Citizen engagement: now a strategic necessity for restoring public finances

Budgets are more than technical spreadsheets. They are political and moral documents. They show who we value, what we value, and how we share resources. Yet in most countries, the public’s role is still limited to comment boxes or annual town halls that change little. Today’s context demands we take public engagement far more seriously. Democracy is under pressure, public trust is low, and we face extremely tough fiscal trade-offs. The public wants to be seen, heard, and respected, but they also want to influence policy. Public engagement is how we achieve both.

When the public understands the budget and can engage with the process meaningfully, public engagement becomes a strategic capability that makes budgeting more legitimate, realistic, and effective.

First, choices improve. The public and civil society have ground-level knowledge that top-down processes routinely miss. They know the relative importance of tertiary hospitals versus rural clinics, or school feeding versus pensions. These insights improve allocative decisions before money is spent.

Second, fairness is visible. Budgets are about distribution. Engagement surfaces the distributional impacts of proposals — who gains, who pays, and who is left out. This allows governments to address inequities openly, instead of relying on backroom deals with powerful lobbies.

Third, delivery gets stronger. When the public helps to set priorities, they are also incentivised to monitor programmes. This pressure and information sharpens execution. It reduces underspending. And it improves quality.

Finally, engagement builds trust. When fiscal space is tight, trust is vital. You do not build trust by promising perfection. You build it by showing your work, making trade-offs explicit, inviting challenge, and demonstrating how public input changes outcomes. We can no longer afford to exclude the public from public budgeting.

Not everyone is in favour of public participation. Four common concerns are often raised, but they can all be managed through careful design.

The first concern is: “We don't have time.” I would argue that the executive already spends significant time explaining budget decisions after the fact. Moving some of that energy upstream saves time later, resulting in fewer surprises and less backlash.

The second is that the process will be captured by special interests. Capture thrives in the dark, not in the light. Well-designed engagement reduces the space for quiet, informal lobbying by putting all proposals and their reasons on the public record.

Third, many raise the concern that inclusive budgeting will raise expectations we cannot meet. On the contrary, engagement allows expectations to be managed early by being specific about the scope and explaining decisions. The public can hope for a “yes” but accept a “no” when the trade-offs are made clear and the process is serious.

Finally, some argue that public participation undermines the role of Parliament. In fact, it can complement and strengthen parliamentary scrutiny, especially when analytical capacity in Parliament is limited.

So, how much progress are we making? The short answer is that we are making progress, but it is very patchy.

On the positive side, standard-setters like the OECD, the IMF, and the World Bank all endorse public participation. The principles and practices to guide engagement exist. Furthermore, the preconditions for participation are stronger than ever. Budget transparency has increased dramatically, and the analytical capacity of civil society has grown in countries all over the world.

The problem is that formal engagement opportunities lag far behind. According to the International Budget Partnership's latest Open Budget Survey, the average score for public participation in the 22 OECD countries covered is just 25 out of 100.

Despite this low average, impressive bright spots are developing. Ireland’s National Economic Dialogue is a strong forum for setting the scene ahead of the annual budget, while bringing everyone together. Canada runs an annual pre-budget consultation and, crucially, publishes a “what we heard” summary showing how input was treated. Scotland produces an “Equality and Fairer Scotland” budget statement, prompting explicit discussion on the impacts on different groups. In a local example from the Netherlands, the municipality of Zeist faced a €6.2 million shortfall. By engaging 200 citizens, they not only closed the gap but identified savings of €7.6 million, enough to create additional fiscal space.

The building blocks for participation exist, but they are not yet consistently connected. The next level of public engagement must recognise two factors.

First, the public is not just looking for a microphone; they want influence.

Second, budgeting is no longer the purview of a few actors; it is an “ecosystem” made up of many interdependent actors.

This means we must design for influence, not just inclusion. We should ask where in the ecosystem participation can add the most value to choices and who should follow through. We must also see the public as a civic ecosystem. Individuals rarely engage alone; they engage through organisations. We should map different channels to different contributions—deliberation for values, open data for analysts, and co-design for implementers.

Finally, governments must compete for civic attention. The budget process offers many entry points. Credible, well-timed, formal avenues will "crowd in" actors. Weak or token avenues will push civil society towards informal or confrontational routes. And we must measure outcomes, not inputs. Do not just count meetings held; count decisions altered, provisions strengthened, and delivery milestones met.

Given the fiscal trade-offs we all face, we cannot afford to exclude the public in public budgeting. As the municipality in the Netherlands declared, the challenges we face are “too difficult to be solved by government alone.”

Change in public finance is a long game. We must be strategic and patient. But it feels as if we are in a moment where the right ideas, people, and institutions are aligning. 

We must grasp this moment to advance the public’s right to participate. This is not about winners and losers. It is about transforming “the government’s budget” into “our budget” — a collective effort to shepherd our increasingly scarce collective resources.

This blog is part of a series of opinion pieces that highlight diverse perspectives on the need to restore public finances. Building public support for budget reforms has become a pressing need for OECD countries. This collection offers insights into some of the most promising ongoing efforts to empower public understanding, featuring contributions  from thought leaders and practitioners in national governments, multilateral organisations, academia, and civil society.

A key reference in this discussion is the OECD report The People and the Budget: Empowering Public Understanding of Public Finances, which offers practical guidance for governments on improving the communication of public finances, strengthening citizen engagement, and highlighting the vital role of independent bodies in an environment of high fiscal pressure and low trust.

This blog article should not be reported as representing the official views of the OECD or of its Member countries. The opinions expressed and arguments employed are those of the authors.