Governance in Translation: A Survey Experiment in Kenyan Participatory Budgeting

• In Event: Experimental Work on Citizen Engagement & Participation in the Developing World

Abstract

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic policy innovation that is spreading rapidly around the world; recent, conservative estimates now count over 3,000 PB programs. PB is designed to empower citizens and incorporate them into democratic policymaking by reserving a portion of government budgets for direct, popular allocation. Many international organizations, such as the World Bank, and USAID, now also promote PB as a complement to the Transparency and Accountability agenda. Evidence shows that PB empowers citizens and improves well-being in Brazil. However, PB is now spreading to environments, such as rural Sub-Saharan Africa, that are very different from the program’s origins in urban, middle-income Brazil. The speed of diffusion far outpaces theory surrounding PB’s design and operational rules, and evidence of its efficacy. Our research builds knowledge on PB through a survey experiment in Kenya’s PB programs. Participants at PB meetings in 30 wards in Makueni County, Kenya, first complete questionnaires on their perceptions of efficacy, social trust, the government’s legitimacy, their future behavior, and project-selection decisions. We then randomly assign survey vignettes covering the county’s development needs, the source of funding for PB, and the previous projects funded through the program to some participants, while others serve as controls and do not receive these prompts. We then compare any changes between responses for the treatment group with data from the control group to evaluate PB’s impact, while also ensuring that other confounding factors, such as economic or political events, do not undermine the results. The results of our analysis will shed new light on PB’s impact as well as on local democratic performance, legitimacy, and accountability among low-income countries around the world.

Authors

• Michael Touchton, University of Miami

• Brian Wampler, Boise State University