Participatory Budgeting in Budapest: Navigating the Trade-Offs of Digitalisation, Resilience, and Inclusiveness Amid Crisis

In a public health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, local governments had to react to external shocks. Based on previous analysis of participatory budgeting (PB) in different cities observed during the most difficult times of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, the quality of participation and deliberation has been seriously reduced, due to the crisis. In many cases, deliberative and participatory processes were cancelled and postponed, which questioned the resilience of these processes. In other cases, online and digital solutions appeared to be a response to the health crises and their challenges. As per our previous findings, we concluded that the resilience of PB processes in the case of Budapest was increased if the resources were available to set up online platforms and create online communication. With the emerging time of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, digital government practices adopted new methods to maintain the continuation of participatory processes, while some others did not adopt new measures. These solutions were further steps towards e-participation and digitalisation of PB processes that could serve the survival of those, but they may result in less inclusive participation. To understand how resilience and inclusiveness could relate to each other, we analysed the digitalisation of PB in Budapest from that point of view. In our analysis, we explore the relationship between resilience, inclusiveness and digitalisation and the possible trade-offs between those characteristics in the case of PB in Budapest at the city level and its districts.