Participatory budget implementation in the determination of spending priorities in municipalities: The case of Çanakkale Municipality

Municipalities, one of the units making up local governments, have increasingly become important units due to such reasons as the changing world order, the fact of globalization, the increasing expectations of the individuals at the local level, differentiation of the expectations of the citizens from the municipality units, and the changing concept of democracy. The duties and responsibilities assigned to these units have also increased in time. This situation, parallel to the increased duties and responsibilities of the municipalities, have made it necessary for them to use their resources more effectively and to produce the goods and services by means of which they will be able to use their resources more efficiently. For this purpose, the municipalities have oriented towards various implementations.One of methods the municipalities have adopted to use their resources more effectively is the implementation of participatory budget. This method, which was first used in 1989 in the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil, has since spread to some other cities in this country and to many other cities and countries of the world. The implementation of the participatory budget method has been adopted and used by the Municipality of Çanakkale in Turkey since 2006.In this study, first the implementation of the participatory budget is theoretically explained, then the structure of the participatory budget implementation adopted by Municipality of Çanakkale is examined, and the process of its application has been evaluated in terms of the years. Consequences and solutions has been made regarding to the implementation by examining the participatory budget implementation of Çanakkale Municipality.Keywords: Local Government, Municipality, Citizenship, Participatory Budget, Çanakkale Municipality