Trust Matters: Enhancing Government Legitimacy through Participatory Budgeting

Legitimacy is a problem of contemporary governance. Communities lack trust in elected officials-in their effectiveness, fairness, and representation of the public interest. Participatory budgeting (PB)-a set of democratic processes where residents determine how to spend a public budget-helps bridge that distance by letting the public make spending decisions. Since 2011, some of New York City's (NYC) council members have been implementing PB with their capital budget-setting aside a million dollars in their districts each budget cycle for PB. Participatory budgeting has the potential to rebuild relationships between government and communities. Using data from over eighty interviews conducted by New York University (NYU) graduate students in 2013 and 2014 with PBNYC participants over two years, this article suggests that in council districts using PB, residents have greater feelings of access to and voice in local government, and better understanding of the complexities of spending public monies, often leading to a more positive view of government officials, and bolstering legitimacy of local government.