Power to the People? How Participatory Budgets Affect Citizens’ Populist Attitudes

Bibliographic Data

ID6345993
AuthorsMarie‐isabel Theuwis (0000-0003-1802-7896, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume73
Issue2
Pages701-724
Publication date2025-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3217 • E-ISSN: 1467-9248
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00323217241273590
OpenAlexW4402412365
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited60

So-called populist citizens feel excluded from political decision-making, which in their eyes is dominated by an unresponsive political elite. While democratic innovation scholars suggest that empowering citizens in the decision-making process can affect populist sentiments, this article addresses the lack of theorization and empirical research on the mechanisms behind such effects as well as the scarcity of qualitative research regarding populist attitudes. It generates a theory that accounts for changes in participants’ populist attitudes and tests this theory in a most-likely case study. An analysis of pre–post survey data and 35 semi-structured interviews from three participatory budgeting events in the Netherlands shows that for populist citizens, the inclusion of politically marginalised groups and the empowerment of citizens can explain populist attitudes change. On the contrary, the representativeness of the participants and the ability to have deeper discussions are drivers of populist attitudes change for non-populist citizens

Affect (linguistics · Business · Citizen journalism · Economics · Political economy · Political science · Power (physics · Public economics · Sociology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Media Influence and Politics · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Public Administration

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