The Bumps in the Road Toward Social Equity Budgeting: The Administrative Pitfalls When Implementing Participatory Budgeting

ABSTRACT Participatory budgeting can encourage meaningful community engagement in all phases of the budgeting cycle to promote social equity. However, participatory budgeting administrators often experience administrative and political challenges in establishing participatory processes that effectively promote social equity. Using an integrated social equity framework that builds on the concept of sustainable governance, we create an implementation framework to evaluate PB systems and guide practitioners and scholars. We build on survey and interview data from 27 jurisdictions in the United States and Canada to explore the main administrative challenges in each stage of the PB implementation process. Our findings reveal four primary administrative pitfalls: the episodic nature of training programs, challenges in managing the political environment, issues with internal coordination and bureaucratic red tape, and difficulties in communicating PB process expectations. Policies and practices can be formalized to mitigate these challenges and enhance the possibility of building equitable participatory systems.