Urban democracy in post-Maidan Ukraine: conflict and cooperation between citizens and local governments in participatory budgeting

ABSTRACT

Seeking to explain Ukraine's societal resilience in the context of the Russian invasion, scholars point to the unprecedented levels of civic engagement on the one hand and improvements in local self-governance on the other. However, little is known about how citizens have interacted with local authorities in recent years. This article studies modes of interaction between citizens and public servants in the co-production of participatory budgeting projects in Dnipro, Kyiv, and Lviv. I adopt a relational approach to democracy, focusing on the participants’ assessments of their cooperation with municipal authorities. The article draws on 51 semi-structured interviews and is informed by a digital ethnography. The results reveal that the participants’ oversight is crucial because public servants regularly attempt to block those proposals which do not have precedents. The degree of the participants’ influence varied in the three cases, yet in each case the participants’ greater understanding of local self-governance processes was essential for facilitating adequate responses by local authorities. These findings not only result in a better understanding of the development of urban democracy in Ukraine prior to 2022, but also highlight the significant role participatory processes can play in the prospective democratic governance in Ukraine.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban democracy
• participatory budgeting
• state-citizen relations
• Ukraine
• decentralization
• citizen participation

Introduction

Attempts to improve urban democracy have thrived in Ukraine since the Euromaidan revolution in 2013–14. The post-Maidan democratic aspirations and the decentralization reform launched in 2014 facilitated the introduction of new avenues for citizen participation on the municipal level. Amongst the introduced mechanisms, the idea of letting city dwellers participate in allocating parts of the municipal budget proved particularly popular. Participatory budgeting has mushroomed all over Ukraine since 2015. In 2021, Ukraine was near the top of European countries with the most participatory budgeting projects in place, following Poland, Portugal, and Spain (Dias 2021).

This dynamic diffusion fits in well with the considerable rise in civic engagement in post-Maidan Ukraine mapped by scholars (Shapovalova and Burlyuk 2018). However, what distinguishes participatory budgeting from non-institutionalized forms of citizen participation is its direct link to municipal institutions. During participatory budgeting processes, citizens ideally cooperate closely with municipal authorities to realize projects. The co-production of projects is meant to improve public service delivery, which was also a key objective of the decentralization reform in Ukraine (Sydorchuk and Chabanna 2017). Moreover, participatory budgeting aims to include lay citizens in local decision-making processes.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion launched on 24th February 2022, scholars have emphasized the importance of civil society for the Ukrainian resistance and pointed out how the improved provision of public services and local authorities’ greater authority and legitimacy have significantly enhanced Ukraine's resilience (Romanova 2022; Brik and Brick Murtazashvili 2022). The rise in the level of volunteering in Ukraine has received broad scholarly attention since 2014, when Ukrainian citizens mobilized in response to the Russian-Ukrainian war in the Donbas (Puglisi 2015; Worschech 2017; Zarembo 2017; Oleinik 2018; Shapovalova and Burlyuk 2018; Stepaniuk 2021, 2022). In contrast, the cooperation of citizens with state institutions has not been extensively studied. A study from 2014 differs significantly from currently made claims, finding that citizens regularly experienced difficulties when interacting with (local) state institutions (Roberts and Fisun 2014).

Drawing on these debates, I argue that participatory budgeting constitutes a fruitful focal point for studying how the quality of state-citizen interactions evolved on the municipal level in Ukraine between 2015 and 2022. Understanding the contribution of participatory processes on the municipal level is crucial not only for explaining past developments but also for considering the prospects of democratic governing in Ukraine, which might be essentially shaped by grassroots engagement in local self-government, as Pisano (2022) argues.

To study how participatory budgeting affects the quality of state-citizen interactions, I build on a relational approach to democracy (Tilly 2007), and focus on the cities of Dnipro, Kyiv, and Lviv. Such an approach requires an analysis of interaction patterns between citizens and local authorities to reveal modes of cooperation and to grasp how power relations are shaped in these interactions. Drawing from literature systematizing the impact of participatory processes on the quality of state-citizen relations (Baiocchi et al. 2011; Bherer et al. 2016; Montambeault 2016), and literature arguing that citizen participation improves the citizens’ perceptions of local authorities (Geissel 2012; Warren 2014; Fung 2015), I adopt a bottom-up approach focusing on participatory budgeting from the citizens’ perspectives.

As participatory budgeting is structured around submitting individual project proposals in Ukraine, I focus on the project authors’ involvement in and influence on the realization of their proposals. This enables the study of the micro-practices of cooperation between the project authors and public servants and provides insights into the degree to which the participants’ proposals materialize, which in turn relates to the impact of participatory budgeting on the city's development more generally.

The following section substantiates the choice to focus on state-citizen interactions on the urban level and situates the research in existing research on participatory budgeting in Ukraine. Following this I discuss the article's theoretical underpinnings and provide an overview of the data generation process. The article concludes with a presentation of the findings from my empirical research.

The context of the rise of participatory budgeting in Ukraine

Since 2015, around 233 Ukrainian municipalities have implemented participatory budgeting (Dias 2021). This remarkable expansion has been facilitated by the democratic aspirations stemming from the Euromaidan and an enabling reform context. As Zelinska (2018) has shown, local Euromaidan protesters across the country have developed distinct claims concerning increased citizen participation in local self-governance. The decentralization reform launched in 2014 by the Ukrainian government further facilitated attempts to make local self-governance processes more transparent and inclusive of citizens. The reform comprised the amalgamation of smaller municipalities and the transfer of resources from the center to the municipal level. The reallocation of resources better equipped municipalities to decide on the provision of public goods (Sydorchuk and Chabanna 2017).

Scholars have long acknowledged that the size of cities makes them ideally suited for democratic governance (Dahl 1967; Fung 2011). For instance, Dahl (1967: 960) has argued that while on the national level, citizens’ participation is mostly confined to voting in elections, citizens’ participation in small governing entities below the city level limits their influence to relatively trivial issues. Ukraine's decentralization reform is believed to have boosted the relevance of the urban governing level. Scholars see the oblast centers as the primary beneficiaries in fiscal terms (Dudley 2019: 24; Aasland and Lyska 2020: 285). While this makes city authorities less dependent on national authorities, bigger budgets might increase the risk of abuse of resources (Dudley 2019; Bader 2020). This renders the citizens’ control over the authorities’ actions even more important. Hence, I chose to focus on the urban level, arguing that this seems the most promising level for examining the participatory budgeting's effect on democratic governance in post-Maidan Ukraine.

Participatory budgeting was first introduced in Cherkasy, Poltava, and Chernihiv in 2015, with the support of the Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation (PAUCI) (Ploskyi 2016: 22–7). PAUCI is a legacy organization implementing benchmark practices that had proven successful in Poland.¹ Therefore, the organization built on the recent positive experiences with participatory budgeting in Poland (Expert interview, E1). International donor organizations furthermore facilitated the circulation of knowledge about participatory budgeting in Ukraine (Pauci and GIZ 2019; Chorna-Bokhniak and Lepyoshkin 2020).

Drawing on the Polish experience, Ukrainian municipalities implemented a digital variant of participatory budgeting. The digital platforms were developed by the NGO ‘Social Boost’ (Chorna-Bokhniak and Lepyoshkin 2020: 8) and by the East Europe Foundation's E-Governance for Accountability and Participation Program (EGAP).² Digital participatory budgeting comprises several steps. First, city dwellers propose projects, and the municipal administration determines whether the proposed project conforms to applicable technical and legal regulations. Subsequently, city dwellers can vote for projects. The administrations are required to implement those projects which received the most votes. The degree of the citizens’ inclusion in the realization of projects varies, but the administration is obligated to document successful project implementation on the participatory budgeting platform.

The existing body of literature on participatory budgeting in Ukraine was developed mainly by civil society experts from domestic NGOs and international donor organizations who tapped into their own experiences with the implementation of these schemes, and provides crucial comparative insights into the project implementation in several Ukrainian cities (cf., for instance, [Pauci and GIZ 2019; Chorna-Bokhniak and Lepyoshkin 2020]). Furthermore, Volodin (2019) studied the impact of a participatory budgeting experiment in Chernivtsi on survey-based trust rates in local institutions. He found significantly increased trust in local authorities, particularly amongst those with less experience in civic engagement. Khutkyy and Avramchenko (2019) provided the most comprehensive report on participatory budgeting, which mapped quantitative data from 141 communities. The authors also conducted nine case studies, drawing predominantly on expert assessments of the impact of participatory budgeting on local self-governance and residents. This article draws from these findings, in particular, those regarding the mapping of participation rates. It adds substantially to the literature by presenting in-depth case studies of three significant cases. In doing so, it considers the participants’ diverse perspectives as well as the micro-practices crucially shaping the quality of state-citizen relations.

Theoretical underpinnings: participatory budgeting as a relational practice

According to the relational, process-oriented conceptualization of democracy proposed by Charles Tilly (2007), the quality of state-citizen relations is the central criterion for assessing democratization processes. Several scholars built on this framework in their work on participatory budgeting (Baiocchi et al. 2011; Bherer et al. 2016; Montambeault 2016), arguing that the institutional and political context in which civil society actors operate is crucial for shaping their actions. Scholars have identified four criteria to examine the quality of a civil society's interaction with local institutions, namely (1) the level of broad, inclusive, equal participation of society, (2) the degree of the citizens’ autonomy in the participatory process, (3) public, formalized, transparent interactions between state and citizens, and (4) the degree of the citizens’ control over the local authorities and the decisions made (Baiocchi et al. 2011: 19–34; Bherer et al. 2016: 345–7; Montambeault 2016: 19–27).

This article focuses on the last criteria, taking the degree of the citizens’ control over the implementation of participatory budgeting projects as a lens for studying interactions between public authorities and participants. Generally, the implementation of participatory budgeting projects is mandatory in Dnipro, Kyiv, and Lviv. However, my data suggest that even if projects are successfully implemented, they do not always correspond with the citizens’ initial proposals. In the same vein, Donos and Ploskyi (2019: 44) identify the lack of correspondence between the implemented projects and the project authors’ expectations as a common issue. These findings confirm the assumption that project implementation rates alone are insufficient for understanding the participants’ influence, let alone for rating the democratization impact of participatory budgeting. Instead, a more thorough examination of how local authorities and citizens interact while implementing projects is needed.

The focus on the implementation process is supported by several conceptional arguments from the literature. Bherer et al. (2016) argue that conflictive or contentious modes of interaction during the implementation process indicate how power relations between citizens and administrations are (re)shaped. Authorities might, for instance, block certain proposals. Baiocchi and Summers (2017) studied participatory budgeting projects in Chicago where participants and public servants repeatedly argued about how specific proposals should be implemented. During these negotiations, citizens increasingly challenged the officials’ expertise and, thus, the power relationship. Bherer et al. (2016) add that enhanced transparency and information flow can reduce conflict and enhance the citizens’ influence because authorities incorporate their ideas beyond the participatory budgeting process. Moreover, Nez (2016) maintains that considering the degree of the inclusion of citizens’ ideas and expertise in policymaking is relevant for evaluating the influence of participatory processes on urban development.

In addition, I argue that the scope of the project authors’ influence on the project implementation process might shape their perceptions of municipal institutions and authorities. As mentioned, a study by Roberts and Fisun (2014: 27) found these perceptions to be predominantly negative in Ukraine. In her study on citizens’ perceptions of members of the Ukrainian parliament, Whitmore (2019a, 2019b) comes to similar conclusions. Detachment from state institutions is not a peculiar Ukrainian phenomenon, though. Fung (2015) argues that improving citizens’ views of government institutions should be a central aim of the participatory processes. Other scholars share this view (Geissel 2012; Warren 2014). However, survey-based studies that take trust, political support, or legitimacy as indicators of citizens’ perceptions of their governments have produced inconclusive results regarding the influence of participatory processes (Font and Blanco 2007; Gherghina 2017; Boulianne 2019; Werner and Marien 2020; Zakhour 2020). Rather than operating with such abstract notions (capturing aggregate judgements only), this article examines whether the above-mentioned overtly negative conceptions of the state in Ukraine change at the urban level. In line with the relational approaches to democracy, it considers cooperation with the state as a necessary precondition for citizens to effectively address demands. In this light, the degree to which citizens consider it reasonable to cooperate with or address municipal institutions emerges as a key factor shaping the strength of civil society.

Methodology and data

The conceptual framework suggests a qualitative-interpretive, bottom-up approach. That is why the article focuses on citizens’ experiences with participatory budgeting in the urban settings of Dnipro, Kyiv, and Lviv. Since the aim is not to generalize but to provide an in-depth focus on a particular phenomenon, a purposive sampling strategy has been applied by selecting ‘rich, intensive cases’ (Patton 1990: 169–71). I decided to focus on oblast centers where participatory budgeting developed particularly dynamically, taking participation rates as the main indicator. The assumption was that high participation rates allow for a variety of insights into state-citizen interactions. However, following the suggestion of Baiocchi and Ganuza (2017: 14–5) that mere numbers of participants should not be taken at face value, I set out to examine the political and social micro-practices behind them.

As Khutkyy and Avramchenko (2019) revealed, participation rates in participatory budgeting vary significantly throughout Ukraine. I compared the authors’ cases with high and median participation rates in 2018 with participation rates in 2019, the year preceding my fieldwork. I then chose Dnipro in addition to Kyiv and Lviv. While Kyiv and Lviv had high participation rates in 2018, Dnipro's rates grew significantly from 3.2% to 10.6% of the city population in 2019.³

Methodologically, my approach is inspired by the ethnographic approach to studying participatory budgeting (Baiocchi 2005; Montambeault 2016). The main research on participatory budgeting upon which this article draws was conducted between April 2020 and July 2021. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I employed a digital ethnography (Postill 2017), including online interviews, participation in meetings, and observation of social media practices (Kozinets et al. 2014). These observations mostly followed the recommendations of my respondents, who invited me to their respective online meetings or Facebook groups. Although this article refers primarily to interview data, my analysis is crucially informed by the overall understanding of participatory budgeting practices drawn from the ethnographic data.

Generally, I agree with existing studies concluding that the quality of online interviews is of equal value to on-site interviews (Deakin and Wakefield 2014; Jenner and Myers 2019; Howlett 2022). Overall, I conducted 51 semi-structured interviews between May 2020 and November 2020. Of these, 41 were with authors of participatory budgeting proposals. To contact project authors, I consulted the respective participatory budgeting platforms providing contact information. The selection of respondents followed a purposive selection logic, selecting respondents in different project categories. Some respondents were contacted following recommendations. All respondents were informed about the purpose of the research and gave their consent to be cited anonymously.⁴ The civic engagement profiles of respondents suggest that my sample covers a broad variety of perspectives. Around one third of participants reported no prior civic engagement. The second largest group consisted of those who reported that they had been informally engaged in civic processes in their neighborhood or workplace. Members of civic organizations constitute the third largest group. In addition, some respondents were members of a homeowner association or a parents’ committee. An overview of the project authors’ profiles as well as of all interviews can be found in the appendix.

Interview questions sought information as to how the interaction with local authorities played out, if and how the citizens’ perceptions of local institutions and authorities have changed, and what the citizens learned from the participatory budgeting experience. The analysis followed an abductive logic. Accordingly, I focused on the qualities of state-citizen relations identified from the literature and derived practices informing modes of interaction inductively from the interview data.

The major, if intended, limitation of the study's results is that the study is biased towards the more successful cases of participatory budgeting. Future research could explore other cases to add further insights to this study's findings. Moreover, scholars could examine reasons for the varying participation rates in participatory processes, building on Keudel’s (2022) argument that informal business-political networks shape opportunities for citizen participation in Ukraine.

Results

The following presentation of empirical findings is structured in three sections. As I found major differences in the modes of interaction between local authorities and project authors, these modes are discussed in two separate parts. The first one is devoted to the development of state-citizen relations in the context of participatory budgeting in Dnipro, while the second focuses on respective findings from Kyiv and Lviv. In a third step, I discuss how these relations have affected the respondents’ perceptions of municipal institutions and authorities.

Interactions between municipal authorities and city dwellers in Dnipro

In Dnipro, participatory budgeting has developed more dynamically than in the other two cities. Some respondents argued that the visible results of participatory budgeting in the form of realized projects increased the residents’ trust in the program (DC7, DC11, DC13). Indeed, project implementation rates increased significantly in Dnipro after the first two years.⁵ The smoother implementation of projects was certainly also related to the fact that in May 2019, the municipal government dismissed a city administrator who had been co-responsible for the program on grounds of corruption (DP27, DP28). In addition, a civil society expert involved in the implementation of the scheme reported that it had been beset by political conflicts (see Khutkyy and Avramchenko 2019: 24).

Despite the positive development of participatory budgeting as measured by rising participation rates and higher numbers of implemented projects, the respondents’ accounts suggest a continuous lack of control by project authors over the realization of projects. Nine out of the fourteen respondents mentioned that they had observed or experienced instances of public servants changing project proposals substantially during implementation. According to their reports, some projects even took on a completely different form (DC1, DC2, DC5, DC7, DC8, DC9, DC10, DC12, DC13). The respondents’ reactions to the widespread practice of redrafting project authors’ proposals varied significantly. Some, such as DC7, adopted a rather pragmatic stance, stating that it did not matter to her that the public servants altered some details concerning the pedestrian pathway she proposed. Two other respondents even argued that it is inevitable that the administration would not necessarily realize every detail of the submitted proposals. One of them pointed out:

The author proposes a playground, searches for it on the internet, takes a commercial offer, draws a visualization, and all that. And when it comes to realizing it, it is not the author who does it but the profile departments. […] If a person is ready to understand that it cannot be realized what ‘I want’, but that all factors must be considered, then many authors stay and continue to submit projects. (Respondent from Dnipro, DC1)

Notably, the respondent explicitly pointed to the final authority of the administration, even though she recognized that project authors put a lot of time and energy into drafting their projects (DC1). In contrast, two respondents with long-term experience in civic engagement took a more critical stance. Referring to discussions in a group of participatory budgeting authors on the messenger service Viber, one respondent pointed to severe difficulties concerning reconstructing playgrounds and roads:

[Concerning] projects that are for the reconstruction of roads or playgrounds, there I see unfair moments. […] And there, most likely a little, well, I cannot blame and say that this money is stolen there, but a slightly different approach, you understand. There is a little less humanity there. (Respondent from Dnipro, DC12)

While this respondent somewhat cautiously pointed out the non-transparent handling of money by public servants, another respondent called the behavior of the public servants corrupt. In addition, she mentioned several examples of projects (submitted by other project authors) which had been fundamentally changed. From her point of view, this was due to the fact that the participants did not put enough pressure on the administration (DC5).

One case which I encountered during my fieldwork concerned a respondent who faced a severe conflict with the administration. This case reveals that public servants do not only change technical details of participatory budgeting projects, but outrightly block proposals that entail elements extending beyond established administrative procedures. The respondent had successfully realized a playground with a design differing from those common in Dnipro. When she proposed a second playground for youth instead of small children, the administration refused to implement her proposal (DC7). As the respondent decided to resist the changes proposed by the public servants, the case became a publicly discussed issue in the local participatory budgeting community – several respondents pointed me to the case (DC5, DC13, D10).

The way the respondent DC13 comments on the case is particularly revealing regarding the issue of autonomy of project authors from the will of the public servants. As DC13 recounts, she and other project authors were astonished when DC7 realized her first project because of the unique design that differed visibly from the aesthetic standards usually set by the administration:

We support [DC7]; she's done well, her first playground, you know, it was a shock for us because we were a little ‘trimmed.’ We were told, roughly speaking, not to pretend to something; if you want it [the project] to be [realized], it will be like this. And then we were looking [at the playground], and she had a playground, wow, cool. (Respondent from Dnipro, DC13)

DC13 added that DC7 went ‘against the system’ and confessed that she was unsure if this would lead to DC7's exclusion from the participatory budgeting program. The respondent's account reveals the high degree of perceived dependence on the goodwill of the public servants, expressed particularly by her description of project authors as being ‘trimmed.’

Indeed, DC7 decided to demand more substantial project author rights in the realization of proposals. She, along with other project authors, including DC13, brought their demands to the Dnipro Participatory Budgeting Commission (PBC). The streamlined participatory budgeting legislation passed by the Dnipro City Council in January 2021 reflects the results of the project authors’ efforts.⁶ The new legislation states explicitly that the project author must approve all changes made by the administration. In cases of disagreement, the PBC would mediate. As half of the members of the Dnipro PBC are city residents, these amendments signify an increase of the project authors’ control over the implementation process, at least on paper. The protest by DC7 and the resulting public conflict led to better-secured rights for project authors. Furthermore, it apparently strengthened the bonds amongst participatory budgeting authors.

Interactions between municipal authorities and city dwellers in Kyiv and Lviv

In Kyiv and Lviv, project authors have greater control over their projects’ implementation than in Dnipro. While respondents also mentioned attempts by public servants to modify projects (LC10, LC3), such instances appear less common. The respondents’ accounts indicate that the project authors’ intensive involvement in the process constitutes the decisive factor for the successful implementation of projects. However, while project authors possess greater control over the realization of their proposals, maintaining oversight requires significant time and resources.

A project in Kyiv to reconstruct a public square into a recreational space is a case in point. The respondent described the implementation of the project as arduous, requiring a great deal of effort on the part of the project authors:

We weren't thrilled with the contractor. I’ll tell you honestly, for them, it was a completely new experience. […] It was all very wild for them, and we had endless supervision. We were there before work, at nine in the morning I came there, at seven in the evening, after work I came there, we spent the weekends there all the time. […] We also invited a landscape designer. (Respondent from Kyiv, KC2)

According to the respondent, the contractors lacked any plan to implement the project proposal, and the initiative group asked a landscape architect they knew for support. Another respondent from Lviv had to obtain the assistance of a family member who happened to be an architect to prove the feasibility of his project to the administration. He complained:

When I won the project, they told me I would order all services, estimate the documentation, monitor the installation, and manufacture the process. And I said – Stop, people! … I’m not an employee of the Lviv City Council. […] This is what you should do! (Respondent from Lviv, LC2)

Some of these struggles may be the result of technical difficulties which were addressed over time, as a member of the Kyiv Civic Budgetary Commission (CBC) dealing with such cases in Kyiv pointed out (KC3). Other conflicts, however, constituted distinct steps in the process of renegotiating the power relationships between residents and public officials. Such conflicts were, for the most part, provoked by innovative projects, which questioned established usages of public space and could not be handled with business-as-usual practices by the administration. Examples include projects related to infrastructure for pedestrians or disabled persons. Participants in all three cities attempted to propose such ‘creative’ or ‘socially significant’ projects, as they called them. Crucially, in Dnipro, several participants complained that such projects were not included in the participatory budget (DC5, DC10, DC12, DC13, DC14). It is in Kyiv that participants most actively strove to establish precedents of this kind. As one respondent reflected:

I probably saw how some small projects could change the general trends very much. […] When something is confirmed, which is not done as usual, but over time, literally in a year or two, this will become a common practice and scaled up within the city. (Respondent from Kyiv, KC4)

According to this respondent, small projects could make a difference in the city's development if they introduce new ideas. The challenge for project authors is, however, to get their ideas approved despite reluctance from a ‘retrograde administration’, as another respondent put it:

It is like this that Kyiv, it is a bit of a retrograde city, people who are involved in management. […] They often try to block some projects in every possible way. And then, the [civic budgetary] commission takes part in helping this project to be implemented, promoted, and allowed to be voted on. (Respondent from Kyiv, KC2)

The respondent points to the crucial role of the CBC in mediating conflicts with the city administration. From the perspective of participants, these conflicts occur for a variety of reasons. One respondent recounted that public servants feared negative consequences if a project implementation failed (KC10), while others argued that public servants did not want citizens to undermine their expertise (KC14). In such cases, public officials frequently used technical arguments concerning the feasibility of specific projects as arguments opposing participants’ proposals. However, several examples reveal that the rejection or blocking of project proposals, which had been meant to set new precedents, extends beyond technical expertise, and reflects the administration's policy preferences.

A case in point is the introduction of pedestrian islands through participatory budgeting. Several participants proposed pedestrian islands as a more inclusive and convenient alternative to underground passageways, which are widespread in Ukraine as a legacy of Soviet urban planning. These proposals faced continued resistance from the Kyiv's departments responsible for transportation and infrastructure. The responsible public servants opposed pedestrian islands because they allegedly interfered with vehicle traffic, and pointed to the existing underground passageways, which in their view rendered overground alternatives superfluous. Despite mediation by Kyiv's CBC, the implementation of pedestrian islands was delayed several times (KC3). However, in several other cases, project authors were successful in setting precedents and altering administrative procedures in Kyiv. By doing this, the project authors used the participatory budget process as a tool to introduce new ideas that extended beyond the city administration's repertoire.

In Lviv, interactions between project authors and municipalities appear slightly less contentious. Notably, these interactions include the involvement of local deputies or their staff. This noticeable difference, when compared to the situation in Kyiv, might stem from the fact that local deputies had been co-initiators of participatory budgeting in Lviv. The city council's involvement facilitated the cooperation with project authors beyond participatory budgeting projects on related problems in the neighborhood or school (LC1, LC4, LC7, LC8, LC9).

Moreover, local deputies seem to see participatory budgeting projects connected to parks, lakes, or other public spaces as indicators of the residents’ desire for broader changes in their communities. Three respondents reported that the city council decided to put additional financial resources into reconstructing proposed participatory budgeting project sites (LC1, LC4, LC10). LC10, an experienced civil society activist, spoke about the reconstruction of a public space, which was initiated by ‘an idea’ he submitted to the participatory budget that resulted in several public discussions with residents as well as the hiring of an architect who created a design for the proposed project. After he submitted the plan, the administration decided to add more money to include an adjacent street to the plans (LC10).

Consequently, in Lviv, project authors influenced urban development in ways that were beyond the scope of the participatory budgeting project. In contrast to Kyiv, this influence did not stem from challenging administrative procedures, but rather from an intensified dialogue between the city council and citizens. While the modes of interaction are much more contentious in Kyiv than in Lviv, the degree of conflict cannot be simply a result of the relative power of the participants. Rather, the two cases suggest that the modes of interaction depend on the respective local governance configurations and the participants’ expectations concerning the participatory processes.

Changing perceptions of municipal institutions

As I pointed out in the conceptual part of this essay, scholars often assume participatory processes to be a means to improve citizens’ perceptions of the state or its political institutions. Indeed, two-thirds of the respondents reported positive changes in their perception of municipal institutions or authorities. This number may be misleading, however, as the reports of positive changes were often accompanied by criticism. Unsurprisingly, in Dnipro, where the impact of participants on project implementation is the lowest, the proportion of those who do not see positive changes is the highest. Nonetheless, several respondents in Dnipro positively assessed the work of the city administration employees responsible for coordinating the participatory budget process (DC12, DC1, DC2) while one respondent reported being utterly frustrated with the participatory budget in Dnipro (DC10).

The reports of improved perceptions can be roughly divided into two categories. The first concerns the improved understanding of the municipal institutions and authorities as such, and the second concerns improved perceptions of cooperation with municipal authorities.

The increased understanding of the municipal institutions occurred on both concrete and more abstract levels and depended on the respondents’ civic engagement history. Especially for respondents with little prior experience in civic engagement, engaging in the participatory budgeting process seems to have counteracted their previous alienation from state institutions, at least on a very fundamental level. As DC11 put it:

I start, somehow, I even started to believe in the state a bit, yes, so that it is possible to fix something. And what is also pleasant is not that I believed but that I learned to sow hope in many people that you can do something well here. (Respondent from Dnipro, DC11)

Apparently, this respondent did not expect that he could ‘fix something’ by approaching municipal authorities. Another respondent, in a similar vein, expressed her astonishment that the authorities would ‘do something for citizens’ (DC7). Another respondent admitted bluntly that it had been ‘a discovery’ for him that not all public servants were corrupt, but ‘there are also normal people among them who are interested in developing the district’ (KC8).

Several respondents reported that their understanding of the processes within municipal institutions improved, which resulted in a greater appreciation of the municipal authorities’ role. Some respondents mentioned that they realized how many constraints public servants face in their work (KC7, DC14, DC13). One respondent from Kyiv explained that because of his participation in the participatory budget process, he discovered the complexity behind the most visible figures of municipal politics. In his words, he realized that it takes more to solve a problem than ‘writing to the mayor’ (KC14). The account of DC14 confirms this finding:

I began to understand some parts of their work; I probably began to understand and somehow support them when they can't do something. Because, when they say on TV that something is broken and they still haven't done it for three weeks, there is a dug-up road that hasn't been done. […] I understand that most often it's political PR of another party. (Respondent from Dnipro, DC14)

However, a greater understanding of administrative processes does not mean that citizens uncritically accept public servants’ actions. In contrast, some explicitly state that their increased knowledge about local self-governance has enabled them to voice their demands and exercise some control over the authorities (KC14, KC5, KC4, KC6).

Control also plays a vital role when it comes to perceptions of improved cooperation with the authorities. For example, a respondent from Dnipro argued that despite problems with implementing some projects, officials try to explain their actions to participants. The public servants’ behavior gave her the impression that she oversaw the process (DC12). A project author from Kyiv voiced the opinion that, thanks to the participatory budget process, the administration now must communicate and justify its behavior (KC3). Several respondents determined that the pressure municipal authorities feel to justify their actions is a result of the participatory budget procedures and the public pressure it created. According to a respondent from Lviv, participants’ oversight encourages municipal officials to act more transparently (LC8). Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, even the husband of the project author who openly challenged the Dnipro city administration, expressed his belief that the participatory budget process made it possible for citizens to exercise greater control over municipal authorities than before. As he explained:

Well, it seems to us now that our question has already begun to be resolved. That is, there is public pressure. They [the authorities] are afraid of losing their reputation […]. I believe that this impact on the authorities is happening. (Respondent from Dnipro, DC9)

In addition to the enhanced citizen control, some respondents also stated that public servants themselves have started to cooperate better. A respondent from Lviv thinks that the participatory budget process can be used as an additional means of pressure to emphasize certain problems (LC9). Two other respondents even saw better cooperation with authorities as the most significant change brought about by participatory budgeting (KC12, KC15).

Conclusion

This article explored how participatory budgeting has shaped the relationship between municipal authorities and citizens in the cities of Dnipro, Kyiv, and Lviv. More specifically, it focused on whether participatory budgeting resulted in more democratic state-citizen relations and what contribution citizen participation made to urban development. Building on a relational approach to participatory processes, I have argued that the degree of the participants’ influence on the implementation of projects constitutes a fruitful lens for studying such changes. This article also examined how participatory budgeting affects citizens’ overtly negative perceptions of (municipal) state institutions.

Based on my empirical analysis, I make three main contributions to the understanding of the impact of participatory budgeting on urban democracy in post-Maidan Ukraine and to research on participatory processes more generally.

First, my findings confirm the importance of examining micro-practices to reveal the quality of relations between city dwellers and municipal authorities, as well as the influence of participants on urban development. The case of Dnipro demonstrates that indicators such as implementation and participation rates are insufficient to understand whether participatory budgeting results in more transparent municipal administrations and whether public servants really act according to citizens’ proposals. My analysis of the respondents’ accounts of their interaction with public servants shows that Dnipro project authors lack influence in the implementation of their proposals. Moreover, the data suggest that Dnipro participants depend on the public servants’ goodwill instead of being able to exercise control over them.

In Kyiv and Lviv, a different picture emerged. In both cities, the influence of the project authors on municipal policies even extends beyond the scope of the participatory budget project in several cases. Yet, the type of influence depends on the respective local context and its actors. While in Kyiv, some participants sought to introduce new ideas within the framework of the participatory budget, in Lviv, local politicians took some project proposals as an opportunity to carry out larger reconstruction projects in parks and public squares. The case of Kyiv also highlights that research on participatory processes generally needs to consider both the scope of the projects and their ideational and qualitative impact.

Second, the article reveals how the project authors’ perceptions of change in municipal institutions relate to their prior civic engagement and their expectations regarding the participatory process. This finding generally confirms Volodin’s (2019) survey results which reveal that trust in local authorities rose most amongst those with little experience of citizen participation. I go beyond these findings by showing the diverging perceptions informing changes in citizens’ assessments aggregated in concepts such as political trust. Some participants reported that they had developed a general belief in the capacity of the state to deliver public services. Others, in contrast, emphasized better mutual relations with, and reduced skepticism about, working in cooperation with municipal authorities. In addition, my analysis also confirms that the quality of the participants’ interactions with municipal authorities informs their perceptions. Accordingly, respondents from Dnipro mostly remained neutral but also pointed to some positive developments.

The third finding concerns the importance of civic learning on perceptions about municipal authorities and the quality of state-citizen relations. It is a basic assumption of participatory democracy theory that participatory processes facilitate civic learning (Pateman 1970). However, relational approaches towards participatory processes remain silent on this. Respondents’ accounts indicate that civic learning plays an important role in citizens’ perceptions of their municipal government and its employees, and could lead to a gradual progress in transparency and responsiveness on the part of local authorities. Respondents stated that they gained a greater understanding of local self-governance processes and, in some cases, the work of public servants. More crucially, respondents reported greater control of public servants’ actions within the participatory budget process. Accordingly, I argue that participants’ learning can actively contribute to an improvement in state-society relations, because citizens become aware that they can exercise more control over the administration and a critical ‘public’ emerges, as some respondents put it. This argument is further underpinned by the improvements in Dnipro, where project authors successfully united in claiming more rights, although many participants had initially felt they had no say over the public servants’ actions.

Future research could further explore the connection between civic learning and the transparency and responsiveness of municipal authorities. Moreover, I have pointed to the limitations of my findings, which build on three case studies where participatory budgeting developed particularly dynamically. Case studies on other Ukrainian cities could broaden the findings of this article.

At the time of writing, participatory budgeting programs have been put on hold in Ukraine due to the Russian invasion. As I have argued, this article contributes to a better understanding of the positive evolution of relations between citizens and municipal authorities prior to 2022. Arguably, these improved relations likely facilitated interaction between civil society and local administrations in providing humanitarian aid in the context of Russia's war against Ukraine.

Moreover, my findings suggest that participatory budgeting and similar participatory processes are highly suitable for playing a crucial role in the future democratic governance in Ukraine. For instance, participatory procedures could facilitate dialogue and collective engagement between long-term residents and internally displaced persons. It might also help in framing negotiations between municipal residents and the municipality about rebuilding destroyed buildings. Participatory budgeting could enable fairer allocation of resources in these processes. Crucially, including citizens in the reconstruction of Ukrainian municipalities should enable not only co-determination of where rebuilding is needed but also allow citizens’ input on how these processes should look.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback. I also offer my thanks to the participants of the Early Career Workshop in Leuven for insightful remarks on a very early version of this article and to Florian Peters for rigorous comments on a later version.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

A part of this work was supported by the State of Hesse Excellence Program ‘Conflict Regions in Eastern Europe’ at Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany.

Notes on contributors

Sophie Schmäing

Sophie Schmäing is a doctoral researcher at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany.

Notes

1 https://pauci.org/en/foundation.

2 https://eef.org.ua/en/program/programa-egap/.

3 Information on participation rates were derived from the participatory budgeting platform: https://adm.dniprorada.gov.ua/statistics/281; Statistical Data on population size from the Website of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine: http://db.ukrcensus.gov.ua/PXWEB2007/ukr/publ_new1/2020/zb_chuselnist%202019.pdf.

4 Interviews are marked as follows: with ‘C, A, E’ (citizen-participant, administration, (civil society) expert), Where applicable, sources have a letter for the respective city, e.g. D (Dnipro), K (Kyiv), L (Lviv).

5 See https://adm.dniprorada.gov.ua/statistics/281.

6 See https://adm.dniprorada.gov.ua/files/document/1569/file/16341333023937_6-5.pdf.