A Comparative Analysis Of Fiscal Democracy And Covid-19 Expenditures

Fiscal democracy refers to a phenomenon where individuals can actively participate in the budget processes, the society has access to sufficient information about the income and expenditures of the public budget, and social inclusiveness is ensured. The COVID19 outbreak, which started in the last months of 2019, has been an important indicator in terms of seeing whether fiscal democracy is implemented strongly in a country. While the COVID-19 epidemic caused the death of millions of people, it caused economic and social problems to grow on a global scale. Governments have a great responsibility to solve the economic and social problems experienced by individuals due to COVID-19 and to support efforts to end the epidemic. In the analysis made within the scope of this study, it is seen that public expenditures made within the scope of COVID-19 generally have a larger share of GDP in democratically mature countries, budget processes are transparent, and welfare is high and fairly distributed. In countries with low democratic standards and a lack of income justice and fiscal democracy, there has been a decline in COVID-19 spending. It is expected that epidemics similar to COVID-19 will reappear in the coming years and there will be a numerical increase in extreme natural events due to climate change. Depending on these crises, economic and social risks will also increase. Therefore, especially in authoritarian countries, there is a need to correctly implement the principles of fiscal democracy to use public resources more effectively and in favor of society