participatory governance in pune & berlin
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Participatory Governance in Pune & Berlin
Advancing Direct Democracy
- Matthias Schnabel
Participatory Governance is a phenomenon that is
constantly gaining more and more recognition all over the
world. The idea is to let citizens take part in decision
making processes in which only officials and politicians
are involved otherwise. A number of economists and
social scientists are researching on what constitutes as
good governance and most times 'Participation' emerges as
one of the indispensable pillars. It is through participationthat transparency and accountability can also be achieved
in the process of governance. But the question is; in a
representative form of democracy, participation varies
under different political, social, economic, administrative
and cultural conditions. So what constitutes as Participation and how far can a government
go in directly involving its citizens in the process of governance.
Participatory Budgeting; an important tool of participatory governance is a democratic
process of deliberation by citizens, civic officials and elected representatives on the issuesthat need attention and collectively arriving at decisions that would directly be included in
the budget of the government. This process helps citizens to voice their opinions and decide
on how to allocate part of a municipal or public budget for betterment of theirneighborhoods. Participatory budgeting empowers the citizens to present their demands and
priorities for improvement, and influence through discussions and negotiations the budget
allocations made by their municipalities. It is an opportunity in which the common citizenscan decide about the allocation and distribution of public expenditure in their areas or
regions.
'Janwani' meaning 'voice of the people' has always went the extra mile to ensure that
citizens are included in the decision-making processes concerned with the city of Pune. One
important aspect of work at Janwani is the constant curiosity to learn and this curiosity has
led us to working on a cross-learning paper on what can Pune (the only city in India with a
fully functional participatory budgeting) can learn from Berlin (city with an advanced
participatory budgeting process) and vice versa.
East meets West
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Matthias Schnabel is an undergraduate Political Science student from Germany. He is currently
doing a year-long internship at Janwani, Pune working on a research paper assessing participatory
budgeting processes in Pune and Berlin. The paper assesses how participation works under
different adminstrational, political and economic environments.