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Participatory Budgeting in Budapest: Navigating the Trade-Offs of Digitalisation, Resilience, and Inclusiveness Amid Crisis

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Electronic Participation (ePart 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14153))

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Abstract

In a public health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, local governments had to react to external shocks. Based on previous analysis of participatory budgeting (PB) in different cities observed during the most difficult times of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, the quality of participation and deliberation has been seriously reduced, due to the crisis. In many cases, deliberative and participatory processes were cancelled and postponed, which questioned the resilience of these processes. In other cases, online and digital solutions appeared to be a response to the health crises and their challenges. As per our previous findings, we concluded that the resilience of PB processes in the case of Budapest was increased if the resources were available to set up online platforms and create online communication. With the emerging time of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, digital government practices adopted new methods to maintain the continuation of participatory processes, while some others did not adopt new measures. These solutions were further steps towards e-participation and digitalisation of PB processes that could serve the survival of those, but they may result in less inclusive participation. To understand how resilience and inclusiveness could relate to each other, we analysed the digitalisation of PB in Budapest from that point of view. In our analysis, we explore the relationship between resilience, inclusiveness and digitalisation and the possible trade-offs between those characteristics in the case of PB in Budapest at the city level and its districts.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

    Gabriella Kiss & Máté Csukás

  2. Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

    Dániel Oross

Authors
  1. Gabriella Kiss
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  2. Máté Csukás
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  3. Dániel Oross
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gabriella Kiss .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Continuing Education Krems, Krems an der Donau, Austria

    Noella Edelmann

  2. Ghent University, Gent, Belgium

    Lieselot Danneels

  3. University of Continuing Education Krems, Krems an der Donau, Austria

    Anna-Sophie Novak

  4. Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    Panos Panagiotopoulos

  5. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Iryna Susha

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Kiss, G., Csukás, M., Oross, D. (2023). Participatory Budgeting in Budapest: Navigating the Trade-Offs of Digitalisation, Resilience, and Inclusiveness Amid Crisis. In: Edelmann, N., Danneels, L., Novak, AS., Panagiotopoulos, P., Susha, I. (eds) Electronic Participation. ePart 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14153. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41617-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41617-0_3

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