“Participatory” Budgeting by or for the People? Direct and Indirect Consultation in Bankrupt Cities

• In Event: 2429 - Open Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Roundtable 14

Abstract

Recent scholarship in political sociology has found evidences to support the “taxation leads to accountability” argument, yet “how participatory” public consultation should we anticipate from state officials to render taxation legitimate remains under-theorized. To bridge such intellectual gap, a qualitative study on Vallejo and Stockton, two California bankrupt cities which implemented direct and indirect consultation respectively in exchange of taxation, constitute an appropriate matched pair. Specifically, this ongoing research project seeks to investigate why Vallejo decided to launch Participatory Budgeting with 30% of its one percent sales tax, public consultation in the form of doing budgeting “by the people,” whereas Stockton decided to build a citizen’s oversight committee to oversight how the government spent the voter-approved three-quarter percent sales tax, public consultation in the form of doing budgeting “for the people.”

To study the mechanisms determining the format of public consultation, I use a multi-methods approach, relying on archival and interview-based data collection and analysis. I argue that the more asymmetrical distribution of political capital in the political field, the more possible direct consultation would be institutionalized net of other considerations. Situated in a political field with a more balanced distribution of symbolic capital, elected officials in Stockton were risk-averse and opted for bargaining indirect consultation for legitimate taxation in way with low return but low risks. On the contrary, elected officials in Vallejo opted for a choice of high risks with high returns because they were in a political field with a more asymmetrical distribution of political capital. Direct consultation then became their choice for legitimate taxation.

Author

• Yen-Ting Hsu, University of California San Diego