How would the residents of Budapest spend 1 billion forints? In this project, DemNet was contracted by the Council of Budapest to carry out the methodological planning, facilitation and evaluation of the citizens’ jury of the participatory budgeting process launched in 2020.
Participatory budgeting is a form of deliberative democracy and citizen decision making. During this process, citizens are involved in deciding how public money is spent on the municipal, other local, regional or even national level. The method was first used in Porto Alegre in Brazil in 1998, and has since proved itself in many parts of the world. Participatory budgeting has multiple benefits: it increases transparency, accountability, develops democratic skills and tax compliance, and citizens gain better understanding of the trade-offs that come into play during budgetary planning.
Hungary’s first participatory budgeting process was launched by the Council of Budapest in 2020. During the process, residents of Budapest decide about the use of 1 billion forints of city funds. Firstly, anyone living in Budapest could submit their idea on an open online platform, and by the end of this phase nearly 700 ideas were submitted. Then, the Council of Budapest conducted a formal check and clustering of the submissions, and set up a citizens’s jury to evaluate all of the remaining 142 ideas.
Any adult from Budapest could register to participate in the jury, and the final composition of the jury was decided by random selection carried out by the Council of Budapest. The final composition of the jury is representative of the adult population of Budapest in terms of gender, age and education, with two members from each city district. Fourteen delegates of different civil society organisations are also part of the jury.
The Council of Budapest contracted DemNet to deliver the methodology, facilitation and evaluation of the process.