Features Of Participatory Governance
Features Of Participatory Governance
1. Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgeting is a process of democratic deliberation and decision making, in which ordinary residents of a village or city decide how the allocate part of a panchayat or municipal or public budget. Participatory budgeting is usually characterized by several basic design features, such as: identification of spending priorities by community members, election of budget delegates to represent different communities, facilitation and technical assistance by public employees, local and higher level assemblies to deliberate and vote on spending priorities, and the implementation of local direct-impacatcommunity projects.
In India, the panchayat in some states utilizes its common property resources and generates funds which are added to the total budget of the panchayats. Besides this, people also collect money to manage their common resources such as water works, and street lights.
2. Public Trusts
Public participation is regarded as one of the potential solutions to the crisis in public trust and governance. The idea is that the public should be involved in the policy process, and participation, rather than treating the public as simply passive recipients of policy decisions.
Public participation increase public trust in authorities, improving citizen political efficacy, enhancing democratic ideals, and even improving the quality of policy decisions.
3. Transparency and Accountability
These are two important pillar of democratic governance. Transparency ensures that information is made available that can be used to measure the authority’s performance and to guard against the misuse of power. Transparency enables democracies to achieve accountability.
4. Participatory Development
The World Development Report (1994) on infrastructure reported that in a study of 121 completed rural water supply projects, financed by various agencies, projects with a high degree of local participation in project selection and design were more likely to enjoy good maintenance, subsequently, than those with more centralized decision-making.
5. Environment and Sustainable Development
In recent years, public participation has come to be seen as a vital part of addressing environmental problems and bringing about environment and sustainable development. It is argued that public participation allows governments to adopt policies and enact laws that are relevant to communities and take into account their real needs. Sustainable development is more effective with participation in governance.