Rethinking the transformation of liberal democracies: Can participatory budgeting deepen democracy

Democracy is a vast concept that is almost like a living organism since it evolves and changes throughout history and various experiences. As for nowadays, it has started to be considered as liberal democracy due to the impact of Western societies to world politics. However, this mainstream concept has several problems. The criticisms of liberal democracies lie at the heart of this research study. The representation crisis will be the focus among all the criticisms. The possible transformation of liberal democracies towards a more deepened and deliberative model will be examined. This research recruits Habermas's deliberative democracy model and examines if this model can be a guideline at transforming the liberal democracies. However, deliberative democracy receives many criticisms for being an abstract and theoretical concept rather than a concrete one. This thesis examines whether participatory budgeting, that was born as a public administration model in Latin America in the late 1980s, can be seen as a more concrete and institutionalized version of deliberative democracy. Different examples of participatory budgeting are presented with their success and failure stories, commonalities, and differences. The aim is to discuss the linkage between participatory budgeting and the deepening of democracy.