Impact Evaluation Of Participatory Budgeting In Ukraine

Participatory budgeting as a mechanism of direct citizen participation in decision making on the use of public funds is globally acknowledged good practice of participatory governance. In Ukraine, within almost four years–from August 2015 till May 2019–participatory budgeting has been introduced in at least 154 communities. However, the available estimations of its efficiency are fragmented. Therefore, the goal of this research is to evaluate the impact of participatory budgeting on a community: its quality of life, residents, and local self-governance. For this aim, desk research was performed, the collection of data from open sources was carried out, information requests were sent to local self-government agencies, and expert interviews were conducted. Largely, this research relies on the received official responses from 141 local self-government agencies, 23 semi-structured interviews with public officials and civic activists, and on 9 case studies. The legal analysis of regulations, the statistical analysis of quantitative data, and the content analysis of qualitative data was applied to this data.