Public participation in budgeting can have benefits, but the incentives are not always there for local governments to use it

By creating processes which allow for public participation, governments can better involve citizens in their decision-making. Iuliia Shybalkina looks at the use of one type of public participation – participatory budgeting – across six New York City council districts. She finds that the incentives council members faced had a large influence on how their districts invested in the participatory budgeting process, leading to often very different processes in different districts