Budgetary Cycle and late accountability: diagnosis regarding the political judgment of government financial statements within the scope of the States

Abstract

The normative scenario configured by the 1988 Constitution, in matters of public finances, reveals a dynamic structured based on the notion of budget cycle. However, the materialization of the processes that make up this cycle is permeated by decision-making operated from a perspective of supervision of social bodies and institutionalized control. In this sense, the theoretical framework regarding horizontal accountability emerges, according to O'Donnell's (1998) categorization, which translates in the issuance of the preliminary opinion by the Audit Courts and the subsequent political judgment issued of Parliament. Having as its object of work the temporal profile of the political judgment of government accounts, this paper proposes to investigate the existence of empirical distortions concerning the process of assessment and judgment of the accounts of the head of the Executive Branch of the States, and where possible delays arise – whether in the assessment and sending of the preliminary opinion by the accounting body or in the processing of the document in the legislative houses. Therefore, in methodological terms, for the purpose of articulating the diagnosis on a legal-exploratory basis, we opted for a sample selection stratified into subgroups referring to the five historically recognized regions, choosing the most populous federated entity in each region as a critical case for analysis, which takes place through the mobilization of qualitative data, extracted from primary sources (legislative decrees, draft legislative decrees and previous opinions), with a documentary analytical focus, taking as a focus the period referring to the accounts from 2010 to 2020.