Participatory Budgeting in COVID-19 Times: A Perspective from Local Public Administration

The global COVID-19 pandemic provoked the adoption of public administration actions to contain the advance of the disease in governments around the world. The capacity of national health systems has a limit to serving those infected by the disease. To avoid the possibility of not serving all patients in a given period of time, many national and local governments adopted measures so that the number of infected would not exceed the maximum capacity that the health system could support. In this context of uncertainty, the restrictions imposed by the global COVID-19 pandemic in some way impacted the realization of the participatory budget. Participatory budgeting (PB) is one of the most important innovations in governance and participatory democracy around the world. The cities of Porto Alegre, São Paulo, Palmela, Lisbon, New York or Paris are just a few examples of cities using this mechanism and fostering citizen participation in local public policy discussion and decision-making. It is currently estimated that between 11,690 and 11,825 participatory budgeting experiences occur in 71 countries. The pioneering approach to participatory budgeting occurred in the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil in 1989, followed by national and international repercussions inspired by this model, either by the development of a complex instrument of interlocution with citizens or by continuity over time. Portugal was one of the countries influenced by this dynamic, the pioneering experience occurred in Palmela, in the district of Setúbal, in 2002. In this context, Lisbon was the first capital of Europe to implement the participatory budget in 2009. And Portugal was the first country in the world to implement the mechanism at national level, in 2017. It is our goal to explore the barriers imposed by the global pandemic of COVID-19 to participatory budgeting, considering the particular perspective of Brazilian and Portuguese Local Public Administration. The research considers among its assumptions that restrictions to the implementation of Participatory Budgeting during the pandemic are expected, changing the form or causing its cancellation with possible reflexes in the period after the health crisis. Furthermore, it considers that there are no marked differences between the perception about the barriers of COVID-19 to PB in the two countries involved in the research. An online questionnaire survey using a Likert scale was developed to assess the perception of Local Government employees about the barriers imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic to participatory budgeting. The research work intends to contribute theoretically to the broadening of the spectrum of analysis by joining the research on the quality of local democracy. It also intends to contribute empirically from the comparative perspective of Brazilian and Portuguese municipalities and by indicating the perception of local governments on the barriers imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, it intends to be a benchmark of practical use for cities that plan to implement or already use the mechanism, since knowledge about the difficulties makes it possible to adopt corrective measures to improve the quality of the participation process and as a consequence of local democracy.