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Key research themes
1. How can participatory budgeting methods be designed to effectively aggregate diverse voter preferences while addressing project cost constraints and group-level budget limits?
This theme focuses on advancing the methodologies for participatory budgeting (PB) that comprehensively capture voter preferences, account for project costs, and respect complex budgetary constraints both at the global and subgroup levels. Designing mechanisms that reflect voters’ true priorities and deal with the combinatorial nature of projects and finances is crucial for fair, practical, and efficient allocation of public resources.
Key finding: Introduced 'Knapsack Voting' tailored for PB settings that strategically incorporates project costs into voters' preferences, showing strategy-proofness under natural utility models, and demonstrated real-world applicability... Read more
Key finding: Extended standard PB models by incorporating groupings of projects, each with specific budget limits, and investigated the computational complexity of maximizing voter satisfaction under these constraints; identified... Read more
Key finding: Augmented the PB model to integrate substitution and complementary interactions among projects within groups, capturing diminishing marginal utilities and enabling more realistic modeling of voter preferences; identified... Read more
Key finding: Developed a web-based system supporting virtual participatory budget formation through explicit preference elicitation and guided negotiation, improving upon traditional physical meeting-based voting by enabling structured... Read more
2. What are the organizational and process-related factors influencing the implementation and effectiveness of collaborative budgeting in organizations?
This theme investigates how the budgeting process, including collaboration among various organizational stakeholders, impacts the practicality and success of budget implementation. It explores the challenges and opportunities of moving from traditional budgeting to more participative or beyond-budgeting approaches within different organizational structures and cultural contexts, emphasizing factors like inclusiveness, control, and motivation.
Key finding: Empirically showed that organizations inspired by Beyond Budgeting principles may still retain fixed budget targets due to structural constraints, lack of internal benchmarks, and owner expectations; highlighted the tension... Read more
Key finding: Demonstrated through qualitative research that involving operational employees in the budget process enhances relevance and reliability, suggesting that collaborative budgeting helps reduce alienation and increases successful... Read more
Key finding: Proposed a theoretical framework contrasting traditional public budgeting with budgeting in collaborative networks, emphasizing the altered accountability, transparency, and performance measurement challenges in networked... Read more
Key finding: Argued that criticisms of budgeting often stem from bad management practices rather than the technique itself; illustrated how proper budgeting, integrated into organizational climate and management, can foster trust,... Read more
3. What lessons can be learned from the global diffusion and implementation of participatory budgeting regarding citizen participation, transparency, and governance outcomes?
This theme synthesizes international experiences with participatory budgeting, focusing on its adoption drivers, variations in quality, and impacts on democratic engagement and service delivery. It examines how PB has evolved from a radical democratic experiment toward a governance tool emphasizing transparency and accountability, highlighting factors such as civil society mobilization, government ideology, and institutional capacity.
Key finding: Reviewed global diffusion of PB across varied contexts and governance levels, identifying adoption influenced by government ideology, civil society activism, and international advocacy; underscored PB's dual role in improving... Read more
Key finding: Analyzed local government experiences with budgetary collaborations, highlighting success factors such as clarity of expectations, trust-building, shared information, and managing power imbalances; emphasized the political... Read more
Key finding: Examined the shortcomings in transparency and public participation in national budgeting processes, calling for adoption of best practices from countries like Canada and South Korea that include multi-stage public... Read more