Good governance at local level as a tool for participatory budgeting: A proposal model for municipalities

Developments in information and technology, liberal economic approaches becoming widespread combined with the concept of globalization spreading around the world, have carried with it new approaches to administration. A process of moving towards a government model based upon multi-sided (ya da multilateral) and shared government instead of one-sided government has started. Good governance is also among the tools revealed by this process. Good governance is an approach, which depends on principles such as transparency and accountability in resource utilization, rests on participation, and consequently, attaches importance to representation in government, audit, presence of an effective civil society, rule of law and democratization. Good governance to become widespread especially among local governmental units would contribute to joint determination of service priorities by the government and public at the local level and settlement of participatory democracy in government. This would bring together a more transparent, accountable and participatory government approach especially during the preparation, implementation and review processes of the municipality budget, as well as correct and appropriate spending of scarce resources. In this study, participatory budget models, which emerged in Porto Alegre/Brasil and have gradually spreadaround the world, are analyzed in theory and subsequently by taking into account their existing applications. We attempted to construct a participatory model special to Turkey by taking examples of models as reference. Taking the cultural structure of Turkey into account, various elements are mentioned in this model, such as civil society organizations to work as intermediary between the municipality and public in putting forward the public wish, various tools for increasing participation to be used, participatory cultural consciousness to be created starting from the primary school to university. Key words: Participatory budgeting, good governance, participatory democracy, transparency, accountability, municipality