The predominant institutional design of participatory budgeting is characterized here as well as type of citizenship participation that is produced in it, in order to evaluate the incidence that these new participative institutions have had on local democratic representative institutions. The hypothesis is that the institutional design of participatory budgeting promotes a kind of citizenship participation that is more consultative than deliberative. In some cases the participatory budgeting is used to renew clientele relations of the representor with the represented. When processes of citizenship participation are more sustantive, there has been a determinant role played by social organizations of civil society. The principal results show that, in order to provoke the complementary processes of citizenship participation in representative democracy, the institutional designs are not as determinant as the mayors political will and the dynamic role of civil society. The methodological strategy used was the compared study (cross-country) of the institutional design of the participatory budgeting in 5 countries. The tools used for the recollection of data were the interviews with experts in each country, and bibliographic revision of the topic.