for the associated deliberative quality.
According to the data, the vast majority of Participatory Budgeting cases in the world, around 85%, are based in 31 countries with imperfect democracies, 12 of which are in Europe, 7 in South America, 5 in Asia, 3 in Africa, 2 in North America, and 2 in Central America. 

The remaining PB are distributed as follows: 5% in states with authoritarian regimes; 4 to 5% in nations with fully-fledged democracies; 4 to 5% in countries with hybrid regimes. The big surprise is that there are more Participatory Budgeting cases in territories where political, civil and other freedoms are non-existent or limited, than in those where the best democratic principles apply. 

Focusing on the 11 countries with fully-fledged democracies, it is clear that gather a total range of 535 to 596 Participatory Budgeting cases. These include 350 to 400 cases in Spain and 102 in Germany. These two states account for 65 to 67% and 17 to 19% of the total PB of this group of nations, respectively. There are still about 15 to 16% of initiatives disseminated by the remaining 9 countries. Added to this reading is the fact that the overwhelming majority of German processes are consultative in nature, which further reinforces the idea of some resistance from full democracies to adopt PB as a practice. 
This is certainly one of the data in this Atlas that can cause the reader to be more startled and questioned. There are no scientifically proven arguments to explain these trends, but it is still possible to launch some research hypotheses for future work on the subject. 
Full democracies, because they consider themselves to be stable, because they have been able to provide good living conditions for their populations, and because they enjoy high levels of trust in their institutions, may not see the PB as a very relevant tool or at least an answer to problems they might face. 

In hybrid and totalitarian regimes, despite their differences, the use of participatory budgeting can be a way of demonstrating a stance of "good intentions" and "dialogue" on the part of the elites who lead the institutions, contributing to a certain social and political peace, and of promoting principles of good governance and an image of openness and transparency in the management of public resources. In general, Participatory Budgeting is promoted in these contexts without ever resorting to the word democracy. In situations such as these, the PB is not regarded as a counter-cyclical instrument, to which may be associated a transformative ambition of reality and a project of political and social democratisation, but rather as a tool for the legitimisation of the regime. This does not mean that Participatory Budgeting and its results are the fruit of manipulation. There are no concrete elements for such an affirmation. On the contrary, they may constitute a conscious ceding of government institutions, thus seeking to derive political and social benefits.  

A critical analysis of the history of Participatory Budgeting allows us to launch the idea that South America was probably the region on the planet with the greatest transformative ambition in these mechanisms. They were associated with an effective project of social and political change, in defence of a high-intensity democracy, of reversing the logic of power, of effectively fighting corruption and inequalities, among other issues. The transposition of this ideal into the world was not at all possible, which is why the PB was disseminated through selective use - sometimes excessively so - of its purposes and aspirations, removing its real capacity for transformation. 

This is what justifies the fact, for example, that in Europe the PB has devoted itself mainly to rebuilding trust between citizens and institutions, and less to fighting corruption and inequalities, extracting from it the transformative dimension of the institutions themselves. The accommodation provided allows governance models to function mostly in the traditional way and at the same time to promote participatory budgeting.

It is this same reading that also allows us to understand how the PB has been accepted in countries with authoritarian governments. In these countries there is no transformational objective, but rather an ambition to legitimise the current order and regime. 

The adaptation of PB to such different contexts, serving even conflicting purposes, is one of the hallmarks of the broad dissemination of these participatory processes over three decades. The PB has thus changed its identity according to the contexts of incorporation. It is an innovation that has lived on the margins and that has lost intensity and transformative ambition when transformed into mainstream public policy. Probably it could not be any other way for PB to achieve such projection and acceptance in all political circles. 

This is by no means a defeatist view of the potential of this instrument. The intention of associating the PB with a broader project of creating more intense logics of living democracy and building community has given way to other ambitions, certainly less radical or utopian, but equally transformative of certain dimensions of politics, public administration and society. No other instrument, of which there is memory, has had this capacity to mould itself to such diverse contexts, some of which represent the very negation of the ideals of PB. This is above all a mark of the vitality of PB as a concept. It has not been lost. It has travelled the world, reinvented itself in countless ways, changed the lives of many people, conquered very diverse players, spawned countless international cooperation and continues to thrive. 

The cross-analysis between the territorial distribution of PB and the Corruption Perception Index reinforces the arguments put forward, as the majority of cases, i.e. around 57% of the world total, are located in 26 countries positioned in the two best levels of that index, which globally coincide with imperfect democracies; 37% in the third and only 5 to 6% in the lowest level, that is, in the worst in terms of corruption. While it is certainly a concern of some PB around the world, combating this problem has not been the main motivation for these initiatives.    

The transformative project associated with the first Participatory Budgeting also included a deliberate intention to fight social disparities, to ensure a fairer redistribution of resources and to promote more equal access to essential public services. Based on this principle and using the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI), it is noted that the majority of PB in the world, or 59%, are located in 29 countries with the highest level of HDI. About 28% of PB are based in 15 nations with the next level, classified by the organizers as "high". Only 8% and 5% of PB belong to contexts with medium and low HDI levels, integrated respectively in 10 and 15 states. This fact reinforces the hypothesis that this transformative dimension of PB has also been lost in many places where the process has been taking place, with its purposes dedicated to other, probably less ambitious, dimensions.
The use of the happiness ranking in this Atlas is due to the renewed interest that immaterial units of measurement may have in the formulation of public policies, escaping a little from the traditional Gross Domestic Product, among other more conventional statistical indicators. The literature on the relationship between happiness and citizen participation is very scarce and inconclusive in many aspects. This is, therefore, another path of research that is intended to challenge from the Atlas. Are, for example, PB contributing to the strengthening of the happiness of the population and, in this way, increasing their participatory commitment? If we do not have answers to these and other questions, it remains for the moment to understand how Participatory Budgeting in the world is distributed based on the happiness ranking, produced by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network in partnership with the Ernesto Illy Foundation. The data obtained allows us to conclude that the majority of the processes, around 64%, are located in countries positioned in the second level of the index under analysis. Approximately 34% of the cases refer to PB that occur in states with the highest level of happiness, while only 2% of the cases are located in nations integrated in the third and penultimate level.  

After a cross-sectional analysis of the four indexes, it stands out as a majority trend the fact that there is a greater concentration than any other Participatory Budgeting in States with imperfect democracies, which allows us to hypothesize that the correction of some imperfections of this system of government, such as the breakdown of trust in institutions, continues to be the main driving force for the dissemination of these processes throughout the world, much more than the fight against corruption and inequality. Other purposes are not excluded, as explained before, but this seems to be in fact the majority. 

In global terms, it can be affirmed that the privileged territory for the affirmation of Participatory Budgeting in the world is the one that has the characteristics of an imperfect democracy, is located in the second best level of fight against corruption, has a very high human development index and is positioned in the second level of the happiness ranking. 

Dissemination is also synonymous with diversification of players and scales 
The international expansion of Participatory Budgeting has also benefited from other trends, namely: 
​

• The growth of the processes promoted by other groups of players or types of institutions, other than traditional local governments. These include public schools, community groups in countries with embryonic decentralization processes and other private entities, such as agencies, companies and associations. These processes currently account for about 15% of all PB in the world. Portugal and the United States of America play an important role in this field, as they are the only two countries where there is a majority of experiences promoted by schools. The number of processes led by local governments is lower in these two cases. 
• the strengthening of practices on a higher territorial and institutional scale. According to the survey, there are 7 national and 158 regional Participatory Budgeting cases in operation in the 71 countries that make up the Atlas. The first are based in Portugal (3), Ukraine (1), South Korea (1), Taiwan (1) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (1). The latter are scattered a little throughout all the regions of the planet, with emphasis to the Russian Federation (55), Peru (25) and Ecuador (24). South America is the continent that concentrates the largest number of cases at the regional level, namely 65, which corresponds to about 41% of the total. 
  
  

The leading role of cities. At this level, capital urban areas and those with populations of more than 1 million people deserve special mention. According to the diagnosis made, 175 Participatory Budgeting cases were identified, operating in capital cities - national and regional - in 38 countries, and 93 large cities in 33 countries. The role of these local governments is preponderant in the dissemination of PB, as it increases the public and sometimes media visibility of these initiatives and serves as an example and incentive to others. North America is the continent with the highest proportion of POs in large cities compared to the total of those promoted by local governments, namely 9 in 1998, which corresponds to 9.2%. A comparative analysis of the different countries shows that China is the one with the highest proportion at this level, with 4 PB operating in these territories, in a total of 5 to 7 cases. Egypt is followed by 3 major urban areas involved in the PB, out of a total of 8 to 10 initiatives.

by Nelson Dias, Sahsil Enríquez and Simone Júlio

Democracy index

FULL DEMOCRACIES​

569-633
4,87 - 5,35%

FLAWED DEMOCRACIES​

9962-10018
85,22 - 84,72%

HYBRID REGIME​

560-570
4,79 - 4,82%

AUTHORITARIAN​

599-604
​5,11 - 5,12%

corruption perception

100 - 76 (low)

212-216
1,81 - 1,91%

75 - 51 (Medium)

6475-6553
55,39 - 55,42%

50 - 26 (high)

4342-4385
34,14 - 37,08%

25 - 0 (Very High)

661
​5,65 - 5,59%

human development

very high

6887-6979
58,98 - 59,07%

high

3327-3367
28,48 - 28,50%

medium

883-886
​7,50 - 7,56%

low

583
​4,93 - 4,99%

word happiness

8.0 - 6.1 (Very high)

3841-3953
33,33 - 33,91%

6.0 - 4.1 (High)

7405-7429
63,71 - 64,26%

4.0 - 2.1 (Medium)

278
2,38 - 2,41%

2.0 - 0.0 (low)​

0
​0,00%