The Role of Participatory Budgeting in the Development of Outermost Regions: the Case of Azores Archipelago

• Main Authors: Freitas Santos, José, Bernardino, Susana
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: Orçamento Participativo; Açores; Five Islands; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/25799

Participatory budgeting is a new form of public financing that intends to engage citizens in the political decision-making process. In this descentralized process, the population propose and votes for the most useful projects in a certain location with the aim of obtaining public resources to implement and benefit their own community. Taking the case of Azores, one of the outermost regions of Portugal, the objective is to evaluate how the participatory budgting has been implemented in that region between 2018 and 2022. The Azores archipelago is an autonomous region of Portugal located in the North Atlantic. The archipelago comprises nine islands and several islets which belong to three groups: i) the Western Group (with two islands: Flores and Corvo); ii) the Central Group (with five islands: Faial, Pico, São Jorge, Graciosa and Terceira); and iii) the Eastern Group (with two islands: São Miguel and Santa Maria, and the Formigas islets). To accomplish that goal a statistical analysis of the approved projects is made in order to ascertain the area of intervention, the regional distribution, the financial relevance and the content of projects. Further, the contribution of participatory budgeting for the cohesion of the overall region is evaluated not only from the point of view of each Island (inter island comparasion) but also at the level of municipality (intra island comparasion). info:eu-repo/semantics/draft