Birds of a feather flock together: influence of ideology in the implementation of participation

Abstract

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The global spread of participatory budgeting (PB) has facilitated its adoption by ideologically diverse political parties. Nowadays, we can easily find conservative, social democratic and leftist parties as promoters of PB. Hence the question arises: how does party ideology influence the implementation of citizen participation mechanisms? In this article, we study PB processes in nine different Spanish municipalities. Our aim is to analyse three dimensions that can be influenced by ideology: PB’s participatory design, the reasons different parties have to launch and maintain PB, and the possible instrumental reasons politicians refer to when speaking in favour of or against PB. According to our findings PB initiatives implemented by conservative, social democratic and radical left parties are quite different from one another: from a managerial way of understanding participation (conservative), which views participants as consumers to understanding PB as an educational process aimed to empower citizens (radical left). Nevertheless, arguments vary depending on whether politicians are in office or in the opposition, the former being more inclined to support citizen participation.