Social capital and participatory budgeting: a critical review of selected authors

Abstract

The present article seeks to discuss the possible impact of social capital on the practice of Participatory Budgeting (PB). Although the literature has attempted to focus on the benefits of extending the stock of social capital (SC), we intend here to point out its possible iniquities. Diverse possibilities of the generation of negative social capital were identified which can cause, by way of the practice of participatory budgeting, the constraint of socio-spacial inequalities, the discouragement to participation, clientelist practices, group antagonism, depoliticization of the decision process, group monopolies, the exclusion or the self-exclusion of individuals in practice, and other constraints presented in this article. We don’t intend to revoke the merits of PB, much less that of social capital. We only seek to demonstrate that this capital is composed of two opposing faces.