Enacting and negotiating institutional rules in participatory budgeting: how institutional rules shape inclusion and exclusion in democratic innovations

Local governments increasingly experiment with democratic innovations to strengthen local democracy and decision-making power of residents. This article examines how the institutional rules of a specific democratic innovation – participatory budgeting – shape who is included or excluded. Participatory budgeting holds the potential to empower and emancipate underprivileged citizens through firsthand knowledge and experience with decision-making practices, but it can also reinforce existing inequalities and power disparities. Drawing on institutional theory through a public encounters lens, this study analyzes how rules regarding position, boundary, scope and authority affect the emancipatory potential of participatory budgeting in practice. Particular attention is given to how participants in different positions engage with and shape these rules, as to understand how decision-making within participatory budgeting works. The findings show that institutional rules are continuously contested and that rules intended to empower disadvantaged participants often, in practice, benefit those who already have a dominant position.