Investigating young people’s involvement in participatory budgeting

Abstract

It is widely believed that assisting young people to participate in community affairs is a potent way to contribute to both youth and community development. One way in which youth can become involved in their communities is through participatory budgeting (PB) processes. This study investigates young people’s understanding of, and experience with, the PB process organized by Toronto Community Housing in Canada. The findings of our qualitative study suggest that some youth understand the primary purpose of PB to be the betterment of the community as a whole; that motivation to become involved can be enhanced through appropriate identity-formation and adult support; and that youth can serve as a litmus test for the fairness of the deliberative practices associated with PB.

Background

Youth development and community building are often thought to be interrelated processes, or at least processes that can be closely linked in order to yield mutually beneficial outcomes (Nitzberg, 2005). Involving youth in the affairs of their community and in its development—if it is done well—can be beneficial for the community as well as for the young people who participate (Shodjaee-Zrudlo and Farahmandpour, 2017). One of the affairs of the community that has, in some settings, recently been partially opened to youth participation is the local budgeting process. This practice is commonly referred to as ‘participatory budgeting’ (PB).

PB emerged in urban contexts in Brazil in the 1990s as a way for citizens to have direct influence on budgets that impact their lives. It is now implemented in many hundreds of cities around the world. One study estimated that by 2018 there were some 7059–7671 participatory budgeting processes or events around the world, with some 75–80 in North America (Dias and Júlio, 2018). In 2020, the Participatory Budgeting Project tracked some 183 PB projects in North America, nine of which were in Canada (Participatory Budgeting Project, 2023). The way the innovation has spread has caused it to mutate in a variety of ways, adapting to a variety of political and cultural contexts. This fact has been deplored by some scholars, who lament its now frequent dissociation from more radical left politics (Baiocchi and Ganuza, 2014). To generalize about PB is therefore somewhat difficult. In any case, at a bare minimum, what often happens is that a portion (usually quite small) of a city’s budget is allocated to projects that are decided upon by citizens. Individuals or groups can usually come up with projects, which are then put to a vote in meetings. The precise details of the process differ from place to place. There are also often a variety of constraints decided upon by civil authorities about the kinds of projects that can be selected and how they are to be carried out.

Because PB processes usually involve meetings in which citizens not only vote but, more importantly perhaps, discuss practical proposals, there has been great interest in studying how the ideals of democratic deliberation and participation are articulated and practiced (or not) in these spaces (Boldt, 2018). In general, it has been argued that, through involvement in PB, citizens can acquire knowledge and skills, develop attitudes, and learn practices that are immediately relevant to citizenship (Lerner and Schugurensky, 2007; see also People Powered, 2022, for a compilation of research showing such impacts). For example, participating in PB can help enhance the ability of citizens to contact government agencies and officials and the ability to rank and prioritize demands (Lerner and Schugurensky, 2007: 91). However, the experience of PB in various places has also shown that one needs certain skills and abilities to participate effectively in the first place (e.g. Hill et al., 2004). This raises questions about how accessible these processes are to certain segments of the population who may not yet possess these skills and abilities, such as young people (Boldt, 2018).

The first wave of PB following the experience in Brazil lacked the participation of young people. Therefore, it was only in the ensuing years that mechanisms emerged to incorporate children and youth, particularly in Spain and Germany (García-Leiva and Falck, 2018). However, as García-Leiva and Falck (2018) have indicated:

Both in political and academic forums, participatory processes involving children occupy a secondary place, lacking the level of methodological and evaluative debate that there has been with adult processes. A result of this is the scant academic literature regarding children’s experiences. (García-Leiva and Falck, 2018: 540).

Below, then, we review some of this ‘scant’ academic literature about the involvement of young people in PB.

Youth involvement in PB, from what we have been able to read and observe, takes three forms, all of which are generally underexamined. The first is in PB programs that are generally open beyond the adult population and thus could in principle include the participation of youth in the process. Such is the case for the TCH PB process, which we will describe in the next section. In general, many PB processes in the United States are open to those as young as 16; in some cases even those 14 or a little younger are in principle welcome to participate (Godwin, 2018). In these cases, youth are incorporated into processes that have already been designed and delineated without particular attention placed on the nature of young people’s involvement (García-Leiva and Falck, 2018). As such, the specific experience of youth in these contexts is rarely studied. One exception is Brough’s (2020) study of the involvement of youth in the PB process in Medellín, Colombia.

The second form is youth-led PB projects. These are designed explicitly for youth and do not typically include adults, except as organizers or facilitators. There have been a handful of cities in Europe and Latin America that have offered youth-led PB processes alongside their wider municipal process (see Bartlett and Schugurensky, 2021, for a comprehensive description). In the Latin American context, we were able to find one study on a youth-led PB project (Cabannes, 2006). One case study of a youth-led PB project in Helsinki exists (Boldt, 2018), and for North America there is a series of articles and book chapters about a youth-led PB program in Boston, which welcomes the participation of young people between the ages of 12 and 25 (e.g. Augsberger et al., 2017, 2019; Collins et al., 2018; Gilman, 2016; Gordon et al., 2016). Many of these case studies are interested in what involvement in PB contributes to youth development and empowerment.

The third form is School Participatory Budgeting (School PB). In the North American context, we found a series of articles about the experience of school PB in Arizona, which is the first School PB process in the United States (Bartlett and Schugurensky, 2021, 2023; Cohen et al., 2015; Gibbs et al., 2021). Here, School PB is viewed as a tool for citizenship learning, civic engagement, and school democracy, and as such, it differs from youth-led PB in that it pays greater attention to the pedagogical or educational value of the PB process (Bartlett and Schugurensky, 2021). These studies examine, among other things, how School PB increases inclusive civic learning opportunities, democratic learning, student voice, and political efficacy.

Quite naturally, the two latter forms of participation include youth exclusively, while in the first, youth are usually a minority. Again, given that the participation of youth is not often specifically studied in the context of the first form, there is not much data available to offer a sense of young people’s basic involvement. An exception is a study from 2013, which found that participants between the ages of 16 and 25 consisted of about 13% of those involved in the PB process in Porto Alegre in Brazil (Lüchmann et al., 2018). In general, researchers and administrators often point to the weak involvement of youth in open PB processes, the importance of including them since they are a traditionally disadvantaged or underrepresented group in community affairs, and the possibility of developing specific mechanisms to engage more young people in such processes (e.g. Hartz-Karp and Weymouth, 2018; No, 2018; Primc, 2018).

There is broad consensus that involvement in PB can help at least some youth develop a variety of skills and capacities and that recognizing the influence they exert on the process is often experienced as empowering by them. Support from adults also appears to be helpful. In some cases, it seems the involvement of youth also benefits the city and community. There are concerns, however, that the PB process itself might present obstacles to youth empowerment—for example, by securing merely tokenistic participation of youth—or might exclude certain young people. As is the case for most social endeavors, the results are mixed. Instead of asking whether PB is beneficial for young people and their communities, then, it seems more productive to understand the conditions under which it is of mutual benefit to youth and their communities. Crucial for understanding these conditions is investigating the actual experience of youth who participate in PB. Some of the studies mentioned above call for further research that is more fine-grained, getting at the ‘micro-level’ details of the experience for youth (Boldt, 2018: 109).

The research on youth participation more broadly has also noted that we need to pay closer attention to the details. In the area of youth programing, for example, there is a concern that simply noting attendance is insufficient when researching youth participation (Weiss et al., 2005). Attendance reveals little, for example, about why youth chose to participate, how they understood the purpose of their participation, or what their participation brought them. The problem is similar when it comes to studying the political participation of youth. That young people in some places are not turning up to vote in large numbers does not necessarily mean they are apathetic; it may be, rather, that the political process itself is currently alienating. Broadening the scope of our vision beyond voting reveals, in fact, a widespread and consistent participation of youth in socio-political affairs, at least in some regions (Gauthier, 2003). Simply counting votes or attendance, then, is often not enough for understanding the reasons behind youth participation or its dynamics. Again, this points to the need, among other things, for more qualitative analysis.

Our study

The authors of this study are both involved in youth and community development initiatives in Toronto, Canada. Many of these endeavors take place in social housing neighborhoods. In the context of our ongoing efforts, young people’s participation in community affairs remains an ongoing question and ongoing collaboration and mutual support with social housing staff around issues of shared concern—such as youth engagement—is the norm. One opportunity for youth to participate in the affairs of these communities is the participatory budgeting process organized by housing authorities. Both social housing staff and the neighborhood programs in which youth are involved encourage young people to participate in PB. While the authors of this study were not and are not involved in the development or implementation of the housing PB process itself, the educational activities the authors follow aim to increase participation in the affairs of the community, which could include processes such as PB. Given the shared interest in youth’s involvement in the community, we therefore decided to investigate the experience of young people’s involvement in the participatory budgeting process—which, as noted above, is still relatively underexamined in the literature.

Our qualitative study examined the participation of youth in the PB processes initiated by Toronto Community Housing (TCH) in Canada. Unlike most of the studies mentioned above, the PB processes we examined are not targeted at youth per se, though they are open to them—it is a case of the ‘first form’ of youth participation in PB mentioned above. Only Brough (2020) seems to have researched a similar case carefully, though in the Colombian context. While it is valuable to study youth-led efforts and School PB as well, we think that studying the involvement of youth in ‘open’ or ‘general’ PB processes brings into focus interesting dynamics about youth participation in community affairs that are less apparent in youth-tailored initiatives. For instance, this firm form of participation exposes young people to the messier realities of community democracy. Studying youth involvement in this context—which could be described as real, non-ideal conditions—therefore promises to yield interesting fruit. (It is also the case that some youth-focused endeavors appear to be rather childish; see Boldt, 2018.)

Three research questions oriented our study:

1. What do youth understand the purpose of PB to be?

2. What motivates youth to take part in PB?

3. How is the PB process experienced by youth?

The hope was to get at the lived experience of youth in a way that sheds light on their participation in community affairs.

Research context and methods

Canada is known to have conducted early experiments with PB, with some initiatives carried out in the major cities of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal (Baiocchi and Lerner, 2007). The PB process we examined is somewhat atypical in that it is carried out by a public housing corporation, rather than by a city. However, the experience is considered by many to be the first big PB experiment in North America, largely because of the demographics of Toronto and the nature of its housing authority (Lerner, 2014). Toronto Community Housing (TCH) is the second largest publicly owned social housing provider in North America, and the largest in Canada, serving well over 100,000 residents. Residents living in TCH housing include seniors, families, refugees, new immigrants, and individuals with special needs. Nearly 40% of residents are children and youth (Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCH, 2022b). The ‘budget’ in which residents participate, then, is the budget of TCH, and not a city-wide one. Presumably, then, concerns and projects may in some cases be even ‘closer to the ground’ than in a regular city-wide PB process.

TCH began implementing PB in 2001. The intention was to encourage tenants to work together to identify the priorities for their own community, and then decide on the distribution and implementation of specific funds allocated by TCH. Staff devised an initial participatory budgeting process in order to establish a tenant role in the distribution of a portion of the capital budget to the community projects that are deemed most worthy. A meeting was held in each TCH building to identify priorities and elect delegates to represent their building in their Community Housing Unit (CHU) Council. In the context of these CHU Councils, the delegates alongside staff decided how to divide the funds amongst the building’s priorities (Lerner, 2014). The first cycle (2001–2004) involved about 6000 tenant participants who decided upon the allocation of $18 million from the TCH budget neighborhood improvements (TCH, 2004). During the second cycle (2004–2012), TCH decided to allocate $9 million annually from its capital operating budget to the PB process, primarily for infrastructure projects. While the first phase was introduced by TCH staff, the structure of the participatory budgeting process moved under tenant direction during this time, subject to regular assessment and annual improvements (TCH, 2016).

Tenants go through a five-step process that allows them to identify the community needs, deliberate on the complexity of the issue to achieve understanding, decide on how to resolve the problem, implement the agreement, and monitor and evaluate the final result (Avritzer, 2002). The process begins with a ‘building’ meeting, open to all residents, in order to elect both a capital need priority and a delegate to represent their building and their voted priority need. A participatory budgeting committee composed of TCH tenants meet monthly to discuss the process itself and co-ordinate planning for the annual ‘allocation day event’, a city-wide forum for participation where tenants are represented by their elected peers. Delegates gather and make presentations on their projects and then all vote on which community projects should receive funding. The hope, as expressed by TCH, is for the PB process to enhance community governance and to build ‘strong tenant leaders with engaged communities’ (TCH, 2005: 43).

The total PB budget for 2016 was $5 million, with $4.23 million for general capital items including common spaces, and $750,000 for safety projects. Historically, PB allocation to capital repair projects are about 85% and include such things as roof replacements, driveway paving, playgrounds, lighting, repair of damaged interiors, and window replacements, to name a few (TCH, 2016). Community engagement projects make up 10% of the PB budget and include such things as bike racks, recreation room furniture, fitness equipment, plants and gardening equipment, and library furniture and books (TCH, 2016).

In October 2016, the TCH Board of Directors put the PB process on hold in order to organize a series of consultations with tenants to determine key strengths and key areas of improvement. The 145 tenants who attended, by and large, identified the democratic nature of the PB process and their own involvement as a key benefit of the program. For example, tenants felt empowered because they were involved in the decision-making process from start to finish; that communities are able to think and talk about their needs with each other and to staff, and that the democratic process that enables them to work together to make decisions is fair (TCH, 2016). At the same time, tenants named a number of drawbacks or areas of improvement that touched on issues of tenant control at the local level; unfair voting processes including how tenants identify projects in their building meetings; and project pricing being inefficient or incorrect. The consultations resulted in a plan for 2017 for TCH to design and pilot a tenant decision-making process specific to the capital repair plan and another process specific to the community-based projects.

In 2021, the PB process was paused yet again to allow for a comprehensive review of all aspects of the program, which is still underway (TCH, 2022a). The review is intended to address issues related to control mechanisms for higher accountability; align the process with procurement, finances and tenant engagement policies and procedures; update policies and procedures with input from key stakeholders; and to align the PB program with TCH’s new operations service model (TCH, 2022a). No date has yet been provided for the PB program to be reinstated.

There are a handful of studies of TCH’s PB process that in addition to documenting the PB experience itself, also examine a range of issues such as the informal learning of tenant volunteers and the connections between informal learning, citizenship learning, and the enhancement of a culture of democracy (Foroughi, 2013; Foroughi and McCollum, 2013); integrating games and games mechanics into democratic processes in a Western context to enhance PB projects (Lerner, 2014); lessons learned and challenges encountered with respect to tenant participation (Foroughi, 2017); and the PB process as case study for deliberative democracy and empowerment (Johnson, 2009, 2018).

The two authors of the present study are very familiar with TCH, having collaborated with them in a variety of settings, often for the purpose of consulting about and working toward the empowerment of youth residing in their communities. We ourselves are involved in a number of educational initiatives in these same neighborhoods in Toronto (though, as mentioned above, we ourselves have not been involved in the TCH PB process itself). It is therefore accurate to describe ourselves, in the context of the current study, as reflexive practitioner-researchers (De Lavergne, 2007; Schon, 1984). Given this positionality, we are already deeply committed to the progress of the young people residing in these communities. The conversations we had with them were therefore not isolated events with unknown individuals, to be forgotten once we left the ‘research site’. Rather, the interviews were woven into the fabric of our ongoing efforts to empower young people in these places to contribute to the development of their communities. In fact, we do not see ourselves as ‘separate’ from these communities, as we spend a great deal of time outside of ‘research hours’ thinking about and working practically toward their betterment.

We used semi-structured in-depth interviews. It was felt that this qualitative approach would be the best way to reveal the fine details of the experiences of youth involved in PB processes, as well as to bring out their perspectives in their own voice (Holstein and Gubrium, 1995; Savoie-Zajc, 2013; Tierney and Dilley, 2002; Warren, 2002). This approach also allowed us to pursue the interviews with a degree of informality that was more appropriate given our pre-existing connections with some of the youth and the community context. An interview guide with some probing questions was developed, while we remained open to following trajectories in the conversation that may not have been encompassed in the guide. The questions in the guide asked about their experience with PB, who helped them to become involved, and their motivation and obstacles to participation. Interviews lasted between 1 and 1.5 hours each.

Our pre-existing contacts in TCH made it simple to identify potential interviewees, some of whom were already known to us. An email was sent to a TCH program manager responsible for the participatory budgeting process regarding our study, and this individual directed us to TCH community service coordinators, who work closely with youth. One community service coordinator agreed to assist and contacted youth in his jurisdiction who have participated in the PB budgeting process in their communities. Interested study participants then contacted us and an in-person interview in a public location—the local public library—was scheduled. One interview was conducted over the phone due to scheduling conflicts. This approach may have introduced a degree of selection bias, in the sense that TCH staff were potentially more likely to direct us to youth who had actively participated in the PB process. However, given our research questions—particularly the second and third—we naturally wished to speak to young people who had participated effectively in the process to some degree.

In terms of criteria for selection, we wanted to speak to young people between the ages of 12 and 29 who had been involved in at least one aspect of PB in TCH housing no later than 2012 (so that their experiences would not be too old). In the end, we interviewed five youth: four of whom were female, and one male. The interviews were carried out in the Spring of 2017. Our interviewees were between the ages of 14 and 26. Each interviewee filled a consent form before proceeding with the interview. Those who were under the age of 18 were given a form that also asked for parental consent or consent from a legal guardian. Interviews were recorded, transcribed manually, and then analyzed for emerging themes. In writing up this paper, each interviewee was assigned a pseudonym.

Findings

Our findings are structured around the three guiding research questions enumerated above. Briefly, our qualitative study suggests (1) that some youth understand the primary purpose of PB to be the betterment of the community as a whole; (2) that motivation to become involved could be enhanced through appropriate identity-formation and adult support; and (3) that youth can serve as a litmus test for the fairness of the deliberative practices associated with PB. Due to our small sample size, of course, these are issues to consider rather than generalizable conclusions.

Youth understanding of PB

Two major themes emerged around the first research question. First, it was clear that the youth understood PB to be something that benefits the community rather than the individual, and that it promises to offer concrete and often sorely needed change in the community. Dante (14 years old), said the following:

to me it was like a presidential meeting because we were doing something actually big, it wasn’t like we were debating which juice box was better, [we were] actually debating on what needs to be done . . . this is something big, [it was] money to do something to your whole community not just for yourself or your child.

Paige (15 years old) echoed this feeling, articulating her understanding of a corresponding norm for good projects:

the purpose of PB is to make the community better for the community, as best as possible not for each individual or unit but for the community. If it benefits the community it’s a good plan, and if it benefits one or two people it’s not.

Examples of projects the youth had been involved in presenting included renovating a playground that had become a litter box for animals (causing ringworm in some children) and installing lights that made people feel safer at night as they came and went from their homes.

While the purpose of PB was articulated as improving the common weal, the youth were also clear about the benefits that accrued to themselves, especially in terms of skill and knowledge acquisition. This was the second major theme. Fara (26 years old) expressed these benefits in the following way:

I learned leadership skills, building confidence to advocate, learning how to speak publicly, to analyze information and prioritizing, how to pitch, how to talk to people with a level of authority I’m not used to, to learn who has influence and decision making power, and feeling like I have a stake in where I live and being able to accomplish things with the support of my community and TCH, having that sense of accomplishment.

Thus, the main way in which young people understood the purpose of PB was that its aim is to improve the community as a whole. At the same time, youth were also clear about the way in which involvement in PB helped them develop a variety of abilities.

The motivations of youth involved in PB

A great deal of time was spent unpacking with the youth why they had decided to become involved in PB—what had motivated them to join the meetings and participate. We uncovered two major categories of reasons. The first had to do with the way in which the youth perceived themselves, what psychologists often call ‘self-concept’.

Interestingly, rather than describing their motivation to act in purely altruistic or self-interested terms, the youth we interviewed seemed to connect their motivation to the kind of person they saw or understood themselves to be. In other words, instead of saying they got involved because they wanted to help others (altruism) or wanted to develop certain abilities and skills (self-interest), they connected their participation to their image of themselves, which had implications for how they should use their time. They also stressed the importance of certain qualities and attitudes and their sense of responsibility to the community. It was as if they had difficulty imagining not participating, given who they understood themselves to be.

Paige had the following to say, emphasizing the idea of choice:

I feel like it all depended on my choice, because every time I had to go, rather than I was forced or told to go . . . people want things to change but they never go about changing it . . . People want to see homeless in homes but they don’t do it. So basically, it’s the choice you make, to act to make things better, or to sit back and watch it fall apart.

Fara said she felt guilty at the idea of not participating:

It was that I care more . . .. I don’t want to complain about something if there is a legitimate mechanism to change that, and not do anything about it. For me that is incredibly counter-intuitive and counterproductive . . . so I thought about it and said I really have no excuse, plus it would be [a] great gift to this community I love. I don’t want to make my friends appear flippant but I genuinely see that no one cares . . . there were some years that I didn’t care! But I definitely feel that it weighs on my subconscious more, I definitely feel a level of guilt when I don’t know what’s going on.

As can be seen in Fara’s comment, the youth often contrasted their identity with that of other youth in their community. They perceived other youth to be more self-interested, not interested in the community, and generally absorbed in advancing their own projects, including work and meeting personal needs. The youth who participated in PB saw themselves as particularly ‘mature’ or ‘keeners’, while their friends and others were ‘less engaged’ or ‘just don’t care’. Nicki (17 years old) said that ‘You can tell them but they won’t care. It’s the thought that counts, it’s [with] a bribery or rewards . . . It’s more like if they see how it benefits them’.

The other major factor motivating participation had to do with the support of adults. None of the youth we interviewed participated without explicit encouragement from TCH staff. Fara described her interaction with one staff member in the following way:

He [the TCH staff member] came one day to our community and I met him, he spoke to me and he engaged me, and I [was] intrigued by what he was saying, this idea of cultivating leadership skills, and he was like [your neighbourhood] is forgotten, who knows anything about [your neighbourhood] and I was like you are right you are right! Literally this man has [the] power of youth, he just rallies youth all the time. So he rallied me and he met me in my community when he was holding that PB meeting. That’s how I caught the bug.

Briefly, then, young people were motivated to participate if they saw themselves as the kind of person who contributes to the betterment of their community and if they had relevant support from adults.

The experience of youth in PB

Two major themes emerged when the youth were asked to describe their experience with the actual PB processes facilitated by TCH (which, again, mostly consists of meetings of various kinds). The first theme was adequately summarized by one interviewee: ‘the only young person there’. While the PB spaces organized by TCH are technically open to all residents, the process tends to be mostly attended by adults. As such, these meetings were not seen by the youth as youth spaces, but rather as adult spaces in which they were participating. Some of the youth reported feeling somewhat nervous and intimidated as a result. However, given the close-knit nature of many TCH housing complexes, the youth actually knew many of the attendees at the meetings, and overall were more comfortable than not. Allocation day was more intimidating because it spanned all TCH housing across the city. Some youth reported that the adult delegates present on allocation day were surprised that someone so young was involved, and in some cases, they received encouragement from the adults. Thus, while they felt somewhat like abnormal participants, they were nonetheless often welcomed.

The other major theme was young people’s perception of the fairness of the PB process. The use of persuasion, the strength of particular voices and personalities, and the negotiation and formation of alliances so that groups of delegates could increase the number of votes for particular projects, were all seen in the eyes of some youth as ‘corrupt’ practices, essentially resulting in less than fair or just results. Nora (17 years old) reports the following:

I think it should have been a blind vote. In general, it should have been people who done things for the community and who help out. But it was people who speak the most versus people who do things. . . . There are a bunch of people there that actually needed things done didn’t make the list.

Nicki was even more adamant:

It felt so set up; it felt bias[ed]. Some people came in and they knew what they were going to vote for or because they had been to a meeting before they knew the tricks. . . . It’s not fair how Housing sets it up you shouldn’t have nine spots and [it’s] survival of fittest. Housing is supposed to help everyone but some places get more.

These observations were particularly interesting, since, for many of the adults in attendance, this was no doubt business as usual: this is how politics is done. But the youth we interviewed, particularly the younger ones, were critical of these practices.

To summarize, young people felt somewhat out of place in PB spaces, though mostly welcomed, but they were critical of elements of the PB process, seeing them as corrupt or unfair.

Discussion

Our findings related to how youth understand PB are largely consistent with other studies. Brough (2020) found, for example, that the Colombian youth she interviewed ‘emphasized that serving the interest of the communa (and not just their own groups) was a goal they shared’ (p. 120). The purpose of PB is therefore broadly understood by young people to be about the common weal—the betterment of the entire community. Also similar to other studies (Brough, 2020; Collins et al., 2018), youth feel that PB is beneficial for them as well. They learn a variety of abilities and skills, including how to express themselves in public, how to come up with projects and steer them through the process, and much about the local political landscape. Many youth find the process to be empowering and experience a strong sense of agency and accomplishment as a result of participation.

With regard to the question of motivation, we were somewhat surprised by the kinds of responses offered by the interviewees, specifically by their focus on the way they saw themselves and contrasted their own motivation with others’. This prompted us—in the midst of the interviews—to look back at the literature to see if others had linked the question of motives for participation with that of identity. We found that the youth’s comments confirmed some of the arguments made by Teske (1997) about the role of moral motivation in explaining political behavior. Teske argues that both rational actor models (which stress self-interest) and theories that instead focus on altruism as a motive are insufficient for understanding motivation for participating in politics. Drawing on long interviews with political activists, he offers what he calls an ‘identity-construction’ approach to understanding motivation in politics. This approach ‘points to types of concerns that are morally relevant and self-regarding at the same time’ (p. 74), thus transcending the dichotomy between self-interest and altruism. Furthermore, it

focuses on concerns for what kind of person one is and what kind of life one is living, on the qualitative moral concerns that political actors have and the desires they have that certain qualities (bravery, honesty, commitment, and so on) be instantiated in their actions and lives. (Teske, 1997: 85, emphasis in original)

This is a good description of the kinds of considerations raised by the youth we interviewed when we asked them what motivated them to participate in PB.

If motivation to participate in PB is indeed related to identity-construction processes, this may have implications for outreach efforts to involve youth in PB. Disseminating information about PB is of course vital. But simply getting information to young people will probably not be enough to motivate them to participate. And attracting them by making the process appear ‘fun’ (as was done in the youth-led process studied by Boldt, 2018) may not be much good either. What our interviews—along with Teske’s reflections—suggest is that one supplementary strategy to enhance youth involvement in PB would be to engage them in meaningful conversations about their identity, prior to participation. What kind of person do they see themselves to be? How does PB fit into this? If one can make a link between the aims of PB and the way young people see themselves, one may create receptivity to participation. Otherwise, only some youth, perhaps already predisposed to participate, will do so.

This leads us to the theme of adult support, another one of our findings related to motivation. This idea was echoed in several of the other studies (e.g. Augsberger et al., 2019). It seems that support from adults involved in the process is a rather key factor in enhancing youth motivation to become involved in PB. Combined with the previous point, a potential implication of our study is that, if a housing authority or city wishes to increase youth involvement in participatory budgeting, it would be worthwhile for it to commit resources to raising the capacity of older youth and adults to have meaningful conversations with young people about the way in which PB contributes to their identity-formation aspirations.

The interviewees’ reflections on their personal experiences participating in the PB process—particularly their views on what would be needed to enhance the quality of the deliberations—were striking. Brough (2020) reports a similar phenomenon in the case of the PB process in Medellín, Colombia: youth delegates there were critical, for example, of the way in which some individuals and groups openly promoted their own interests, as opposed to being oriented to the betterment of the community as a whole. What our findings suggest is that the participation of younger youth in open PB processes may serve as a kind of litmus test of the fairness of these processes and may even offer some hints as to some of the conditions of ideal deliberation. The young people we interviewed felt they had a clear idea of what would constitute fair deliberation or were at least less jaded about political processes. This raises an interesting question about the so-called ‘socialization’ function of PB. Collins et al. (2018) mention that this is one aim of youth-led PB: to socialize young people into political engagement. But what if we are socializing youth into less-than-ideal forms of political engagement, ultimately replicating norms of deliberation that are less-than-ideal?

The main concern of the youth we interviewed seemed to be that the deliberations on allocation day were particularly adversarial (‘survival of the fittest’), and that this did not serve the real needs of the community. Some might deny that conflict-free deliberation is even possible (e.g. Mouffe, 2013). Are these youth, then, to be dismissed as merely naïve actors? Instead, we would suggest that the experiences of these youth may help us rethink what it means to deliberate and make decisions in a community. They help us look at practices related to democratic decision-making with fresh eyes, so to speak, rather than conceiving of current practices as inevitable or unchangeable. To move beyond a space for deliberation in which individuals and groups compete for their projects to win toward a meeting in which the interests of all are genuinely considered is a tall order. It demands certain structural changes (e.g. ‘blind voting’, as suggested by one of the youth), as well as the development of certain attitudes and qualities among the participants in these meetings (e.g. Karlberg, 2004). For now, it is unclear how these changes, particularly the latter ones, would take place—some foundational changes in concepts would be required as well as a high degree of consensus on certain matters—but they seem to us nevertheless necessary, especially if we are to take youth participation seriously as a litmus test.

Conclusion

The limitations of this study are clear: the experiences of only five youth were examined. A larger sample would have been preferable. But given that our findings resonate with some of the key conclusions of other recent studies on youth involvement in PB, we assume this indicates our interviewees were echoing common experiences. The small sample size also allowed us to go more in-depth than if we had tried to interview more youth, or to survey much larger numbers. Nevertheless, further studies might wish to identify and interview a broader range of youth, including those who were invited to participate but did not, or those who attended only partially, or less actively.

In general, we would recommend more qualitative, ethnographic research on youth participation in community affairs such as PB. Augsberger et al. (2019) suggested the use of youth participatory action research (YPAR), which we would also recommend. The latter method may allow communities and groups of youth to try out new modes of deliberation that avoid the kinds of conflict that young people feel obstruct the broad aims of community well-being. This kind of social innovation, carried out with youth themselves, would be highly beneficial to the twin aims of youth and community development.

In closing, it is worth underlining that PB is just one means of youth participation in community affairs. It has its limitations—some of which were discussed above—and it may well be that there are other modes of participation that present far fewer challenges (Augsberger et al., 2019). Much depends on the particular context: how PB is actually carried out, and what other opportunities and possibilities are available to youth for participation in community affairs. Nevertheless, it is good for a diversity of avenues for youth participation to be thoroughly researched, including PB. There is still much to learn about the interrelated processes of youth and community development.