Madison Reporter

Chicago’s participatory budgeting a positive, but incomplete, step toward inclusion

A sidewalk in Rogers Park, Chicago, where residents used participatory budgeting to decide on infrastructure projects like repaving streets, painting murals and installing new playgrounds. Photo by James Andrews/iStock

Street-level mobilization, an outreach strategy aimed at making participatory budgeting more inclusive, can only partially achieve its goal for marginalized groups, according to a multiyear ethnographic study in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood by Assistant Professor Denia Garcia of the La Follette School of Public Affairs.

Participatory budgeting is a practice in which citizens make decisions about part of a public budget through a series of assemblies, deliberations and voting methods. In participating Chicago wards, residents decide on infrastructure projects like repaving streets, painting murals and installing new playgrounds. Street-level mobilization is a direct outreach strategy to make civic participation more accessible to everyone.

However, Garcia’s fieldwork demonstrates that full inclusion is not possible through participatory budgeting because it is not designed to give people the power to meaningfully effect change in their community. In Chicago, participatory budgeting is limited to aldermanic “menu” money for discretionary infrastructure spending. That means communities can decide how to spend money on infrastructure projects like repaving sidewalks but not on projects related to the ward’s operational costs like after-school programming. Thus, the power to decide on many issues that matter to people, such as education and public safety, falls outside the purview of participatory budgeting.

“Even in the highly diverse and politically active community of Rogers Park,” Garcia says. “A major theme highlighted in my work as a participant observer was that of pervasive distrust in the government to be an honest and effective broker of the public’s funds.” She adds: “This is despite the fact that participatory budgeting is specifically designed to build trust and put agency back into the hands of the community.”

During her fieldwork — which lasted more than three years — one of Garcia’s responsibilities was to assist the 49th Ward alderman’s office in recruiting participatory budgeting voters. To do so, she asked residents walking by a train station: “Would you like to decide how to spend a million dollars to improve the neighborhood?” This street-level mobilization increased voting and helped create pop-up civic spaces about the project and the neighborhood.

However, upon analysis of her data, she found responses often betrayed a lack of institutional trust among those who responded. Distrust in government was common among both those who voted in the participatory budgeting election and those who explained why they refused to vote. Distrust was the second most common explanation for not voting after “I’m running late.” Garcia’s observations and interviews with nearly 100 residents revealed that these expressions of distrust often have a racial component and are indicative of a broken relationship between citizens and their government.

Distrust often manifested as belief that projects on the ballot would not be completed or that funds would not be distributed fairly. This belief was more prevalent among Latino and Black residents due to historical and contemporary political exclusion and disinvestment in their neighborhoods. One man said in Spanish: “Why [vote] if you are not going to do it?” A Black woman told her: “It’s not going to be for this part of the neighborhood.”

The 49th Ward is located in Rogers Park, a highly diverse neighborhood on Chicago's north side with more than 50,000 residents. The 49th Ward became the first place in the United States to adopt participatory budgeting in 2009; however civic events did not reflect this diversity according observations made during Garcia's fieldwork.

Garcia's research comes at a time when trust in government has dropped precipitously. The percentage of Americans who reported trusting federal government "always" or "most of time" declined from 77 percent (1964) down 24 percent (2021), nearly three out four Americans believe elected officials do care what people think according Pew Research Center.

“As trust in government – even democracy itself – continues plummet,” says Garcia: "This research highlights how best-intended strategies inclusive civic participation struggle overcome headwinds corruption racism marginalization." She concludes: "Street-level outreach necessary but sufficient strategy engage citizens processes Governments must work rebuild trust aspire fully inclusive communities."