EN
The history of participatory budget (PB) in Poland is less than 10 years old. The occurrence of PB was to raise the local government to a higher level of civil society by introducing so-called deliberative democracy. For some contemporary political thinkers, what defines politics is intersubjective dialogue conducted by citizens in an open and public space. Deliberative democracy is characterized by: a) elementary competences of the participants who have to become acquainted with the material concerning the issue concerned b) the need to formulate their position, which is the result of reflection, reflection on the issue c) civic debate where all proposals have the right to be presented, argued and discussed. The subject of this paper is the civic budget, also referred to as participatory budget (both names are often used interchangeably) as an expression of the willingness of citizens to allocate funds that are available to local authorities. Editions of the citizens’ budget in Krakow between 2014 and 2019 were analysed, the procedure and functions of this social institution were shown.