Participatory budgeting: A dialogue among whom?

This research is based on a qualitative analysis of participatory budgeting (PB) in a local government in northern Italy using a single case study. Through the lens of the dialogic accounting theory, the research investigates PB as a tool of dialogic accounting to address the conceptual and practical problem of how and why PB can facilitate dialogue among participants throughout the budgeting process, and reshape the relationship between government and citizens. The results show that PB was conceptualized and implemented as a process with a combination of monologic and dialogic characteristics. It was designed in a top-down monological way, followed by the planning phase which endorsed the creation of a dialogue among citizens rather than between government and citizens. Further, the executive phase of PB did not meet the dialogic expectations of citizens because control over the use of public resources was exercised mainly through political authority.