3 Participatory Budgets Honored for "Vitalizing Democracy"

From Tiago Peixoto: The Bertelsmann Foundation has announced the 7 finalists of the Reinhard-Mohn Prize 2011 “Vitalizing Democracy”. To this competition, 158 cases of democratic innovations from all over the world have been submitted. Amongst the 7 finalists chosen by the jury, 3 cases are related to innovations in the field of Participatory Budgeting (2 Brazil, 1 Argentina). All these 3 PB cases have the usage of ICT as an essential component of their participatory process.

- La Plata (Argentina): Participatory Budgeting uses SMS-voting and electronic ballots.

- Belo Horizonte (Brazil) Co-Governance: part of Belo Horizonte’s participatory budgeting includes Internet and interactive voice response (IVR) voting.

- Recife (Brazil) Participatory Budgeting: includes electronic ballots and Internet voting.

The 7 finalist cases will now go through an in-depth process of evaluation and documentation. The outputs of this process (e.g. videos, research papers) will then be available to the public at large, providing a wealth of information for researchers and practitioners.

The full-list of finalists can be found here.