Publication Details
Abstract
Results-based budgeting strengthens accountability of spending units to the finance ministry and the legislature, but it rarely gives citizens a direct role in defining and monitoring results. This article examines whether participatory budgeting can fill this gap, using Uzbekistan's Open Budget initiative, a large-scale and digitally organised participatory budgeting programme, as a case. Season-level data for 2021–2025 published by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, official announcements and population statistics are used to construct indicators of proposal supply, participation intensity, competition and fiscal weight. The number of proposals peaked at 69,700 in the first season of 2022 and declined to 22,263 in the second season of 2025, while votes rose from 1.1 million in 2021 to 18.1 million in the second season of 2023 and fell by 35.2 per cent after the introduction of identity-verified one-citizen-one-vote rules in 2024. Votes per proposal increased from 28 to 500, and the average winning project grew from 332 million to 1,351 million sums. Funding rose from 50.4 million US dollars in 2021 to 500.3 million in 2024, equivalent to about 1.0–1.2 per cent of consolidated budget expenditure in 2023–2024; school repairs and internal roads accounted for 65 per cent of winning projects in the first season of 2023. The article argues that the initiative already functions as a channel for revealing local demand and mobilising public scrutiny, but is not yet connected to the performance frameworks of budget programmes, and proposes a framework for integrating the two.