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While new forms of participation in the budget process hold the potential to build stronger bridges between citizens and states, the current state of budget participation around the world is weak, scoring only 12 out of 100 points on our index. Many countries have at least one form of formal budget participation mechanism in place, but many of these are poorly structured and are not fully inclusive. In most cases, government officials and legislators fail to provide any feedback to citizens on their inputs, which can decrease interest in participating in the future and undermine confidence in institutions. Nevertheless, we document important innovations happening around the world across the four stages of the budget process, and countries can build on their current practices and learn from their peers to improve participation. Finally, when we consider the three pillars of the accountability system together – transparency, participation, and oversight – no country scores high on all three of these (above 60), and 22 countries score poorly (40 or lower) on all three.