Позитивные изменения. Том 2, №4 (2022). Positive changes. Volume 2, Issue 4 (2022) - Редакция журнала «Позитивные изменения»

In a couple of years, when all the urgent problems are done with, through IB with active participation of the public, the residents generally move to the next level and begin to improve the infrastructure or come up with more complex, original and exclusive projects.

But, of course, for any unity to be possible, first of all, there must be someone who is willing to take on all this work, and secondly, you need quality infrastructure: a voting platform, mobile or landline Internet for the residents, availability of consultants on initiative budgeting, facilitators and meeting moderators. In Russia, this may be common in large cities; but villages and rural areas still leave a lot to be desired.

But here we have the opposite situation: the city, with its good infrastructure and big budgets, can show poor results in initiative budgeting. This is a result of lower levels of public engagement in the life of their yard, street or city.

“I keep saying that initiative budgeting is not about money at all. Money is only the means for educational work. Thanks to initiative budgeting, responsible residents are educated. This brings about passionate citizens, who are eager to participate in the affairs of their cities. The question of money is secondary,” Vladimir Vagin says. “For example, Moscow has been given a huge number of free-for-all facilities like Zaryadye Park, so what? Does this mean that Muscovites have become more educated citizens who are willing to consciously take on subsequent use of these gifts? Do they understand what the cost of these facilities to the city budget was? Have they created and maintained some forms of joint community activities? Nothing of the kind.”

The lack of responsibility for facilities donated or “handed down from above” is a problem that, of course, is not peculiar for the city — it can also arise in the villages, where the level of cohesion between residents is higher. In order to prevent this from happening, residents of any settlement, regardless of the size of the territory, must be included in the project work, and they must have a working channel for communicating with the authorities.

“The problems that exist in the local courtyard or suburban areas, which are part of Moscow and the Moscow Region, are quite big, because local residents do not have the tools to talk to the authorities in the same language,” adds Mikhail Shevelev. “All they can do is file a complaint and get a response. Neither the residents nor the authorities have a tool to build relationships wherein the local community will also responsible for its decisions.”

Of course, there are successful IB practices in large cities, the expert adds. “I can quote the example of the Kirov Region and St. Petersburg, which find the right forms of working with the residents, in which individual activists and self-organized groups of citizens unite. For example, cyclists in St. Petersburg come up with projects by delegating their representatives to the budget committees. They present these projects at the committee meetings and implement them on behalf of the entire cycling community.”

“In large cities, for greater efficiency, it is possible to launch projects related to the current agenda”, says Natalia Shapovalova, senior researcher of the NIFI Center for Initiative Budgeting under the Russian Ministry of Finance. “Initiative budgeting is still not a universal practice for all residents. In large cities, many communities are excluded from the decision-making process, such as the migrants or people with disabilities. So I would shift the focus from territories to specific social areas and target groups, which have the potential for applying IB — health care and patients, universities and students, schools and students.”

IS A WORLD BASED ON INITIATIVE BUDGETING A UTOPIA OR ESSENTIAL REALITY?

Today, initiative budgeting is the most effective engagement technology, aimed at improving the efficiency of state municipal governance. This tool is expected to retain its leadership position for some time to come. How long this will last, however, is difficult to predict, the experts believe.

Vladimir Vagin does not deny that another technology may emerge that will prove even more effective. “However, knowing how much effort, time and resources have been spent on making initiative budgeting appear in Russia, I think that it is unlikely that something like this will appear in the near future,” the expert reckons. “Therefore, speaking about the future of initiative budgeting, I can assume that this tool will soon become an integral part of the state policy and will be present everywhere.”

Recently, a new Initiative Budgeting Development Strategy until 2030 was presented at the 4th All-Russian Conference on Initiative Budgeting held on September 29–30, 2022[38]. The draft strategy developed by NIFI includes five main directions for the development of initiative budgeting:

• integration of IB into state programs and national projects;

• development of territorial public self-governance, including with the help of IB;

• co-financing of IB with taxes;

• development of school and youth IB;

• financial integration and budget literacy.

Figure 1. Indicators of initiative budgeting development in Russia

Based on the monitoring data of the initiative budgeting development in the subjects of the Russian Federation and municipalities for 2018–2021

Source: Financial Research Institute of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation

Natalia Shapovalova also notes a possible territorial vector for the development of this tool. “It is impossible for a single IB practice, no matter how convenient and effective it is, to cover all of the people's needs. Especially if we view them not as an abstract mass of population, but as a combination of communities or target audiences, which makes it necessary to build comprehensive systems of territorial public involvement, building participatory ecosystems at the city, region and country level.”

“Along with the possible prospects of scaling up to the whole of Russia, there is also an objective risk of discrediting the very idea of initiative budgeting,” Mikhail