Does participatory budgeting belong to democracy or bureaucracy? Case Study of Bialystok (Poland)

Abstract

The paper presents the grounds for the wider project “Participatory budgeting - success or crisis of local democracy? Comparative legal study, aiming to explore what factors (dependent and independent from the policy makers) make from BP the instrument strengthening the local democracy and what are the barriers to fully exploit its potential. To this aim, we propose the theoretical model of the PB strengthening the local democracy. To test its validity, using the case of one of the Polish cities (Bialystok), we use the mix research method: the desk research, the qualitative and quantitative surveys and the qualitative interviews. The preliminary results have shown that PB do not imply the success of the democracy, but rather only its failure and the illusion of the citizens’ participation.