1 Introduction

Citizen participation in the public agenda has become key for the creation of public and social value by contributing to the legitimation of public policies, favoring social plurality and strengthening the role of the civil society. Moreover, in this particular arena of new public and collaborative governance (Torfing et al. 2012a, b; Sorensen and Torfing 2012; Osborne 2010a, b; Rhodes 1996; Kooiman 1993, 2002), public budgeting has contributed to direct participation of citizens in the decision making process of resource and public finance allocation, (Gilman 2016; Sintomer et al. 2008; Novy and Leubolt 2005; Ebdon 2002; Ebdon and Franklin 2006) by empowering them through bottom-up channels of communication to define strategic socioeconomic challenges of cities and regions.

In this context, the Provincial Government of Gipuzkoa in the Basque CountryFootnote 1 has introduced a new process of public budgeting (PB) as a central pillar of its regional collaborative and good governance program. This process is framed inside the Strategic Management Plan for 2015–2019 for the province of Gipuzkoa, which is based on a new Open and Collaborative Governance Model. Consolidating an open government approach for the province of Gipuzkoa implies the generation of trust between citizens and public representatives providing increasing transparency and effective accountability in the allocation of public resources and design of public policies. To achieve this goal the Provincial Government implemented a participatory budgeting program open to regional citizens to co-decide on the key socioeconomic challenges of the province for public finance allocation in 2018.

This paper illustrates the context in which this strategy was developed by focusing on the analysis of its channels of participation and communication and the description of the achieved main results by following five important objectives:

  • Describe how new public structures can play a major role in the creation of an innovative participatory culture which is able to scale and implement PB from a bottom-up approach.

  • Analyse how the systemic employment of social and technological tools can improve citizen participation.

  • Acknowledge the social priorities and social needs of citizens by attending real demands that can be included into the development of future public policies.

  • Open new channels of active reflection and debate, which contribute to improve the ways in which public administrations engage with citizens.

  • Describe how the process of open public budgeting through citizen participation can be approved and scaled by public representatives and technical staff.

This paper is divided into four different sections. We will first analyze the implications of collaborative governance and participatory budgeting in contemporary societies. The second section is focused on the methodological approach we have followed during this process. The third section will described the main results and reflections of the PB process leading to a concluding final section.

2 Understanding Collaborative Governance and Participatory Budgeting

Collaborative governance has been institutionalized as an innovative approach for the management and design of public policies in contemporary democratic systems (Jun 2002; Kettl 2002; Klijn and Koopenjan 2016). Its articulation is based on shared motivation structures oriented to the improvement of the capacities of policy action, fostering shared knowledge and adaptation to specific political and socioeconomic challenges. The nature of this collaboration has to be sustainable over time for the effective management of different resources from a series of reciprocal protocols and institutionalized procedures. In this context, collaborative governance is defined as “the structures of public policy decision making and management that engage people constructively across the boundaries of public agencies, levels of government, and/or the public, private and civic spheres in order to carry out a public purpose that could not otherwise be accomplished” (Emerson et al. 2011:2).

Likewise, this collaboration needs to enhance leadership and responsibility of the interested parties in the process of participation in order to generate new knowledge that can be later pragmatically applied. Frequently, these collaborative processes face different difficulties when translated into specific political responses and measures, resulting in the dissolution of citizen participation into simple proposals which never get to be applied or scaled. In this respect, the methodologies and resources for participation need to be correctly defined and delimited and, therefore, they need to be publicly planned and regulated with pragmatic purposes (Jessop 1998; Ansell and Gash 2007).

The most important challenge faced by these structures of collaboration is the unbalance between the power and knowledge that is generated between the actors, agents and institutions that hold power and civil society organizations; that is to say, between the expert knowledge coming from actors and agents that are more or less institutionally legitimized (academia, political advisers, experts, etc.), and the tacit knowledge coming from citizens and the civil society. This tacit knowledge is connected to the pragmatic nature of the social and economic problems that want to be addressed and that citizens’ face in their daily lives. This unbalance may have an effect in the accomplishment of real social responses because the knowledge acquired through bottom-up structures, may not be integrated in the more general public management dynamics, or may be simply lost in the process of political and policy implementation.

From this point of view, the most important value attributed to the different forms of collaborative governance is the assigned significance of participatory processes, that is, the capacity to generate structures of opportunity for participation, regardless of the benefits and obtained results inside the public consulting process. However, this collaborative and participatory process requires a deeper integration in relation to the objectives and strategies that look to be accomplished by the interested or affected parties in this relation. In the case of the participatory budgeting process described in this paper, the Provincial Government of Gipuzkoa previously designed and agreed to and strategic policy plan (Strategic Management Plan for 2015–2019) that could be aligned with the described relation.

In this framework, according to Ebdon (2002) the goal of citizen participation is to provide the necessary political and policy mechanisms that guarantee the citizens’ active role in the process of public decision making by acknowledging this active role in the provision of government services, and therefore recognizing their value not just as “service consumers” but as legitimized stakeholders in this public decision making process (Ebdon 2002:274). Concerning PB, Novy and Leubolt (2005) see this process as a social innovation that has been capable of creating and intertwined relation between the state and civil society (Novy and Leubolt 2005:23). As a result, PB is perceived as just piece of the puzzle, it’s a mean to an end, being contextualized in a much extensive social experimentation approach that looks to institutionalize and promote a broader participation culture among citizens. In order to achieve this goal PB is usually implemented annually and redefined every time it is applied. Following Novy and Leubolt (2005) “participatory budgeting is an instrument of decentralization that successfully avoids spatial fragmentation” (…) “the participants not only make suggestions but are also responsible for the ranking of the proposed projects that takes place both on a regional and thematic basis” (Novy and Leubolt 2005:28).

PB first emerged in Brazil in the 1980s and has later been adapted to other Latin American and Western European countries. According to Sintomer et al. (2008), PB has followed different methodological approaches, being context dependent. This has had an effect in how we define public budgeting, not being able to agree on a common definition that can be applied to every case. Nevertheless, these authors recognize five important factors when we approach PB: (1) the limited access to resources and funds by public authorities confines restricted possibilities on how these public funds are spend and implemented; (2) local or decentralized authorities need to be involved in the public regulation of the PB process with enough power and legitimation to manage and direct this process; (3) PB requires a sustained strategy over time that grants its future institutionalization; (4) a certain form or mechanism of public deliberation (sustained meetings or assemblies) within its applied collaborative framework is needed; and (5) effective and efficient results to generate trust between citizens and public bodies requires some level of accountability and result materialization once PB is finalized (Sintomer et al. 2008:168).

3 Methodological Context

Having defined the governance context where PB is enclosed, this section looks to describe how this particular collaborative approach was contextualized and applied in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa.

As already stated in the introduction to this paper, the PB initiative is part of the Strategic Management Plan for 2015–2019 developed by the provincial government of Gipuzkoa, and it is therefore framed as an specific action inside a wider public institutional process. The first approach to PB was developed in 2016, and the mentioned plan looks to repeat this process in 2017 and 2018. This paper only describes the actions that took place in 2017 and its implications in the public budgets for 2018.

The Strategic Management Plan for 2015–2019 establishes the foundations for the development of a series of projects, among which we could highlight for our analysis, a “Good Governance Strategy and a Programme for Political Culture and Deepening Democracy”, made specific in the following objectives (DFG 2016:20):

  • The transformation of the ways of governing and making Good Governance a hallmark of the Provincial Government of Gipuzkoa.

  • To explore in more depth the attitudes, values and democratic behaviour of citizens, institutional representatives and organised society.

These projects are reflected in the most important general objectives of the Plan, among which we should highlight the Reinvention of the Government of Gipuzkoa “as the driving force that promotes the development and transformation of the territory, establishing a corporate and crosscutting commitment to the cultural and organisational change by each person and department of the provincial government of Gipuzkoa; opening active channels for citizen participation, multiagent collaboration and transparency” (…) “…extending and homogenising new advanced practices of planning, management and evaluation applicable to each one of its public policies…” (DFG 2016:15).

As a result, in this case PB is only a part of a wider governance model that is methodologically articulated inside a PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) (Matsuo and Nakhara 2013; Moen and Norman (2006); Johnson 2002). The PDCA cycle is based on a multiyear framework of action (2015–2019) that is annually revised involving a series of steps:

  • Development of a Strategic Governance Plan by the Provincial Government of Gipuzkoa for the period (2015–2019) (PLAN).

  • Implementation of first actions within the plan which look to deliver a series of products and public services, in this case related to the participatory budgeting process (DO) inside the following public policy fields: employment, active aging, workplace participation, education, sustainable environment and transport infrastructure, and poverty reduction.

  • Revision of first results and steps, which are organized into different programs and public actions where PB is framed (CHECK).

  • Application and scaling of results through the creation of a sustained and participatory culture in the long-term, by fomenting collective learning within the province, that is, what has been learned and how we can apply and sustain future actions (ACT).

In this particular case, the PB initiative for 2017 involves a broader and new communication and socialization strategy with citizens different from the one implemented in 2016. It is intended to answer with coherence and transparency to citizens’ proposals through the combination of face-to-face actions as well as virtual and digital channels of attention and citizen participation. The rise and diffusion of social networks and mass media through the ICT revolution has facilitated the acceleration and creation of a new relational universe that is more connected and accessible, where citizens and the civil society can express themselves more freely. This resource is now part of our social and public imaginary and of our daily lives, as a mean that is used by all types of actors and agents, from policymakers to third sector organizations, companies, NGOs, citizens, etc. (Gilman 2016; Longo 2011; West 2005). As stated by Hollie Russon Gilman in her book “Democracy Reinvented. Participatory Budgeting and Civic Innovation in America”, “digital technologies have accelerated the flow of communication and reduced barriers to entry for collective action, introducing new possibilities for organization and activism in a networked world (Gilman 2016:4).

The channels of communication and socialization of this PB process where based in the complex and combined application of different measures:

  • Diffusion in the Media and Social Networks of the strategic plan and PB initiative

  • Online and physical mailing campaigns

  • Virtual participation based on simple and agile digital platform where citizens could alternatively answer to the questionnaire and post their different opinions and concerns (https://www.gipuzkoa.eus/es/web/partaidetza/)

  • HERRIZ-HERRI (From Village to Village Campaign): This campaign was based on face to face interactions with citizens of 38 municipalities in Gipuzkoa promoting active participation during 40 days. Physical tents were build in these municipalities where the government explained what PB is, what are the channels of participation. This campaign also offered the chance to answer the questionnaire physically (see Table 1 below)

    Table 1. Municipalities and geographic locations of the ‘Village to Village’ campaign.
    Full size table

  • Thematic meeting with the civil society which involved third sector organizations and civil associations (see Table 2 below).

    Table 2. Thematic meetings with civil society organizations
    Full size table

The online questionnaire that was distributed both physically and through the digital platform was based in two open and one closed question: (1) What are your proposals for the 2018 budget? (Open); (2) What do you think is the main future challenge of the province of Gipuzkoa? (Open); (3) In which three areas would you like the provincial government to invest? (Closed). Each question was formulated for the following thematic areas: social services, employment and economic promotion, infrastructures, public transportation, culture, tourism, environment, corruption, agriculture, equality conciliation policies, promotion of regional language (euskera).

This process was conducted through the months of May to June 2017 and involved a sample of 2,859 people from a population universe of 618,256 (people over 16 years old registered in Gipuzkoa. 318, 054 women and 300, 202 men). The confidence level was of 95% with a margin error of 1.8%.

As part of the PDCA cycle, the revision process (CHECK) looks to improve the actions developed in previous years. As a result the PB initiative in 2017 increased the dates for participation (from 44 in 2016 to 60 in 2017), its presence in local municipalities (from 16 localities in 2016 to 38 in 2017) which amplified its impact potential to 81,7% of the total population, and most significantly, the design of an online digital platform to facilitate both the recollection of answers and the analysis of results, by improving transparency and promoting more efficiency to the recollection process.

The online participant portal was key and played two important roles: on the one hand, citizens could have access and participate directly through the virtual platform to design the new public budgets for 2018; on the other hand, all the channels of communication and participation were monitored through this online platform and weekly updated so that citizens could follow in real time the evolution and priorities of other citizens for public budget allocation.

Methodologically, for those citizens that wanted to participate online, the platform offered a budget simulator where participants could compare the budgets of previous years (2016, 2017) and introduce new modifications. For this particular case, the budget was divided into 10 different lines of action in the Provincial Government where citizens could ‘play’ and ‘experiment’ with the simulator to create their own public budget or modify the previous ones with a +/–5% range. For every line of action, participants could also make new proposals or comment on previous budget allocations. This was a very interesting and dynamic process from a user-centered approach, since citizens faced the complex and real challenge of public budget allocation, the simulator would not allow the budget to be finalized until a balance between all the action lines was reached. They had the chance to experiment how complex and difficult public budget allocation is when having to consider multivariable approaches to the policymaking process.

4 Results

The PB process received 7,683 contributions, 83% of which were recollected through the ‘village to village’ campaign. Only 8% of the total contributions were received through the digital platform, favoring face-to-face interaction over other modes of participation. Citizens acknowledged the complex and difficult task of reaching a budget balance through the online simulator, opting for direct participation and general budget estimations in the ‘village to village’ campaign. The average age of participation was of 48 years old but younger generations were more open to contribute through the different transversal and thematic approaches (almost 44% of the contributions were done by people between 16–45 years old, showing an important generational gap in citizen participation). Also, from a gender perspective, more women than men were involved (58% women over 42% men) in this process.

From a thematic point of view, two were the main concerns manifested through the PB process. Firstly, allocation of resources and funds to support economic promotion in job creation (19.7% of total contributions) –stable, worthy and of quality– specially in younger generations, was a demand which was emphasized transversally through three main participatory processes. The request for specific public policies in this arena was significantly important, particularly for ages over 35 years old and self employed workers. Also, public support of companies and local industry was another significant area of interest with respect to public training and life-long learning programs (particularly in the technological and digital sectors), entrepreneurial public funding and R&D investment.

Secondly, support for social policies is highlighted over other areas (19.3%). The need to advance in the extension of network residences for the aged population, economic household support, rising inequality, and daily care centers to fight poverty and support social integration are revealed as priority areas. The extension of social services and coverage for the aged population and vulnerable people was also a recurrent topic in the PB process.

The third area that received more contributions was the need for sustained public policies and procurement to fight public and private corruption, mainly in the public sector and the migrant population. In this context, it was worrying to see that many of these contributions were focused on demands which were critically addressed to the migrant population, as a social group that is benefiting from social policies in a fraudulent manner. More control and vigilance was directed towards this issue, which particularly worries public administrations indicating that there are rising xenophobic attitudes in certain segments of the population.

Finally, 9,2% of all contributions were addressed towards environmental problems that revealed massive opposition to a public incinerator that is planned to be built in the region. These complaints were directed to the Environment Department of the provincial government through a negative assessment of the possible impacts it will have in the populations’ health, the insecurity it generated and the high costs that would be needed for its support. Others issues emphasized in this particular area were focused on the need for sustainable tourism policies, sustainable transport and cleaning of mountains and rivers.

5 Conclusions

Although this paper has not been able to reflect on the future steps that will be taken to answer some of the mentioned concerns described in the results section, it successfully reveals how PB can contribute to improve the social problems and needs of regional and local populations through citizen participation and social experimentation. The experimentation process is a measure that needs to be acknowledged because citizens were reluctant to use the online simulator when they faced the difficult task of having to calculate and reach a clear budget balance for all their budget proposals.

The application and scaling of results through the creation of a sustained and participatory culture in the long-term is therefore difficult to assess at this stage of the process, but the importance of collective learning between citizens’ and the public government is reflected through the different concerns that were addressed in the PB process. Although it is still early to assess the impact that this strategic policy programe will have on the future of the province, we should acknowledge it is part of a more ambitious and complex endeavor that should enable in the medium-long terms, a new process of institutionalization based on broader public models of action. The rooting and necessary implementation of a new political culture is fundamental for the institutional future of the territory, both from a discursive and practical point of view.

The rules and the values that guide the different social actions, deciding which of them are relevant and which of them can be discarded and, therefore, creating dynamics of hegemonic power that govern the regulatory and conceptual factors through which the policies are built, applying each discourse to its specific spatial practice, is complex and difficult to implement from a bottom-up approach. In this case, exhaustive public monitoring of all of the contributions is needed, and not all citizens’ understand the difficulty and the procurement process public decisions face when scaling public proposals to specific policy measures.

In this context, each social structure raises thoughts about the reasons for its existence, its mechanisms of action and communication, the organization of its power frameworks, and the effect of all these, when building policies and scenarios focused on strengthening organized society and enhancing the process of political legitimization. All of which are faced through new mechanisms of political collaboration and public representation oriented towards solving the problems of Gipuzkoa’s society, creating the necessary tools to guide and decide its future.