Ponencia ISA World 2010 Local governance: the case of participatory budgeting in Salto and Paysandú (Uruguay)

Different ways of implementing the participatory budgeting result in different impacts on their populations. The cases chosen have important differences in strategic approach: contests on one side and search for consensus on the other.

In addition to the historical features of each society, there are also different actions promoted by the different actors which showed different results.

In Paysandú department the society has a significant participation profile and a dense network of civil society organizations, while in Salto department the social network is weaker.

In the first example, a proposal of contests was designed and the contests were evaluated and selected by the municipality.

In the second example, the municipality tried to build consensus on common projects.

The organizational, social and psychological sides of such processes is what is analyzed in the research, pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of both proposals and their results.

The research includes 40 interviews of the actors involved in participatory budgeting of these departments covering different dimensions of the impact referred : organizational, sociological and psychological.

Using a qualitative strategy, the objective of the research was to account for the different formats raised in the different policies and their implications for each group and individual processes ,as well as in the results obtained, considering all the time the participants ‘ subjectivity from their perception as actors of the specific case.

The participation of new actors or the confirmation of the former militants, the new ways of organizing the public space or the traditional role affirmation of democracy or new rituals for old structures, undoubtedly try to give an answer to all the questions that the speech and debate is trying to answer in its extended version.