Let?s Get to Know the City Council and Work Together (Participatory Budget of Villa González)
The participatory process "Let's Get to Know the City Council and Work Together" - one of the most famous examples of participatory democracy in the Dominican Republic - replicated events and structures of Porto Alegre, Brazil. In Villa Gonzalez, citizens participated in municipal decision-making for the first time in Dominican history beginning May, 1999. As stated under Dominican Law and as it was later developed, participatory processes are mandatory. This is especially so at the municipal level, whereby the authorities are obliged to include the preferences of the citizen in their decision-making. At Villa González, local authorities and civil society organizations set up participatory structures for their annual budget planning.
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
- embedded in the constitution/legislation
- Frequency
- single
- Mode of selection of participants
- open
- Type of participants
- citizens
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields a binding decision
- Co-Governance
- yes
Means
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Ends
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