PARTYCYPACY BUDGET AS A CROSSING OF CIVIL ACTIVITY: POLISH MODEL ON THE EXAMPLE OF POZNAŃ

Abstract

The author sets the task to study the impact of new mechanisms of direct democracy (participatory budget) on attracting and activating the population to local public policy. The organization of participatory budgeting is a manifestation of direct democracy that allows citizens to express their approval or disapproval of the actions taken by local authorities. This article presents the Polish experience of implementing a public budget on the example of the city of Poznan, which was one of the first cities in Poland to introduce a civic budget in 2012. It should be added that there is no one model of the participatory budget in Poland. Each municipality and city introduce its own rules, often guided by existing examples, often don’t conducting social consultations and don’t working out the principles of the civic budget together with the residents. The normative, qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the civic budgets of Poznan (number of voters and number of submitted projects, motivation for participation in the voting, public control, application of electronic platforms) are analyzed. In the addition, the advantages and disadvantages of the process of participatory budget are summed up, the activation of citizens is especially noted at the voting stage and low awareness of intermediate stages of the civil budget.