Participatory Budget of Bogotá
The Participatory Budget of Bogotá began to develop since 1990 in order to improve access by citizens to the State and the services it provides. From this, the different municipalities have generated their own programs of Participatory Budgeting based on the regulations for citizen participation that have been developed for Bogota; although there is no such specific rule for this type of exercise. They have sought an agreement between citizens and district authorities and local authorities of the 20 localities in which the city is divided, so that citizens can prioritize the social investment of the district, define investment policies and exercise social control over the results. Although the dynamics have changed and at the beginning it did not even have an organized structure, the most current one is composed of three phases. The first one corresponds to the precabildos, which are realized in all the localities where the necessary information is presented and the process to be followed is defined. Then the Local and District Cabildos are carried out next. The former are divided at first by neighborhoods and then by localities, to finally converge in the District Council, which defines the important issues for the city. The decision-making bodies of the Cabildos act by voting for the participants in the different boards created in relation to the topics on which it is going to be prioritized. Although the Participatory Budget has been developed with a wide participation in the last years and the city offers an important institutional structure for its development, it is still necessary to improve the processes of strengthening and approaching the citizens, in the hopes that the results are more satisfactory.
Institutional design
Formalization: is the innovation embedded in the constitution or legislation, in an administrative act, or not formalized at all?
Frequency: how often does the innovation take place: only once, sporadically, or is it permanent or regular?
Mode of Selection of Participants: is the innovation open to all participants, access is restricted to some kind of condition, or both methods apply?
Type of participants: those who participate are individual citizens, civil society organizations, private stakeholders or a combination of those?
Decisiveness: does the innovation takes binding, non-binding or no decision at all?
Co-governance: is there involvement of the government in the process or not?
- Formalization
- only backed by a governmental program or policy
- Frequency
- regular
- Mode of selection of participants
- both
- Type of participants
- citizens
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields a non-binding decision
- Co-Governance
- yes
Means
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Ends
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