The study is devoted to the presentation of the functioning of the civic budget in Elbląg from the normative and practical perspective. The authors focus on selected legal and political science issues, i.e. the initiative to submit proposals of tasks to be financed from the civic budget, the territorial and subjective scope of submitted projects and selected aspects of how this form of public consultations works in practice. The results of the research lead to the conclusion that, despite the fact that eight editions of the civic budget have already been carried out, the city has not developed an ideal model of its functioning. The biggest problems seem to be manifested in the legislative inconsistency and the weakening interest of residents.

Model of participatory budget in Poland: an attempt to organize theoretical issues

The term of a ‘model/models’ of the civic (participatory) budget (CB) has not been discussed more widely in the Polish literature so far. There are also no publications comparing the existing typologies or classifications. In the article, the author presents what the civic budget model is and its definition in political science research. Various approaches are presented based on both Polish and English-language literature on the subject. The main aim of the article is to propose a model of civic budget in Poland. For this purpose, the author presents practical solutions of the Polish CB and, on this basis, distinguishes between general models (based on the scale of the entire state) and specific models (based on the solutions in local government units). The author also presents the components of these general and specific models.