# Participatory Budgeting: Models and Approaches

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.00606 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00606/

## Key facts

- Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 1 Mar 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Temporal Fairness in Multiwinner Voting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04417/) (2023)
- [Generative Social Choice: The Next Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22939/) (2025)
- [Generative AI voting: fair collective choice is resilient to LLM biases and inconsistencies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11871/) (2024)
- [Beyond RLHF and NLHF: Population-Proportional Alignment under an Axiomatic Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05619/) (2025)
- [On Meritocracy in Optimal Set Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.11932/) (2021)
- [Foundations for Grassroots Democratic Metaverse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04090/) (2022)
- [Full Proportional Justified Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12015/) (2025)
- [Bridging Voting and Deliberation with Algorithms: Field Insights from vTaiwan and Kultur Komitee](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05017/) (2025)
- [Maxmin Participatory Budgeting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13923/) (2022)
- [What Should We Optimize in Participatory Budgeting? An Experimental Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.07308/) (2021)
- [Indivisible Participatory Budgeting under Weak Rankings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.07981/) (2022)
- [Consensus-based Participatory Budgeting for Legitimacy: Decision Support via Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12915/) (2023)
- [Harm Ratio: A Novel and Versatile Fairness Criterion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02977/) (2024)
- [A Linear Theory of Multi-Winner Voting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.03082/) (2025)
- [Large Language Models for Designing Participatory Budgeting Rules](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09349/) (2026)
- [Computing Thiele Rules on Interval Elections and their Generalizations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.03067/) (2026)
- [Participatory Budgeting with Donations and Diversity Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.15075/) (2021)
- [Collective discrete optimisation as judgment aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00574/) (2021)
- [Combinatorial Civic Crowdfunding with Budgeted Agents: Welfare Optimality at Equilibrium and Optimal Deviation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13941/) (2022)
- [Participatory Budgeting With Multiple Degrees of Projects And Ranged Approval Votes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10972/) (2023)
- [Efficient Portfolio Selection through Preference Aggregation with Quicksort and the Bradley--Terry Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16093/) (2025)
- [LLMs for Resource Allocation: A Participatory Budgeting Approach to Inferring Preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06060/) (2025)
- [Algorithmic Shortlisting in Participatory Budgeting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06577/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Participatory budgeting is a democratic approach to deciding the funding of public projects, which has been adopted in many cities across the world. We present a survey of research on participatory budgeting emerging from the computational social choice literature, which draws ideas from computer science and microeconomic theory. We present a mathematical model for participatory budgeting, which charts existing models across different axes including whether the projects are treated as "divisible" or "indivisible" and whether there are funding limits on individual projects. We then survey various approaches and methods from the literature, giving special emphasis on issues of preference elicitation, welfare objectives, fairness axioms, and voter incentives. Finally, we discuss several directions in which research on participatory budgeting can be extended in the future.