Supporting Post-conflict Democratic Development? External Promotion of Participatory Budgeting in El Salvador

SummaryThe following pages provide, first, a rare examination of the external promotion of participatory budgeting (PB), in this case through US-financed local government development projects in post-war El Salvador from 1994 to 2005. Second, I examine the success of the PB activity by investigating the degree to which PB has been sustained nearly five years after its initial utilization. I compare this case of external PB promotion against endogenously developed Latin American PB experience. External practitioners face the same constraints as those advocating home-grown efforts. PB’s sustainability and benefits are circumscribed, I find, yet such gains are nonetheless important.