Open Budgets: The Political Economy of Transparency, Participation, and Accountability

by Sanjeev Khagram (Editor), Archon Fung (Editor), Paolo de Renzio (Editor)

Overview

"Decisions about "who gets what, when, and how" are perhaps the most important that any government must make. So it should not be remarkable that around the world, public officials responsible for public budgeting are facing demands—from their own citizenry, other government officials, economic actors, and increasingly from international sources—to make their patterns of spending more transparent and their processes more participatory.

Surprisingly, rigorous analysis of the causes and consequences of fiscal transparency is thin at best. Open Budgets seeks to fill this gap in existing knowledge by answering a few broad questions: How and why do improvements in fiscal transparency and participation come about? How are they sustained over time? When and how do increased fiscal transparency and participation lead to improved government responsiveness and accountability?

Contributors: Steven Friedman (Rhodes University/University of Johannesburg); Jorge Antonio Alves (Queens College, CUNY) and Patrick Heller (Brown University); Jong-sung You (University of California—San Diego) and Wonhee Lee (Hankyung National University); John M. Ackerman (National Autonomous University of Mexico and Mexican Law Review); Aaron Schneider (University of Denver) and Annabella España-Najéra (California State University–Fresno); Barak D. Hoffman (Georgetown University); Jonathan Warren and Huong Nguyen (University of Washington); Linda Beck (University of Maine–Farmington and Columbia University), E. H. Seydou Nourou Toure (Institut Fondamental de l'Afrique Noire), and Aliou Faye (Senegal Ministry of the Economy and Finance).

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815723370
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	04/05/2013
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

"Sanjeev Khagram is the John Parke Young Professor of Global Political Economy at Occidental College and Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum. Archon Fung is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship at the Harvard Kennedy School. Paolo de Renzio is a senior research fellow with the International Budget Partnership and research associate at the Overseas Development Institute as well as at the University of Oxford."

Read an Excerpt

OPEN BUDGETS

The Political Economy of Transparency, Participation, and Accountability

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By Sanjeev Khagram, Archon Fung, Paolo de Renzio

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS

Copyright © 2013THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8157-2337-0

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Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Overview and Synthesis: The Political Economy of Fiscal Transparency, Participation, and Accountability around the World

SANJEEV KHAGRAM, PAOLO DE RENZIO, AND ARCHON FUNG

Raising, allocating, and spending public resources are among the primary functions and policy instruments of any government. Government budgets, as well as off-budget fiscal instruments such as state-owned enterprises and sovereign wealth funds, profoundly affect economies, societies, and ecoystems. Decisionmaking around government revenues and expenditures has historically been shrouded in secrecy—the purview of heads of state, finance ministers, and central bankers, along with a few select officials in executive agencies. Often, other ministries, government branches (including parliaments), the business community, civil society organizations, and the broader citizenry have had little or no access to information on public financial management. The quantity and quality of engagement and the inclusion of these nonexecutive actors in fiscal decisionmaking and oversight processes have been severely limited.

In recent years, however, interest and action with respect to transparency, participation, and accountability in fiscal decisionmaking have surged around the world. Indeed, over the past two decades, several broad trends have brought fiscal transparency, participation, and accountability into sharp focus:

—The proliferation of good governance norms and standards that emphasize greater transparency, participation, and accountability in all government matters,

—Numerous transitions from closed, authoritarian political regimes to ones characterized by policy contestation, separation of powers, political party competition, an organized civil society, an engaged citizenry, and an active media,

—The introduction of modern public finance management systems and good practices in countries around the world,

—Greater decentralization and devolution of powers to subnational levels of government, including the power to raise, allocate, and spend public resources,

—The growth in the number and operational capacity of independent civil society organizations (CSOs) seeking to be informed about and actively participate in government decisionmaking, and

—The dramatic growth, spread, and use of information and communication technologies around the world.

The global financial and economic crises that began in 2008 further revealed that the disclosure of government fiscal risks and positions was inadequate. This lack of transparency contributed to government fiscal crises in many countries (epitomized by Greece), which created additional perverse incentives for governments to cloud rather than open their fiscal data. Ordinary citizens began calling for greater accountability in the use of public resources—from the streets of Athens and the Arab spring to the tea party and Occupy Wall Street movements in the United States.

Given the fundamental importance of—and increased focus on—these issues and trends in the global economy, it is surprising to find that rigorous analysis of the causes and consequences of fiscal transparency, participation, and accountability is thin at best. This volume seeks to fill this gap in existing knowledge, deploying multiple research methodologies and examining a range of quantitative and qualitative evidence.

We focus on three broad sets of questions. First, how and why do improvements in fiscal transparency and participation come about, and how are such changes sustained over time? That is, what are the key factors and causal mechanisms that contribute to improvements or regressions in these aspects of fiscal decisionmaking? Second, under what conditions and through what type of mechanisms do (or might) increased fiscal transparency and participation lead to more government responsiveness and improved accountability, including outcomes such as better fiscal management, reduced corruption, shifts in budget allocations, and improved public services? Running across these two broad questions is a third set of queries regarding the complex interrelationships among transparency, participation, and accountability in fiscal matters. In particular, does greater transparency contribute to greater participation?

In this chapter, we begin by summarizing the relevant—and limited—theoretical and empirical literature on fiscal transparency, participation, and accountability. We then examine broad cross-country evidence through a set of statistical and comparative studies, looking for conditions (variables) that are associated with higher levels of budget transparency, a major subset of fiscal transparency. The summaries of country case studies that follow (chapters 2 through 9 of this volume) provide a much richer and more nuanced understanding of the causal mechanisms and trajectories that different countries followed as their fiscal systems opened up and became more inclusive (or sometimes regressed).

Overall, our findings suggest that four main causal triggers stand out as contributing to fiscal transparency and participation within countries: (a) political transitions that not only bring an end to autocratic rule, but also bring about political contestation and alternation, giving voice to opposition parties and greater powers to oversight bodies such as legislatures; (b) fiscal and economic crises that force governments to tighten controls over the public purse and put in place mechanisms and incentives for fiscal discipline and independent scrutiny; (c) widely publicized cases of corruption that lead reform-oriented actors to react strongly and compel governments to provide better public access to fiscal information; and (d) external influences that promote global norms to empower domestic reformers and civil society actors, rather than undermine domestic reform processes with interventions that bypass local institutions and seek fiscal information to satisfy external demands rather than to inform a domestic public debate. These factors often interact in complex combinations to shape the trajectories in different countries by fostering or impeding advances in fiscal transparency and participation.

The evidence presented in this volume details tentative responses to the first set of questions that we started with, identifying key factors and mechanisms (particularly combinations and sequences) that are associated with higher levels of fiscal transparency and participation and their improvement over time. However, evidence is more limited of how greater public availability of fiscal information—and related opportunities to engage with the budget process—may affect government accountability, broader public finance management, and quality of service delivery. There are various examples of legislators becoming more demanding vis-à-vis the executive and of civil society campaigns achieving significant but isolated success, but the evidence for the positive impacts of transparency on accountability and responsiveness remains far from systematic or definitive.

We conclude the chapter by looking at some promising trends in the evolving international context, and suggesting strategic lessons and a research agenda.

Fiscal Transparency, Participation, and Accountability: What Would We Have Expected?

At present, there is no holistic or integrated theory on the political economy of fiscal transparency, participation, and accountability. The analytical framework and orienting ideas summarized here are drawn from the broader literature on good governance, transparency, democracy and democratizati
(Continues...)

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Excerpted from OPEN BUDGETS by Sanjeev Khagram. Copyright © 2013 by THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION. Excerpted by permission of BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

1 Overview and Synthesis: The Political Economy of Fiscal Transparency, Participation, and Accountability around the World Sanjeev Khagram Paolo de Renzio Archon Fung 1

2 What We Know Can't Hurt Them: Origins, Sources of Sustenance, and Survival Prospects of Budget Transparency in South Africa Steven Friedman 51

3 Accountability from the Top Down? Brazil's Advances in Budget Accountability despite a Lack of Popular Mobilization Jorge Antonio Alves Patrick Heller 76

4 A Mutually Reinforcing Loop: Budget Transparency and Participation in South Korea Jong-sung You Wonhee Lee 105

5 Budget Transparency and Accountability in Mexico: High Hopes, Low Performance John M. Ackerman 130

6 Guatemala: Limited Advances within Advancing Limits Aaron Schneider Annabella España-Najéra 158

7 The Limits of Top-Down Reform: Budget Transparency in Tanzania Barak D. Hoffman 183

8 The Diversification of State Power: Vietnam's Alternative Path toward Budget Transparency, Accountability, and Participation Jonathan Warren Huong Nguyen 208

9 Capturing Movement at the Margins: Senegal's Efforts at Budget Transparency Reform Linda Beck E. H. Seydou Nourou Toure Aliou Faye 224

Contributors 251

Index 253