审议式公民参与的公共赋权:台湾桃园市参与式预算的公民创新

Public Empowerment of Deliberative Citizen Participation: The Civic Innovation for Participatory Budgeting in Taoyuan City,Taiwan

为了解决当代自由民主体制的问题,实务者及研究者强化授权性的参与机制,透过具备直接民主精神的公民参与,来提升公共资源分配的分配正义,参与式预算就是其中的积极手段之一。为了提升行政机关以及公务人员推动参与式预算业务的能力与意愿,公共赋权是将参与式预算的决议制度化,并实际产生政策影响的关键。本文以桃园市行政部门作为公民创新的个案研究场域,探讨地方行政机关以及公务人员推动参与式预算的赋权过程与赋权结果的动态发展。研究发现从2015年起,台湾桃园市运用行政机关的特定用途预算作为参与式预算的议题,且采用委外模式交由民间团体推动。在赋权过程部分,桃园市行政部门针对青年、市民、公务人员进行系统性的培力课程,提升沟通、审议、方案规划、投票的能力;在赋权结果部分,多数的预算方案并不符合参与式预算的要件,仅是参与式规划。因此,台湾桃园市推动参与式预算的公共赋权尚在雏形,由形式性赋权转化为实质性赋权的成效,主要取决于行政首长、行政机关与公务人员的态度意愿、能力培养以及制度设计。

To address the contemporary problems of liberal democracy,practitioners and researchers are reinforcing the mechanism for authorized participation.In the spirit of direct democracy,citizen participation is used to justly distribute public resources through positive means such as participatory budgeting.To achieve public empowerment and policy impact,participatory budgeting resolutions are institutionalized to motivate executive authorities and civil servants to promote participatory budgetary operations and increase their competence.The paper of case study is the Taoyuan City Government and qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviews and participant observation are used to examine the ongoing empowerment process and outcome of participatory budgeting promotion by local administrative authorities and civil servants.In the empowerment process,local administrations must ensure that citizens and public officials conduct reasoned deliberations through administrative actions such as training,mobilization and supervision,and prioritize public budgets and policies.In the empowerment outcome,local administrations and civil servants must be responsive to the implementation of participatory budget resolutions to ensure that citizens can practically influence policy implementation by local administrations and civil servants.This paper empirically examines four dimensions of public empowerment,namely environment,institution,mechanisms and participants to explore how the Taoyuan City Government transforms the formal empowerment of its participatory budgeting communication platform into substantive empowermen where participatory budgeting resolutions are implemented.The paper results not only compensate for current inadequacies in academic discourse,but also provide local governments with practical suggestions for participatory system innovations and budgeting process adjustment.