Serving Multiple Masters? Public Managers’ Role Perceptions in Participatory Budgeting

• Published date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/00953997211014476
• Author: Koen Migchelbrink,Steven Van de Walle
• Date: 01 March 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211014476

Administration & Society

2022, Vol. 54(3) 339 –365

© The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00953997211014476

journals.sagepub.com/home/aas

Article

Serving Multiple Masters?

Public Managers’

Role Perceptions in

Participatory Budgeting

Koen Migchelbrink1,2

and Steven Van de Walle2

Abstract

Participatory budgeting is fast becoming a popular form of public

participation. Public managers play an important role in organizing and

implementing participatory budgeting. Their role perceptions affect

whether they use their discretion to limit or increase residents’ say in

participatory processes. However, we know little about public managers’

role perceptions in participatory budgeting. In this study, we develop a

typology of public managers’ role perceptions in participatory budgeting

using a Q-methodological analysis of public managers in seven municipal

participatory budgeting projects in Belgium. We find evidence for four

distinct perspectives: a managerial, citizen-centered, technocratic, and

skeptical perspective.

Keywords

participatory budgeting, public managers, role perceptions, typology,

Q-methodology

1Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands

2KU Leuven, Belgium

Corresponding Author:

Koen Migchelbrink, Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus University

Rotterdam, Burgermeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Email: migchelbrink@essb.eur.nl

1014476AAS0010.1177/00953997211014476Administration & SocietyMigchelbrink and Van de Walle

research-article2021

340 Administration & Society 54(3)

Introduction

Participatory budgeting is fast becoming a popular form of public participa-

tion in administrative decision-making (Miller et al., 2019; Sintomer et al.,

2008; Wampler, 2012). Participatory budgeting refers to “the participation of

non-elected citizens in the conception and/or allocation of public finances”

(Sintomer et al., 2008, p. 168). Public managers play an important role in

shaping participatory decision-making projects (Liao & Zhang, 2012;

Marlowe & Portillo, 2006). They design the mechanisms through which par-

ticipation takes place, decide who is eligible to participate, which proposals

are admissible, and support and manage the implementation of these propos-

als. Public managers not only “shape the tone of citizen participation” (Liao

& Zhang, 2012, p. 21), but can also “discount or even discourage” (Marlowe

& Portillo, 2006, p. 180) the participation they do not believe in.

Whether public managers use their professional discretion to limit or

increase residents’ influence in participatory budgeting projects is in part

dependent on their attitudes and role perceptions in participatory budgeting

in relation to residents and local politicians (Liao & Schachter, 2018;

Migchelbrink & Van de Walle, 2021). Participatory budgeting projects are

characterized by the interplay between local politics, administrative norms of

expertise and professionalism, and residents’ policy preferences and spending

proposals. In these processes, managers are expected to simultaneously realize

local politicians’ policy programs, implement residents’ spending proposals,

and enforce administrative norms of professionalism and expertise. It is the

task of public managers to implement participatory budgeting practices in a

way that satisfies the interest of all participants involved in the process (Eckerd

& Heidelberg, 2019; Frenkiel & Lama-Rewal, 2019; Zhang & Liao, 2011). In

short, in participatory budgeting public managers serve multiple masters.

Whose input public managers prefer can affect the efficacy of participa-

tory budgeting. In balancing the competing needs and preferences of local

politicians, bureaucratic norms and values, and residents’ budget proposals,

whose inputs do public managers prefer and whose do they discount? When

spending proposals are at odds, do public managers prefer to side with local

politicians, will they try to shape policies in accordance with their own pro-

fessional norms and values, or do they prefer to defer to residents? To under-

stand public managers’ input preferences in participatory budgeting, we

explore their role perceptions in participatory budgeting vis-a-vis residents

and local politicians.

Because of the importance of public managers to the success of participa-

tory processes, research on the determinants of public managers’ attitudes

toward public participation, including participatory budgeting, is on the rise