Budgetary Negotiations Research Articles

Show Me Your Hands: A Moderator Effect Analysis on Nonverbal Behavior at the Bargaining Table

Does the position of the hands interfere with the outcome of a negotiation? In this research, statistical analysis with N=110 business negotiations addressed to what extent nonverbal reinforcement (BL) moderates the relationship between opening value (OpenVal) and deal value (DealVal) of a face-to-face business negotiation requesting budgetary resources between two parties, with a 99 percent confidence interval. The null hypothesis has been rejected, and the results showed that showing hands (BL=1) was not more significant (B = -.015, p < .969) than hiding hands (BL=0), highly significant (B = 2,323, p <.000), implying that hiding hands produce more adverse results than showing hands at the bargaining table. Finally, the average difference between showing and hiding hands was 20.2 percent in the deal value, suggesting the adoption of nonverbal reinforcement in budgetary negotiations at the bargaining table.

Assessment of the European Commission's proposals for financing the EU budget in 2021–20271

Abstract A major problem in all European Union (EU) budgetary negotiations is the approach of Member States in net return terms (the fair-return approach). EU members compare their contributions to the EU budget with transfers that they receive from the budget. Net payers tend to reduce the size of the budget to contribute less. Brexit has aggravated the problem of the size of revenue (due to the United Kingdom's position as a big net payer). Also, new expenditure needs have arisen (for protecting external borders and climate, innovation, etc.). To address those needs, in 2018, the Commission submitted three proposals to supplement the current resources to finance the EU budget after the expiry of the principles of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2014–2020 at the end of 2020. The article aims to indicate whether the Commission's proposals are good instruments for the financing of the EU budget. The assessment relies on selected criteria based on theory. It also takes account of the feasibility of the proposals. The main conclusion is that none of the proposals meets well theoretical criteria of “genuine” EU revenue. Also, for practical reasons, it will be difficult for the Member States to come to an agreement on new budgetary resources. All proposals would be relatively costly for Poland.

Political economy of Thailand's tax-financed universal coverage scheme.

ProblemThe challenge of implementing contributory health insurance among populations in the informal sector was a barrier to achieving universal health coverage (UHC) in Thailand.ApproachUHC was a political manifesto of the 2001 election campaign. A contributory system was not a feasible option to honour the political commitment. Given Thailand’s fiscal capacity and the moderate amount of additional resources required, the government legislated to use general taxation as the sole source of financing for the universal coverage scheme.Local settingBefore 2001, four public health insurance schemes covered only 70% (44.5 million) of the 63.5 million population. The health ministry received the budget and provided medical welfare services for low-income households and publicly subsidized voluntary insurance for the informal sector. The budgets for supply-side financing of these schemes were based on historical figures which were inadequate to respond to health needs. The finance ministry used its discretionary power in budget allocation decisions.Relevant changesTax became the sole source of financing the universal coverage scheme. Transparency, multistakeholder engagement and use of evidence informed budgetary negotiations. Adequate funding for UHC was achieved, providing access to services and financial protection for vulnerable populations. Out-of-pocket expenditure, medical impoverishment and catastrophic health spending among households decreased between 2000 and 2015.Lessons learntDomestic government health expenditure, strong political commitment and historical precedence of the tax-financed medical welfare scheme were key to achieving UHC in Thailand. Using evidence secures adequate resources, promotes transparency and limits discretionary decision-making in budget allocation.

Not always on an equal footing: power, partiality and the conditional effect of multiparty government on public spending

AbstractPublic spending arguably increases with the number of parties in government as each party seeks to secure benefits to its target groups. In this study, two factors that affect the budgetary consequences of multiparty government are identified. The first is the distribution ofa priorivoting power. An uneven distribution of voting power implies that all government parties are not expected to be equally successful in budgetary negotiations. The second is the degree of impartiality of the public sector. If the public sector is characterized by corruption and other forms of partiality, distributive issues can be expected to gain importance in representative politics. An analysis of data from 30 European countries suggests that changes in the number of government parties are associated with changes in public spending in cases where equally powerful parties are in government and the public sector is relatively partial.

The European Parliament as a budgetary extractor since the Lisbon Treaty

ABSTRACTAfter the Lisbon Treaty came into effect, the European Parliament has seen its powers over the negotiations of the European Union’s annual budget reduced. This article shows that, despite initial setbacks and a position of relative weakness in the budgetary negotiations, the Parliament can extract, through threat of veto, significant concessions in the three pillars of the budget: annual expenditure; long-term expenditure; and the revenue side. Through process tracing and interviews with key actors, the article evaluates the Parliament’s successes and failures in negotiating the 2013 budget package and the circumstances under which the Parliament can maximise its limited power.

Budgetary Negotiations: How the Chilean Congress Overcomes its Constitutional Limitations

Recent research suggests that the Chilean Congress is marginalised in the policymaking process, especially when setting the budget. This paper argues that previous studies have overlooked the fact that the legislature uses two amendment tools – specifications and marginal notes – to increase the national budget and reallocate resources within ministries. This behaviour contradicts the constitution, which only allows Congress to reduce the executive's budget bill. To test this empirically, a pooled two-stage time-series cross-sectional analysis is conducted on ministries for the years 1991–2010. The findings clarify how the legislature surpasses its constitutional limits and demonstrate that specifications are useful to predict when Congress increases or decreases a ministry's budget.

Informal Institutions and Horizontal Accountability: Protocols in the Chilean Budgetary Process

Abstract Studies of executive-legislative relations are usually based only on the analysis of formal institutions, although informal institutions also shape interbranch behavior. This omission leads to questionable results when scholars examine the capacity of state institutions to audit other public agencies and branches of government. This article explores how the protocols, an informal institution that shapes the Chilean budgetary negotiations, have increasingly allowed the congress to have a more relevant budgetary role than what the constitution permits. It argues that protocols accommodate some of the undesired consequences of a charter that is strongly biased toward the central government, and describes how this institution has departed from its stringent budgetary focus to encompass broader executive-legislative agreements that enhance the legislature's capacity to oversee the executive.

Accounting for coalition-building in the European Union: Budget negotiations and the south

Which parameters affect coalition building in budgetary negotiations? In this article, three distinct levels of analysis are identified to account for coalition building patterns, associated with domestic politics, domestic socioeconomic structures and EU politics. At the level of domestic politics, ideology points to cross-governmental affinity of a partisan nature; at the level of socioeconomic structures, similarity of policy interests, generated by cross-national socioeconomic convergence with EU policy standards, informs coalition formation patterns; at the EU politics level, the intergovernmental power balance influences the political aspirations of each Member State in the integration process and coalition-building decisions. Two sets of parameters affect the evolution of EU coalition patterns, corresponding to the integration impact on the EU (new cleavages) and on the Member States (the impact of Europeanisation). This analytical framework is used to examine the southern coalition (Spain, Greece, Portugal) in the four multi-annual financial frameworks (1988, 1992, 1999 and 2005).

The big budgetary bargains: from negotiation to authority

This article explores the evolution of the European Union (EU) as a 'negotiated order' from the perspective of the grand budgetary bargains of 1988, 1992 and 1999. The analysis of budgetary negotiations in the EU since the mid1980s highlights two important linkages, between the budgetary bargains and constitutional change, on the one hand, and between budgetary grand bargains and institutional change, on the other. A fundamental characteristic of EU negotiations is the connection between agreement on policy and agreement on 'rules of the game'. The article sets out to analyse four factors, from an institutionalist perspective, that highlight the evolution of the Union as a 'negotiated order'. These are: the significance of crucial junctures, lock-in, institutionalization and embeddedness in the acquis . All four factors were identified as significant in the evolution of EU budgetary negotiations since 1988.