I find the assumptions of this analysis highly problematic and, consequently, its conclusion (PB is not "an actual democratic process") highly impoverished. First, has COVID-19 and its aftermath impacted civic engagement and public participation in general and PB in particular? The social fabric has only begun to recover and it is no surprise that participation in PB declined in the early 2020s. Second, and more relevantly, how many people would be deciding (exercising power) to determine how to spend the public money in question if a District didn't allocate funds through PB? A single City Councilor plus maybe a few of their staff? How is PB not vastly more democratic even with the numbers you cite? Finally, and most importantly, isn't the comparison of PB voting to turnout in elections like comparing handful of apples to a mountain of oranges? New York has an entire public infrastructure for City elections built over 200+ years. Hasn't NYC had near universal suffrage since the 1920s? How does the size PB process outreach budget compare to the mountains of direct and indirect money spent on administer elections and advertise and promote candidates, not to mention all the media coverage of elections from local and national news outlets? Your conclusions here make a very poor man’s argument. The problem is participatory budgeting, it is that far too long we have done all the democracy we should be doing to run a truly self-governing society (participatory, deliberative, and electoral) on the cheap.
Thanks for reading! I don’t really agree with your characterization of the piece at all. It’s mostly just original data reporting that wasn’t otherwise publicly available, and we need that data to see whether we like PB. I’m really proud to supply that to policymakers and the public. I have a few tentative conclusions from that data at the end of the piece, but your comment (among other things) ignores one of them completely (and that one says PB could be OK as an outreach tool). So: again, thanks for reading, but I don’t agree with the approach or content of your comment.
I find the assumptions of this analysis highly problematic and, consequently, its conclusion (PB is not "an actual democratic process") highly impoverished. First, has COVID-19 and its aftermath impacted civic engagement and public participation in general and PB in particular? The social fabric has only begun to recover and it is no surprise that participation in PB declined in the early 2020s. Second, and more relevantly, how many people would be deciding (exercising power) to determine how to spend the public money in question if a District didn't allocate funds through PB? A single City Councilor plus maybe a few of their staff? How is PB not vastly more democratic even with the numbers you cite? Finally, and most importantly, isn't the comparison of PB voting to turnout in elections like comparing handful of apples to a mountain of oranges? New York has an entire public infrastructure for City elections built over 200+ years. Hasn't NYC had near universal suffrage since the 1920s? How does the size PB process outreach budget compare to the mountains of direct and indirect money spent on administer elections and advertise and promote candidates, not to mention all the media coverage of elections from local and national news outlets? Your conclusions here make a very poor man’s argument. The problem is participatory budgeting, it is that far too long we have done all the democracy we should be doing to run a truly self-governing society (participatory, deliberative, and electoral) on the cheap.
Thanks for reading! I don’t really agree with your characterization of the piece at all. It’s mostly just original data reporting that wasn’t otherwise publicly available, and we need that data to see whether we like PB. I’m really proud to supply that to policymakers and the public. I have a few tentative conclusions from that data at the end of the piece, but your comment (among other things) ignores one of them completely (and that one says PB could be OK as an outreach tool). So: again, thanks for reading, but I don’t agree with the approach or content of your comment.
These “elections” should be required to include as an option a refund to the district’s taxpayers.