Presupuesto Participativo Municipal — the Dominican Republic's Legal Mandate for Local Investment Budgeting

Ley No. 170-07, passed in 2007 and reinforced by Ley 176-07 the same year and later by Article 206 of the Constitution, requires Dominican municipalities to decide their legally-designated capital-investment share (40% of the national transfer municipalities receive) through open town-hall assemblies ("cabildos abiertos") as part of an annual Municipal Investment Plan; the resulting priorities are binding and must be reflected in the municipal budget. FEDOMU, the national municipal federation, provides technical support, while the Ministry of Public Administration scores every municipality's compliance through its SISMAP Municipal monitoring system. Villa González, in Santiago province, pioneered the practice in 1999 — before the law existed, with support from the NGO Fundación Solidaridad and explicitly modelled on Porto Alegre, Brazil — and remains a full complier today.
A 2012 World Bank review found the number of municipalities holding participatory-budget meetings rose from 59 in 2005 to 172 in 2010, with FEDOMU supporting 224 municipalities and municipal districts. A detailed 2016-2018 evaluation of six municipalities by the NGO Participación Ciudadana found participatory processes committing an average of 9% of the total municipal budget (21% of the legally designated capital-investment share) to citizen-chosen projects, with Baní achieving the highest recorded turnout at about 4,000 participants (2.6% of its population).
SISMAP Municipal's 2025 compliance data, reported by Diario Libre, found that only 13 of the country's 158 municipalities (about 8%) fully met all participatory-budgeting indicators, and more than 100 scored 60% or below. The Participación Ciudadana evaluation found average financial execution of participatory-budget commitments of only 61-62% over 2016-2018 — meaning roughly four in ten pesos formally committed through citizen assemblies were never spent on the approved works — and explicitly flagged the absence of any sanction for non-compliance as a structural weakness. A University of Maryland dissertation-based study similarly found the process increased citizens' sense of agency unevenly across municipalities, not as a uniform effect.

Read the full analysis: https://www.fedomu.org/ppm/