In China countless decisions emanate from inside a closed, insensitive and unaccountable political class, with a limited popular mandate dominated by outdated ideology. Yet I learnt from recent involvement in an academic conference in China, PB is very much a topic of interest within the People’s Republic. PB is used in a surprisingly wide range of Chinese cities and many Asian countries. We heard how some Japanese authorities are using PB to build new non-profit organisations that deliver the frontline services that people need and the state can’t provide. Funded by a guaranteed 1% of the local authority budget, with decisions about who gets the money taken by ordinary non elected city taxpayers. Korea is using PB to both bring local economic development to poorer areas, and also address controversial urban planning issues in more affluent cities. Thailand practices a form of rural neighbourhood management. Indonesia is using PB to help recover from the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. India has been experiencing PB in some places for years.

So PB is now embedded in Western Europe, is already quite widespread in Africa, beginning to be considered seriously in North America, and remains common across Latin America. Cities like Christchurch in New Zealand have been recognised as early adopters of PB and even Fiji has used PB as a mechanism for village level community empowerment. PB is most definitely a growing global phenomena.

What the conference that took place in the city of Hangzhou showed is that PB can continually surprise us by it’s adaptability and its universal appeal. Even where an autonomous civil society and the independent third sector remain weak, and even where representative democracy is largely absent, academics, active citizens and more enlightened local administrators agree that PB can be a useful governance tool. The way it is being used maybe be different in China, but the motivations behind adopting PB is often very similar to our own. Some surprising realisations arose from comparing experiences of PB.

The Chinese are first and foremost seeking to modernise the effectiveness their local public administrations, without changing the fundamental political system. PB is offering public sector professionals new insights from accessing local knowledge, helped design specific services like new bus routes, while at the same time improved the accountability of unelected officials by increased budget transparency.

It is increasingly apparent that PB is not only the prerogative of socialist politicians. Left and right wings alike see benefits from supporting PB. As demonstrated by the state of Kerala in India, which for many years has been using a very sophisticated form of PB under alternating communist and right of centre parties. Both sides have continued with a well embedded state-wide process that enjoys lots of popular support. This is a bit like the situation in Porto Alegre, which has seen PB survive the surprise ousting of the left wing Workers Party a few years ago. PB in Porto Alegre is carrying on, with some modifications of course, and not without some complaints -- but the basic process remains.

Once citizens get the PB bug, no politicians can ignore the desire of ordinary people to play their part in decisions that affect their lives.