Institutional Development of Uzbekistan’s System for Financing Projects Shaped on the Basis of Public Opinion and a Regional Analysis of Its Financial Outcomes

This article systematizes the institutional and legal stages through which Uzbekistan’s system for financing projects shaped on the basis of public opinion (the “Participatory Budget”) developed between 2018 and 2026, traces the evolution of its financing sources and regulatory coefficients, and analyzes the system’s practical outcomes by region and project direction using official data from the “Open Budget” portal and the Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The findings show that, although the system’s financial capacity expanded from 1.55 trillion UZS in 2019 to 6.7 trillion UZS by 2025, its growth rate has been declining steadily (from 147.7 percent to 18.6 percent), indicating that the system has moved from a phase of expansion to one of stable institutionalization. The declining number of submitted projects alongside the rising average amount per winning project points to the mechanism’s growing qualitative maturity. The regional analysis confirms the stabilizing role that the guaranteed-minimum-funding mechanism plays in narrowing inequality, while the sectoral-structure analysis confirms that the mechanism remains responsive to actual needs under a bottom-up principle rather than fixed quotas.