IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oec/govkaa/5l9dsm8wmrvk.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Balancing Act: Fiscal Responsibility, Accountability and the Power of the Purse

Author

Listed:
  • Alta Fölscher

Abstract

In recent years a greater demand for strengthening the role of the legislature in the budget process has become evident worldwide: more than a quarter of countries have revised their constitutions over the last 15 years to give Parliament more powers. In particular, several African countries are experiencing pressure to increase the legislature’s role in the preparatory stage of the budget process and as a check on the executive. This article argues that there are risks in allowing greater parliamentary activism, but that a greater risk is associated with marginalising the role of Parliament in the budget process. The article sets out options for designing a role for Parliament that allows it sufficient oversight, while managing the risks of ill-disciplined parliamentary action leading to excess spending or of Parliament becoming a conduit for narrow, ineffective spending demands.

Suggested Citation

  • Alta Fölscher, 2006. "A Balancing Act: Fiscal Responsibility, Accountability and the Power of the Purse," OECD Journal on Budgeting, OECD Publishing, vol. 6(2), pages 1-20.
  • Handle: RePEc:oec:govkaa:5l9dsm8wmrvk
    DOI: 10.1787/budget-v6-art12-en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1787/budget-v6-art12-en
    Download Restriction: Full text available to READ online. PDF download available to OECD iLibrary subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1787/budget-v6-art12-en?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oec:govkaa:5l9dsm8wmrvk. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/oecddfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.