DIFFUSION OF PARTICIPATORY BUDGETS IN POLAND: DO NEIGHBOURS MATTER?

Objective of the study: The subject of the study are participatory budgets - social innovations used by local municipalities to involve citizens in local budgetary decisions with roots in Brazil. The main objective was to determine how being part of a social network affects the decision to introduce participatory budgets made by municipalities in Poland, where a remarkable spread of the innovation has been observed since the early 2010s. Methodology: Spatial autocorrelation tests and visualizations were used to uncover clusters of communes with most similar or dissimilar characteristics. Originality/Relevance: Novelty of the study approach lies in the utilization of an own database - with the intention to overcome the problem of data insufficiency, typical of related research. Main results: The presence of spatial proximity-based peer effects was confirmed in the study. The concentration of innovators has remained spatially uneven, which is to be linked to e.g. the crossregionally diverse forms of social capital. The data-based study design allows to explore participatory budgets as products of social networks and not only individual strategies, as evidenced by numerous case studies in the field. Methodological contributions: The study demonstrates the relevance of collecting longitudinal data for the development of research on participatory budgets. Social/management contributions: Insights from the study are of practical value for recent and future. adopters, wishing to understand the broader relevance of their policies, as well as for higher level policymakers trying to better adapt their legal frameworks to the current and future waves of innovators.