More information
Description
The growth of participatory budgeting across the world has been unprecedented over the last 25 years. A survey of the European Parliament shows that only in Europe participatory budgeting initiatives have increased in the period between 2005 and 2012 from 55 to more than 1300, involving more than 8 million European citizens. The European Parliament recognizes participatory budgeting as an efficient tool to strengthen civic culture and capacity for collective decision-making as well as counteract declining trust in political institutions. Participatory budgeting is still a concept not well-known in Bulgaria. The third national action plan of Bulgaria for the period 2016-2018 aimed at greater involvement of citizens in the management of municipal budgets through “participatory budgeting” but this goal has not been achieved and the concept has not been interpreted in the same way as everywhere else. This project aims at raising the awareness of the public and the administration about participatory budgeting and introducing this mechanism in Sofia. Our approach provides for the collective development of a legal framework together with the citizens, makes the overall process legitimate, depolitisizes it and sets a precedent about the way to develop local policies, namely with active involvement of citizens. Thus the project beneficiaries will be not only the citizens of Sofia City but also all Bulgarian cities, who can apply this example of civic participation in the future.
Summary of project results
The project aimed to enhance the democratic culture of citizens by introducing them to the civil budget mechanism, as well as by conducting surveys to probe citizens'' preferences on how they would like such a policy to be implemented in the Bulgarian capital Sofia.
The project raised the awareness of thousands of citizens about the concept of "civic budget" - from 10% to 17% within the campaign (results of a representative quantitative survey at the beginning and end of the campaign).
Тthrough focus groups, sociological research and online conversation we learned the preferences of over 1500 citizens on how to build a civic budget in Sofia and submitted the summarized results and recommendations to the Sofia Municipal Council; Citizens have expressed a desire to participate in policy-making, and despite the low level of trust in local government, are ready to participate through new tools in the management of the city; Citizens participated constructively in the one-month online discussion. As a result of our campaign, Sofia Municipality launched the program Sofia chooses – a de facto civic budget worth BGN 1.5 million.