Why Change? Exploring the Antecedents of Southern African Evolutions in Legislative Budgeting

Abstract

Abstract Recent evidence suggests that a small number of anglophone legislatures in Southern Africa are enhancing their engagement in the expenditure side of the annual budget process, particularly in the formulation phase. But why change, when these legislatures could simply stay the same? This study tests four possible explanations for this surprising trend, applying unique data collected in 2016/2017, complemented by publicly available, cross-national, historical records. The preliminary results indicate that leading political, legal, and technical explanations are unable to fully account for the changes that are underway. Instead, evidence suggests that a process of international socialisation, potentially precipitated by US-based legislative assistance programmes at a critical time, may have planted the seeds that pushed these developments along. This study encourages further exploration of the ways in which a quintessentially national institution is shaped internationally, and contributes to our understanding of why legislatures in similar developmental contexts might evolve.