Louise O'Kane (Belfast) and Jez Hall (Manchester) give an insight into the history of Participatory Budgeting in Great Britain and the constant conflict between pb organizers and governments as well as bureaucratic structures.
Does participatory budgeting effect public spending? Does pb empower citizens and lead to more democracy or is it simply a "symbolic policy device"? The following debate, lead by two top pb-experts, Carolin Hagelskamp and Thad Calabrese, focuses on these issues .
Michael Menser talks about the political impact of participatory budgeting projetcs in the US and how important the adaption of social and economic justice in a PB-process is.
Syed Kausar Abbas is the Senior Advocacy & Training Officer of the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) in Pakistan. As part of an international exchange programm he lived and worked in Bonn for several months. For Buergerhaushalt.org, he describes the work of his organization, the CPDI.