What do you think of this definition of participatory budgeting that's also used in the document? Does it work for you? Does it have too many parameters/not enough parameters? Does it make PB clear for you? Does it define it from other participation methods?
"Participatory budgeting directly involves local people in making decisions on the spending and priorities for a defined public budget. PB processes can be defined by geographical area (whether that's neighbourhood or larger) or by theme. This means engaging residents and community groups representative of all parts of the community to discuss and vote on spending priorities, make spending proposals, and vote on them, as well giving local people a role in the scrutiny and monitoring of the process and results to inform subsequent PB decisions on an annual or repeatable basis."
Your views on our draft definition of PB
I think its a really good idea to have something like these principles to hold onto. Otherwise anybody can say they are empowering citizens just by adopting the name, without really understanding why they are doing it or even believing in meaningful involvement.
Sherry Arnstein discusses types of participation and "nonparticipation" in A Ladder of Citizen Participation(1969). She defines citizen participation as the redistribution of power that enables the havenot citizens, presently excluded from the political and economic processes, to be deliberately included in the future.
A Budget (from french for a purse) refers to planned expenses and revenues.(thanks wikipedia).
So a simple definition could be "deliberately involving those citizens that have previously been excluded in the decision-making about public services and taxes." (Of course asking people what they think is not enough- they need to make the decision themselves!)
Any other thoughts out there?