Participatory budgeting as a form of dialogic accounting in Russia: Actors’ institutional work and reflexivity trap
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 21 May 2018
Issue publication date: 21 May 2018
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how participatory budgeting (PB), as a form of dialogic accounting, is produced in practice.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a qualitative case study of PB development for the period 2013-2016 in one Russian municipality. Based on triangulation of in-depth semi-structured interviews, documentary analysis, videotape data and netnographic observation, the authors employ ideas of dialogic accounting and institutional work.
Findings
The study shows that the PB experiment, which began with dialogic rhetoric, in reality, had very limited dialogic effects. However, the authors also observed that the PB dynamics over time made the practice neither inherently monologic nor dialogic. The authors explained such transformations by the way in which the individual reflexivity of actors altered when carrying out institutional work. Curiosity reflexivity was the most essential, triggering different patterns of institutional work to set up the PB experiment. However, further, the authors demonstrated that, over the course of the experiment’s development, the institutional work was trapped by various actors’ individual reflexivity forms and in this way limited PB’s dialogic potential.
Originality/value
The study shows the importance of understanding and managing individuals’ reflexivity, as it shapes the institutional work performed by different actors and, therefore, influences the direction of both the design and materialization of dialogic accounting experiments such as PB. In a broader sense, this also influences the way in which democratic governance is developed, losing democratization potential.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank two anonymous reviewers, guest editors of the special issue, scholars of CIGAR and APIRA networks for the encouraging and insightful comments on the previous version of the paper. The authors thank the Norwegian Research Council’s NORRUS program as well. Particularly, the authors thank NORRUS program for funding BUDRUS project “Local government budgeting reforms in Russia: implications and tensions” that made this paper possible.
This paper forms part of a special section “Doings of practitioners: public sector accountants in the 21st Century”.
Citation
Aleksandrov, E., Bourmistrov, A. and Grossi, G. (2018), "Participatory budgeting as a form of dialogic accounting in Russia: Actors’ institutional work and reflexivity trap", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 1098-1123. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-02-2016-2435
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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