No dia 20 de junho, Kadir Çoban (ICS-ULisboa) será o orador do Seminário do Grupo de Investigação RIGoP sobre o tema Dissemination of Participatory Budgets in Turkey. A partir das 11h, online.

This presentation introduces an ongoing doctoral research project that investigates the uneven dissemination of participatory budgeting (PB) by focusing on two extreme cases: Portugal, which has one of the highest levels of municipal diffusion in Europe, and Turkey, where adoption has been exceptionally limited. Rather than offering a direct country comparison, the research seeks to understand how internal, horizontal, and vertical drivers operate in contexts of both high and low PB dissemination. The project employs an ‘explaining outcome process tracing approach’ (Beach and Pedersen, 2013) and conducts in-depth case studies to analyze how similar drivers produce divergent effects. While the broader project engages with both country contexts, this presentation focuses on the Turkish case. In Turkey, PB has been implemented only in a small number of municipalities, such as Çanakkale, Nilüfer, Şişli, and the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. The vast majority of municipalities have not initiated any PB practices, despite the country's large and diverse municipal landscape. To understand this limited diffusion, the study adopts a multi-level analytical framework based on internal, horizontal, and vertical drivers (Wampler and Goldfrank, 2022). These categories enable a systematic exploration of the factors that shape PB diffusion, such as political will, financial and administrative capacity, civil society configuration, institutional structure, and international policy networks. To introduce the case of Turkey, particular attention is given to the structure of local government, the legal and institutional framework for citizen participation, and the dynamics between political and administrative actors. Although data collection is still in progress, the presentation outlines the conceptual framework and methodological design, and reflects on preliminary observations that point to a weak institutional and normative environment for PB dissemination. Ultimately, this research contributes to broader debates on democratic innovation by exploring how the same set of drivers can lead to very different outcomes in two extreme cases of PB dissemination. By including a case of limited dissemination, the study also helps address a gap in the literature, which often overlooks why participatory processes fail to take root.