Participatory Budgeting in the Dominican Republic: Implications for Agency, Democracy and Development

dc.contributor.advisorGraham, Carolen_US
dc.contributor.advisorCrocker, David Aen_US
dc.contributor.authorVasquez Duran, Marie Claireen_US
dc.contributor.departmentPublic Policyen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2015-02-06T06:32:27Z
dc.date.available2015-02-06T06:32:27Z
dc.date.issued2014en_US
dc.description.abstractThis study examines participatory budgeting (PB) as an important kind of citizen participation in the Dominican Republic (DR) and the implications of this recent practice for agency, democracy, and development. PB is a process that intends to drive change with specific outcomes: through deliberative decision-making, ordinary citizens select well-being- and agency-enhancing projects that ideally lead to more local and authentic development. Together with the attainment of these tangible outcomes, valuable subjective states may also come about: people feel more in charge of their own lives, community groups become more collaborative and cooperative, and more and better democracy is fostered. Taking a step forward from previous studies that only focus on PB from an urban planning or public finance perspective, the overall objective of this study is to provide a deeper understanding and assessment of how PB works in the localities under analysis, its association with different measures of agency, the characteristics that drive its success or failure, and its general impact on the lives of individuals and communities. Drawing on normative and policy-based literatures and specifically following an agency-oriented capability approach, this study uses a mixed-methods approach to analyze interview, survey, and direct observations of PB public assemblies, and archival data with respect to the 2013 budget cycle in four DR municipalities. A regression analysis finds that participation in and awareness of PB are both significantly correlated with individuals reporting higher levels of individual and collective agency when compared to non-participants and unaware individuals. These measures of agency are contextualized to the municipal budget-planning cycle. A process tracing analysis concludes that PB is likely, under certain conditions, to increase democratic participation and deliberation. However, due to certain democratic deficits, PB in two DR municipalities does not always increase agency, group cooperative functioning, and good development. Thus, PB must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis because differences in the characteristics of each PB assembly may lead to different outcomes. It is finally argued that rather than condemning democracy because of the failures of the current PB system, we should advance PB's democracy further by improving it in various ways.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/M2J612
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/16141
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledPublic policyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledagencyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledcivic participationen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolleddemocracyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolleddevelopmenten_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledparticipatory budgetingen_US
dc.titleParticipatory Budgeting in the Dominican Republic: Implications for Agency, Democracy and Developmenten_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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