The theoretical focus of participatory budgeting in Latin America has placed sufficient attention in the description and characterization of its dynamics of participation, and more recently on the relation with representative democracy. However, there has been insufficient comparative studies on the hypothesis that participatory budgeting, especially those which have developed in countries outside of Brazil, are consolidating as a neighborhood participatory institution, without reaching a strategic incidence in the definition of the public policies of city (community or municipali- The principal aim of this article is to study the participatory budgeting in three countries of Latin America, where it has developed for more than 10 years and analyze its conditions, and to offer a set of explanatory dimensions of this process. This aim will be realized through the preliminary analysis of the information obtained of the case studies of participatory budgeting of Uruguay, Chile and the Dominican Republic. Of these countries, the approximation was obtained indirectly, by means of a methodology of documentary review on the participatory budgeting in Latin America and in a complementary way direct sources were used (interviews with experts and key informants) to know the results of the process in the mentioned countries. From the description of the trend of the participatory budgeting in the three cases of interest, it is possible to deduce the presence of some conditions that are determining the development of this mechanism, even in contexts where different game rules prevail, such as, for example, a law that regulates its functioning. Definitively, in these cases the participatory budgeting is characterizes by not discussing in the process, the municipal budget nor other items, neither the strategic policies that are implemented at the municipal scale. It is not observed an intention for addressing major resources to the sectors most unprotected or affected by the predominant economic model; in the practice, the distribution is rather egalitarian using the criterion "one inhabitant, one dollar". Political will is determinant at the moment of implementing successfully the participatory budgeting, even when exists a modern legislation as that of the Dominican Republic and an institutional context pro-decentralization and participation as that of Uruguay; the mayors' political will ends up being a determinant for this mechanism of participative democracy. The principal risk of this trend is that participatory budgeting can be transformed into participative mechanisms co-opted by the representative actors, especially when civil society does not manage the processes, and the political will of their leaders is excessive, making the process mutate from the delegation of power to the renovation of concentration strategies of power and allowing clientary relations to be co-opted in participatory budgeting.