The 6th Status Report on Participatory Budgeting in Germany provides an overview of all municipalities listed on the website buergerhaushalt.org. Since the first status report was published in 2007, it is not only the number of municipalities listed here that has grown continuously; so too have the requirements involved in listing them. This is due chiefly to the growing diversity of types of process. To coincide with the relaunch of buergerhaushalt.org, a great deal of work has therefore been put into revising the material. A total of 403 municipalities were researched, including all German municipalities with a population of more than 40,000, as well as the smaller municipalities already listed on buergerhaushalt.org in previous years.
Externer Link: The full report can be downloaded here as a PDF file.
As a result, 274 municipalities are now included in the map of participatory budgeting processes in Germany. This means that the slight trend toward growth observed in previous years continued (last year the figure was still 237).
Besides tracing the trends in status, this year’s report also attempts to define and categorise more precisely the various types of procedure that have emerged in Germany in recent years. The following aspects were examined:
The object of participation
Which parts of the budget did the participatory process relate to?The form of participation
How can citizens participate?
Input optionsWhat kinds of proposal can citizens submit?
The channel of participation
What channels of communication can citizens use to take part in the budgeting process?Accountability
How is accountability provided?