Bilateral Experience Sharing Conference in Participatory Budgeting: Cultivating Citizen’s Concern for Civil Affairs
On Jul. 25th, the Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission (RDEC) and the National Association for the Promotion of Community Universities (NAPCU) organized the “Participatory Budgeting Experience Sharing Conference: Tainan vs. Taichung”. By sharing experiences bilaterally, Tainan City Government enhanced its knowledge in participatory budgeting, and advanced its methods to “civil affairs participation”.
Participatory budgeting is an approach to decide how to distribute a portion of public budget through citizens. All citizens of a community affected by a particular policy will gather up and discuss about the plan, and decide the order of priority through voting. Therefore, citizens have equal rights and opportunities. In other words, one should elaborate his or her views on supporting or opposing a plan, and further be judged by the opinion of others on whether or not to implement the policy.
Chao Ching-Hui, the Chairperson of RDEC, noted that the originator of budget participatory could either be a particular bureau or a councilman, and that the nature of budget participatory could be categorized as “administrative system” or “bid”. The organization that undertakes the responsibility could be a school, a private sector entity, or the government. In Taichung’s case, Taichung City Government authorizes scholars to initiate relating procedures; Tainan, on the other hand, authorizes the Ministry of Culture to promote the “3rd stage community construction and village culture development” through district office’s self-management. It is evident that the two approaches taken are drastically different.
Over the past few years, Tainan City Government has worked with NAPCU on advancing Tainan through deliberative democracy. For instance, open-decision making programs such as the “Fei’yan New Village” and “new location of administrative center referendum” had invited citizens to participate in the policy decision-making process. Activating civil participation through different approaches, Tainan City Government hopes to embed the spirit of civil participation to demonstrate the value of democracy, turning Tainan into a city that communicates with its citizens.