Governance matters. Fieldwork on participatory budgeting, voting, and development from Campania, Italy

• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Author: Andrea Gatto,Elkhan Richard Sadik‐Zada
• Date: 01 December 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2769

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Governance matters. Fieldwork on participatory budgeting,

voting, and development from Campania, Italy

Andrea Gatto

1,2,3

| Elkhan Richard Sadik-Zada

4,5,6

1

College of Business and Public Management,

Wenzhou-Kean University, Wenzhou, China

2

Natural Resources Institute, University of

Greenwich, Central Avenue, Chatham

Maritime, UK

3

Centre for Studies on Europe, Azerbaijan

State University of Economics (UNEC), Baku,

Azerbaijan

4

Institute of Development Research and

Development Policy (IEE), Ruhr-University

Bochum, Bochum, Germany

5

Center Environment, Resources and Energy

Economics (CURE), Ruhr-University Bochum,

Bochum, Germany

6

Center for Studies on Europe (AIM),

Azerbaijan State University of Economics

(UNEC), Baku, Azerbaijan

Correspondence

Andrea Gatto, Wenzhou-Kean University,

Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province 325060, China.

Email: a.gatto@greenwich.ac.uk

On the wave of the success of the participatory budgeting (PB) implemented in

Porto Alegre, Brazil, a number of administrations around the world jumpstarted

new forms of nonfinancial balance reporting. This trend was supported by an

increasing consensus from the international community. PB aims to enhance mutual

trust between the different social stakeholders and foster public administrations

transparency. Fo r this reason, PB is re cognized as an effe ctive tool for faci litating

good governance, sustainability, and development. Previous field research does not

highlight local voting and corruption figures. To shed light on these variables

throughout a case study, this article makes use of original mixed methods tech-

niques to analyze the PB experience of a municipality in Southern Italy. The combi-

nation of data regarding census, voting shares, and projects' features is a

methodological innovation, used here for the first time. Fieldwork has been con-

ducted to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. These data were employed

along with official demographics statistics to inspect existing public management

and development dynamics. Four distinct data sources, intersecting population and

voting data through t he PB tool were exami ned. After mainstr eaming PB, referri ng

to the world's benchmark of Porto Alegre, this article investigates the good practice

of Casamarciano, Campania. Evidence shows compelling features from the local

experience and encouraging involvement of the community, rating the poll partici-

pation even greater than Porto Alegre engagement. The qualitative data pinpoints

the local administration's management choices—noteworthy, the town's PB

model—and the innovation behind the public management strategies. These out-

comes may help to better understand PB dynamics, yielding improved local devel-

opment and sustainability indications for public affairs governance.

KEYWORDS

census data, development policy, good governance, mixed methods, participatory budgeting,

transparency

JEL CLASSIFICATION

H72, O17, O19, O57

Received: 30 July 2021 Revised: 21 September 2021 Accepted: 27 September 2021

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2769

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Public Affairs published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

J Public Affairs. 2022;22(Suppl. 1):e2769. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of11

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2769