Ernesto Ganuza

Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, often celebrated, and is now instituted in at least 1,500 cities worldwide. Some of its central features—its structure of open meetings, its yearly cycle, and its combination of deliberation and representation—are by now well known. In this article, however, we critically reflect on its global travel and argue for more careful consideration of some of its less well-known features, namely the coupling of the budgeting meetings with the exercise of power. We disaggregate PB into its communicative and empowerment dimensions and argue that its empowerment dimensions have usually not been part of its global expansion—and this is cause for concern from the point of view of emancipation. We thus discuss the specific institutional reforms associated with empowerment in the original version as well as its analytic dimensions. We also address some of the specific dangers of a communication-only version of PB as well as some suggestions for reintroducing empowerment.

In early 2019 Madrid launched the first permanent citizen participation scheme in which members are chosen by lot: the Observatory of the City. Although the scheme was abandoned by the new government after the May 2019 elections, the Madrid experiment raises important questions about democracy. The project is another example of the growing prominence that the draw has acquired in many countries, as an ideal element to organise and order the participation of people in political affairs. In this paper we describe the first steps of this scheme and also highlight the features that make the draw in Madrid a unique experience both because of the implications of the use of the draw, and from the point of view of similar schemes that are being carried out in other parts of the world. Madrid ha puesto en marcha, desde inicios del año 2019, la primera experiencia de participación ciudadana permanente cuyos miembros son elegidos por sorteo, el Observatorio de la Ciudad. A pesar de que la experiencia fue abandonada por el nuevo Gobierno después de las elecciones de mayo del 2019, la experiencia madrileña plantea importantes cuestiones sobre la democracia. Esta experiencia se suma al creciente protagonismo que ha adquirido el sorteo en muchos países, como un elemento idóneo para organizar y ordenar la participación de la gente en los asuntos políticos. En este trabajo exponemos los primeros pasos de esta experiencia, así como destacamos los rasgos que hacen del sorteo en Madrid una experiencia singular, tanto por las implicaciones que tiene el uso del sorteo como desde el punto de vista de las experiencias similares que se hacen en otras partes del mundo.