Conclusion: Time for Participatory Budgeting to Grow Up

Only a few years ago, participatory budgeting (PB) in the US was in its infancy, a tiny experiment in democracy. After a five-year growth spurt, PB has entered its awkward adolescence, full of bold achievements, flashes of potential, and some stumbles. PBNYC’s innovation has raised new questions for participatory democracy, as the contributors to this special issue highlight. In this article, I lift up the key impacts and challenges that they discuss, and their practical implications. I argue that for PBNYC and other PB processes to grow up, city leaders need to invest in equity, expand project eligibility and funding, and scale PB up to the city level.     

The decline of a model? Challenge and response in the Italian industrial districts

The article presents an extensive critical review of recent debates on the restructuring of Italian industrial districts in the 1990s. It shows that, despite consensus on the empirical 'facts' of district restructuring, there remains extensive disagreement over appropriate public policies. This debate fundamentally turns on analysts' interpretations of how, or indeed whether, strong institutions and localized subcultures allow territorial networks of small firms to compete successfully with larger and more highly capitalized multinational corporations. But perhaps the most crucial and contentious issues are questions about the past adequacy of the districts' regulatory and service institutions in overcoming structural difficulties of the model, and, more importantly, about further innovations that may be required given recent changes in the external economic context.