Participatory Budgeting as An Instrument of Public Participation: The Example of The City of Kraków

Participatory budgeting is defined as a decision-making process whereby residents/citizens discuss and negotiate the way of distributing public funds. Worldwide, but also in Poland this mechanism has become very popular in the last three decades. It is also treated as an instrument of public participation.

The article presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the PB idea in the context of its participation aspects.

The purpose of the article are deliberations in the theoretical and empirical perspective about the PB mechanism. In the theoretical sphere, attempts have been made to verify PB as an instrument of public participation with regard to four categories presented by Langton and to the ladder of participation proposed by Arnstein. On the empirical side, the deliberations have been based on experience concerning the implementation of PB in a selected Polish voivodeship capital city. By applying the theoretical aspects onto the empirical research, it has been verified to what extent Polish PB schemes are public participation instruments. How strongly they activate and involve the local community in the processes of making shared decisions about shaping the environment and satisfying the needs of the inhabitants, how consistent they are with partnership and power delegation.

The research method applied in the work are analysis of the subject literature, “the documentary research method” and reasoning. The research focuses on the Kraków PB.