Abstract: The township practice of participatory budgeting centered on residents’ participation is an important form of grass-roots democracy development and innovation, which manifests and practices the whole process of people’s democracy in grass-roots governance, and is an important tool for effective township governance. Most existing researches focus on the model discussion of a single case or the net effect of a single element, which lacks a general overview of the township practice of participatory budgeting in China, and lacks the academic discussion of its diversified realization mechanisms. Based on the TOE theoretical framework, the article analyzes 26 cases of participatory budgeting in townships using the clear-set qualitative comparative analysis method (csqca) and finds that the residents’ budgetary participation in townships is the result of the interaction of factors such as digital infrastructure, amount of budgetary funds, administrative dominant level, institutionalized arrangement, and residents’ participatory literacy, etc. There are four types of "technology-organization type" "technology-environment type" "organization-environment equilibrium type" and "technology-organization-environment three-wheel drive type" that drive the achievement of high levels of residents’ budgetary participation. To build an effective democratic foundation for township governance, participatory budgeting practices in townships should take into account the differences in local financial levels and resource endowments, and integrate and give full play to the synergistic effects of differentiated paths.

Key words: effective governance, participatory budgeting, residents’ budget participation, budget democracy