Methodological Aspects of Compiling Open Budget Rankings

Yuriy V Belousov,Olga I Timofeeva

doi:10.31107/2075-1990-2021-4-122-138

Abstract

Budget transparency is an effective tool in improving the quality of public budget executions. Ranking countries, regions and municipalities based on budget transparency is of interest for scientists and professionals in the whole world, including Russia. Methodologies behind budget transparency are a rather complex tool, the quality of which largely affects the results. This paper analyzes the available and applied ranking methodologies — in particular, the Open Budget Index (OBI) by the International Budget Partnership (IBP), transparency indices of local budgets in Kazakhstan and Croatia, and the ranking of the Russian Federation’s constituent territories by the level of budget data openness. During the analysis we identified the methodological principles of each of the considered approaches, their differences and similarities. Special attention was paid to problematic issues of the International Budget Partnership’s methodology. It is especially important to specify these problems, as the IBP methodology is a model in measuring the level of budget transparency. By using the ranking of Russian regions in terms of budget transparency levels, we demonstrate how to use special techniques and methods targeted at improving the quality of managing public fiscal performance.

Highlights

Regions and municipalities based on budget transparency is of interest for scientists and professionals in the whole world, including Russia
By using the ranking of Russian regions in terms of budget transparency levels, we demonstrate how to use special techniques and methods targeted at improving the quality of managing public fiscal performance
The third part describes the methodology of budget transparency ranking calculation in Russia. In the latter part we focus on how it may be possible to solve problems associated with the Open Budget Index

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Processes and other social and economic phenomena are becoming increasingly popular. It is proposed to supplement citizen budgets with macroeconomic indicators that underlie the budget, information about the budget process, or a description of the fiscal policy measures and their implications [OECD, 2017; IBP, 2012]. This is precisely what many open budget makers are actively opposed to Their sentiment is understandable, as citizen budgets prepared by scientists or other representatives of civil society may contain estimates that the executive authorities would not appreciate at all. The idea of IBP, OECD and many other organizations dealing with open budget issues regarding the role and importance of executive authorities seems to be adequate to the practice of public financial management in the 20th century [OECD, 2014; OECD, 2015]. Some researchers note that, in budgetary matters, a consequence of representative democracy is often a situation when deputies neglect ideas of their voters [de Renzio P., 2019, p. 6; Duri J., 2021]

18 Guide to the Open Budget Questionnaire

Findings

CONCLUSIONS