New York City Participatory Budgeting — Council Discretionary Funds Put to Resident Vote, With Measured Voting Effects

Participatory budgeting in New York City began as a council-member-led pilot and expanded across districts, with residents brainstorming ideas, delegates developing proposals and residents voting on which are funded from council discretionary capital funds.
A 2015 report noted more than 6,000 New Yorkers brainstormed ideas and more than 50,000 turned out to vote. Early evaluation work by the Community Development Project (Urban Justice Center) reported that PB drew women, people of color and lower-income voters, with 72% of voters new to PB; an OIDP summary of a research report gives somewhat different shares, so demographic claims should be checked against the original report.
A 2023 Political Behavior study linked PB participants to state voter files and compared them with similar voters in non-PB districts, finding PB engagement increased individual probability of voting by an average of 8.4 percentage points, with larger effects for younger, lower-educated, lower-income and Black voters. A separate equity analysis found only some demographic groups predicted PB voting by district.
Limitation: continuity depends on council members opting in, and we found no source confirming current funding levels.

Read the full analysis: https://researchers.kean.edu/en/publications/testing-the-participation-hypothesis-evidence-from-participatory-/