Exploring the Socio-Political Determinants of Open Budget

Abstract

In a study of budgetary transparency and accountability, this chapter examines how a country’s disclosure of budget information is related to a set of socio-political factors. The authors analyze data from the biennial Open Budget Survey conducted by the International Budget Partnership for the years of 2008 and 2010. The study compares three types of disclosure practices: online, hardcopy, and unpublished distribution for six types of budgets: pre-budget proposal, executive budget, citizens’ budget, mid-year review, end-year review, and audit report. They find that the level of democracy in a given nation has considerable impact on its level of budgetary transparency and accountability, when these qualities are defined in terms of types of budgetary documents that are available to the public online. It is clear that online publication, most probably in the context of e-government efforts, is key to making this information available. The quality of governance is found to be critical for the availability of a citizens’ budget online, and the numbers of Internet users is related to the online availability of the executive budget.