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Good practice Imported

Lviv Participatory Budget — Ukraine's Highest-Turnout Municipal Co-Budgeting Experiment, Suspended by War

Ukraine · Lviv · See the Ukraine profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 93% 43/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Lviv ran six annual participatory-budget cycles from 2016; turnout grew from 21,215 to 145,573 voters (99%+ online) and the 2021 cycle funded 101 projects worth UAH 77.8m. New cycles are suspended since Russia's 2022 invasion, most 2021 winners still unfinished.

21,215 -> 145,573
Voter turnout (2016-2021)
9.9%
Turnout share, 2017 cycle
18 of 101
Final-cycle projects completed as of mid-2026
59%
Female project-author share, 2021
Lviv Participatory Budget — Ukraine's Highest-Turnout Municipal Co-Budgeting Experiment, Suspended by War

Details

Maturity
Discontinued
Promoter
Lviv City Council (Department of City Agglomeration, via the “Gromadskyi Proekt” e-platform)
Period
2016–2021 (suspended since 2022)
Keywords
participatory budgeting, e-democracy, e-voting, municipal finance, civic participation, urban governance

Context

Lviv introduced participatory budgeting (PB) in June 2016, one of at least 154 Ukrainian communities to adopt it between 2015 and 2019. Residents submit costed projects and vote for two weeks each November on a municipal e-platform.

Results

Turnout rose from 21,215 voters in 2016 to 145,573 in the final 2021 cycle, with over 99% of 2021 votes cast online; the 2021 cycle drew 254 proposals requesting UAH 259m and funded 101 winning projects worth UAH 77.8m. An independent 2019 evaluation ranked Lviv the highest-turnout city of its population class (9.9% of residents voting in 2017), though the same evaluation found no statistically significant relationship nationally between turnout and PB funding share or completion rate.

Conclusions

The programme was suspended when Russia's full-scale invasion began; Lviv's executive committee cancelled the 2022 call under martial law and no new cycle has run since. Transparency International Ukraine's November 2024 review found Lviv had stopped financing PB projects altogether, with just 18 of the 101 projects funded in the final 2021 vote completed and 83 still 'in implementation' as of mid-2026.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — UAH 77.8 million funded in the final (2021) cycle.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — 2016-2021 active cycles; suspended from 2022 under martial law.
Staffing & skills
Lviv City Council Department of City Agglomeration, public working group of deputies, officials and activists

Conditions for success

  • online e-platform voting
  • author sign-off rights on tenders

Common failure modes

  • formally cancelled for 2022 under martial law; city stopped financing PB projects and left most final-cycle winners unfinished

Where it fits

Governance type
municipal government
Scale
single city
Income level
lower-middle-income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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