Between bureaucracy and local politics: Participatory budgeting in the Peruvian Andes

In 2004, Peru implemented a citizen participation mechanism called “participatory
budgeting”. The government’s objective was to ensure the needs of citizens are considered
in decision-making about public investment in their localities. Through this mechanism,
community groups participate in prioritizing the sectors and projects to which the local
government’s budget will be allocated. In practice, while there are strict central state
regulations, participatory budgeting is carried out differently in each jurisdiction. This article
seeks to understand how participatory budgeting interacts with local logics of public budget
use. The analysis is based on ethnographic data from a rural region in the Peruvian Andes.
It sheds light on how municipal authorities reappropriate participatory budgets as a way of
formalizing their budgeting processes vis-à-vis the central state, allowing them to secure the
continuity of fiscal transfers through compliance with strict public regulations. This article
will contribute to the study of traveling models, particularly since it examines a South-South
transfer of a policy model in Latin America.