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Real Money, Real Power?

The Challenges with Participatory Budgeting in New York City

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  • © 2020

Overview

Authors:
  1. Daniel Williams

    1. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, New York, USA

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  2. Don Waisanen

    1. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, New York, USA

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  • Offers an investigative, behind-the-scenes look at New York City's participatory budgeting (PB) process, which takes readers through an entire annual cycle

  • Provides a clear account of issues related primarily to transparency, manipulation, and favoritism that are not commonly acknowledged in the PB literature

  • Provides a critical review of the experience of the asserted beneficiaries of participatory budgeting and reveals a variety of barriers to actually achieving those benefits

  • Recommends substantial reform, specifically as it pertains to a lack of transparency, manipulation by city agencies, favorable treatment of insider proposed projects, and a failure to reveal the basis of project costs

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Daniel Williams, Don Waisanen
    Pages 1-8

  3. Participatory Budgeting from the Past to the Present

    • Daniel Williams, Don Waisanen
    Pages 9-17

  4. Between Policy Promises and Program Implementation

    • Daniel Williams, Don Waisanen
    Pages 19-25

  5. The Challenges of Neighborhood Assemblies

    • Daniel Williams, Don Waisanen
    Pages 27-42

  6. The Challenges of Delegate Meetings

    • Daniel Williams, Don Waisanen
    Pages 43-58

  7. The Challenges of Project Expos and Pop-Up Voting

    • Daniel Williams, Don Waisanen
    Pages 59-74

  8. Conclusion: Doing Participatory Budgeting Right

    • Daniel Williams, Don Waisanen
    Pages 75-80

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 81-112
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Keywords

About this book

New York City has the largest council-sponsored Participatory Budgeting (PB) processes in North America. From its inception in Brazil, PB was a process that empowered the least-advantaged members of the community by providing a way to propose budget allocations through voting. This book reports on a multi-methodological study of New York City’s participatory budgeting (PB) process from the perspective of a city resident over time. A participatory budgeting slogan purports that the initiative offers “real power” and “real money” to constituents at a local level. To critically examine such top-down assertions, and different than much that has been written about PB, this book researches and navigates its events the way a member of the community would see it. The study reveals a lack of transparency, manipulation by city agencies, the favorable treatment of insider proposed projects, and a failure to reveal the basis of project costs. It also finds that there is no singular participatory budgeting project in New York City. Instead, there are numerous participatory budget projects, as many as there are council members who engage in the practice. This book provides a ground-level view of these limitations and recommends substantial reform.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, New York, USA

    Daniel Williams, Don Waisanen

About the authors

Daniel Williams has been with Baruch College since 1995 where he teaches budgeting, performance measurement, and ethics. Prior, he was the budget director for the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services (Medicaid). Williams has previous studies of New York City Participatory Budgeting with Thad Calabrese and Anubhav Gupta in Administration and Society and of a New York City discretionary spending with Yonghong Wu in the Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting, and Financial Management.

Don Waisanen is a Professor in the Baruch College, CUNY Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, where he teaches courses and workshops in public communication—including executive speech training, communication strategy, and seminars on leadership, storytelling, and conflict management. All his research projects seek to understand how communication works to promote or hinder the force of citizens’ voices.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Real Money, Real Power?

  • Book Subtitle: The Challenges with Participatory Budgeting in New York City

  • Authors: Daniel Williams, Don Waisanen

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59201-1

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Economics and Finance, Economics and Finance (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-59200-4Published: 29 October 2020

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-59201-1Published: 28 October 2020

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XI, 112

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 3 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Public Finance, Public Policy

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