Designing Participation: Institutional and Socio-Technical Determinants of Participatory Budgeting in Brno and Bratislava

This study explains why Brno’s municipal participatory budgeting (PB) has become durably institutionalised and scaled, whereas Bratislava’s remains fragmented. National fiscal and programme-budgeting frameworks are treated as moderating conditions that enable or constrain local design choices, not as the primary object of analysis. Using a most-similar systems logic, we conduct a comparative multi-case analysis with embedded units – annual PB cycles, project types, core institutions/platforms, and, for Bratislava, boroughs. Evidence derives from publicly available municipal legal and budgetary documents and formally adopted PB rules and reports. The analysis integrates mechanisms from institutional theory (institutionalisation), actor – network theory (socio-technical robustness of identity, workflow, and data infrastructures), deliberative democracy (input/throughput/output legitimacy), and principal – agent perspectives (transparency and auditability). Findings show that Brno’s stable funding envelope, dedicated participation unit, codified cycles, secure digital identity, and auditable end-to-end pipeline underpin predictable delivery despite clustered turnout. Bratislava’s borough-led PB enables experimentation but creates coordination frictions, heterogeneous rules, and uneven links to programme budgeting. The study offers a portable, mechanism-based diagnostic for post-socialist municipal contexts.