Participatory budgeting in COVID-19 times: a perspective from local public administration
Conference Paper
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abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the daily lives of populations around the world, affected
household economies, forced national and subnational governments to manage declining
revenues, and transformed patterns of behavior, practices, and processes. In this context of
uncertainty, the barriers imposed by the pandemic have somehow affected the implementation
of Participatory Budgeting (PB) in several countries. Brazil was a pioneer in the elaboration and
adoption of the mechanism in its municipalities, and Portugal is currently the country with the
highest rates of PB implementation worldwide. The goal of the paper is to explore the barriers
imposed by the global COVID-19 pandemic on PB, considering the perspective of Brazilian and
Portuguese Local Public Administration. The research applied an online survey using a Likert-type
scale to assess the perception of municipalities about the barriers imposed by COVID-19 pandemic
on PB. Public administration officials responsible for carrying out PB, in both the municipalities of
the state of Paraná (Brazil) and the municipalities of Portugal, indicated that the crisis caused by
COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the carrying out of the processes. There is a sign
that the pandemic imposed the alteration of PB processes. As for the possible restrictive
consequences of the crisis on the implementation of the mechanism in the future, they are
apparently not entirely clear, according to the municipalities analyzed in the two countries. The
perception of public administration officials from Portuguese municipalities and cities in the state
of Paraná (Brazil) about the obstacles imposed on PB by COVID-19 pandemic can contribute to
the ongoing debate about the barriers caused by the crisis.
