IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ekm/repojs/v35y2015i3p601-621id241.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why budget accountability fails? The elusive links between parliaments and audit agencies in the oversight of the budget

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Santiso

Abstract

Parliaments and audit agencies have critical and complementary roles in the oversight of the budget and the enforcement of government accountability. Yet, the nexus between parliaments and audit agencies is one of the weakest links in the accountability chain, generating an accountability gap in the budget process. This articles analyses the interactions between parliaments and audit agencies in the oversight of government finances during the latter stages of the budget process. Using proxies to evaluate the quality of those linkages, such as the follow-up to audit findings and the discharge of government, it shows important dysfunctions in the interactions between parliaments and audit agencies due to a combination of technical capacity constraints and political economy disincentives. It suggests that the effective functioning of the system of checks and balances in public budgeting critically hinges on the agility of the linkages between accountability institutions. As such, the failure of budget accountability is due to systemic dysfunctions in the systems of accountability, rather than the failure of an individual accountability institution acting in isolation. In addition, the effectiveness of the horizontal accountability architecture depends on the political economy incentives shaping the budget process, which are generated by the interactions between the choice of institutional design and budget rules, with the degree of political competition and electoral rules. JEL Classification: H61; H83; O54; P51.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Santiso, 2015. "Why budget accountability fails? The elusive links between parliaments and audit agencies in the oversight of the budget," Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, Center of Political Economy, vol. 35(3), pages 601-621.
  • Handle: RePEc:ekm:repojs:v:35:y:2015:i:3:p:601-621:id:241
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://centrodeeconomiapolitica.org.br/repojs/index.php/journal/article/view/241/231
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lino, André Feliciano & Azevedo, Ricardo Rocha de & Aquino, André Carlos Busanelli de & Steccolini, Ileana, 2022. "Fighting or supporting corruption? The role of public sector audit organizations in Brazil," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    public budgeting; budget process; political economy; accountability; parliaments; audit agencies; institutional design; electoral rules; political competition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H61 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Budget; Budget Systems
    • H83 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - Public Administration
    • O54 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Latin America; Caribbean
    • P51 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems

    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:ekm:repojs:v:35:y:2015:i:3:p:601-621:id:241. 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: Brazilian Journal of Political Economy (Brazil) (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://centrodeeconomiapolitica.org/repojs/index.php/journal/ .

    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.