Paticipatory Budgeting And The Development Of The Local Political System

The first practice of Participatory Budgeting (PB) occurred in the city Porto Alegre in Brazil in 1989. It then spread rapidly in many countries, mostly among developed nations. Ten years later, Zeguo, an unknown town in the city Wenlin of the Zhejiang Province, for the first time in China, also introduced some experiments of PB, which turned out to be very successful. More importantly, in contrast to many other innovative practices in public administration which didn't endure long, Zeguo's PB has been maintained and the scale of the PB has been gradually expanded. In line with the theory of path dependence regarding political system changes in the framework of the neoinstitutionalism, PB experiment contributes to compensating the current political deficiencies and promoting democratic politics. Nevertheless, there is an existing tension between the PB practice and the existing political system in China, such as the relationship between elected representatives during the PB and deputies of the respective people's congress, and relationship between the People's Congresses and the Executive (the respective local government). The question of how to deal with this type of tension is not only related with the further development of PB in China, but also the course as well as the pace of political reform at the local level in the country. In comparison to PB in other places, the PB practice in Zeguo has a certain degree of similarities to Porto Alegre's PB. Therefore, through conducting such a comparison between Porto Alegre and Zeguo, the author tries to disclose some possibilities to meet existing difficulties Zeguo is facing its PB practice.