Over the past year, the IBP and the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex have been working together to produce in-depth case studies of six established budget groups.  The objective of the exercise was to learn specifically about the impact of sustained budget work on good governance and poverty reduction.  While budget work has expanded dramatically in Africa, Asia and Latin America over the past ten years, no material has been systematically gathered on the social impact of the work.  The set of case studies we refer to in this website is the first attempt to close this gap in our knowledge.  The chart on the left includes the full case studies and the executive summaries in Spanish and English.

The research draws on case studies of independent budget organizations in Brazil, Croatia, India, Mexico, South Africa, and Uganda who have been engaged in budget analysis and budget advocacy for a period of 5-10 years.  The range of organizations is purposefully broad and includes development NGOs, networks and social movements, and research organizations.  Despite differences in perspective and organizational type, all the organizations share a commitment to social justice and the rights of the poor, and the most effective and efficient use of public resources.  Each organization's approach to budget work is shaped by these normative principles.  For most of the organizations under review, budget work forms only a part of their overall set of activities, and in some cases they have created special units for this purpose.

Located in the Indian state of Gujarat, DISHA is a social movement based on unions of tribals and laborers which developed budget work as a means of supporting claims for land and labor entitlements. At the other end of the spectrum, the Institute of Public Finance in Croatia is a publicly-funded research organization that analyses a range of public policy issues.  IDASA in South Africa is a leading NGO that established a Budget Information Service in 1995 to coordinate its work on budget analysis with a focus on women, children and HIV/AIDS.  Similarly, Fundar in Mexico and IBASE in Brazil are NGOs engaged in the broader project of democratization in their respective countries.  The Uganda Debt Network is an NGO that emerged out of a coalition working on debt and poverty reduction.

The six organizations all work on different aspects of public budgeting. The principal activities on the budget process include work to promote the availability of budget information, budget transparency, and broadening societal participation.  All undertake capacity-building to promote awareness and understanding of public budgets among legislators, NGOs and citizen groups.  Several organizations work to improve budget allocations and outcomes through advocacy work designed to influence budget priorities (allocations between and within major items of expenditure), the quality of implementation (the targeting of expenditures and the proportion of the allocation actually expended) and the utilization of expenditures (how far budget allocations translate into physical outcomes, and the efficiency and effectiveness of expenditures).

The research drew on a combination of methods and data sources to establish evidence of impact.  For investigating impact on budget priorities the research drew on official budget data assembled and synthesized by budget groups with a view to establishing trends in government spending on social welfare, education and health as areas of expenditure that matter most to the poor.  Data on budget outturns provide evidence of implementation, while physical verification of investments carried out by budget groups was the main source of information to ascertain expenditure outcomes.  The main challenge was to establish attribution of any observed changes in budget allocations, quality of implementation and outcomes to the activities of the budget groups independent of other factors such as interventions of other actors and broader economic trends.

For evidence on the impact of the groups on the budget process the research drew primarily on qualitative data gathered from key informant interviews with politicians, government officials and representatives of civil society organizations.  Qualitative interviews and focus group discussions were the principal method used to determine the impact of capacity-building and efforts to broaden participation, especially where insights gathered from different actors served to corroborate the findings.  Further evidence was available from laws and procedures governing budget transparency, especially where changes could be traced with some with some certainty to the activities of these groups.  Secondary documentation and media reports were used to supplement interview data.

Field visits of 10-15 days duration were undertaken by pairs of researchers, in each case one member of IBP/IDS team, together with a civil society budget practitioner from another budget group.  The case studies set out to document the full range of activities undertaken by budget groups, with a focus on interventions centered on data analysis and dissemination, capacity-building, advocacy efforts designed to influence budget policies and the transparency of the budget process, and expenditure tracking.  The intention of the research was to establish what impacts had been achieved in these areas of activity and to develop explanations for the observed impacts, as a means of generating broader lessons from groups operating in different institutional and political contexts.

The emerging findings from the case study research lead to a number of conclusions on the impact of applied budget work.  The impacts fall into two principal categories: changes in budget policy and changes in the budget process.  The research finds that the most significant impacts achieved by independent budget groups lie in improving budget transparency, awareness and civil society engagement on the one hand, and enhancing budgetary resources for existing programs and improvements in their utilization on the other.

All of the case study organizations have played a significant role in improving the quantity and quality of timely and accessible public information available on the budget.  These efforts are often the only dependable source of information on the impact of the budget on poor people and therefore contribute to enhancing government and effective oversight in the budget process.  The case study groups’ media and dissemination work, together with training and capacity building, have considerably expanded budget literacy and the engagement of parts of civil society, the media and the legislature in the budget process.  An important message from this work is that civil society can participate effectively in the budget process, and enhance the participation of the legislature and other actors in strengthening budget oversight.

The case study findings also provide evidence that the analysis carried out by independent budget groups can directly lead to positive improvements in budget policies. The documented impacts take the form of increased allocations of budgetary resources for reproductive health in Mexico, child support grants in South Africa, and tribal development expenditure in Gujarat, India. These important precedents demonstrate that budget advocacy has the potential to influence decisions to introduce new programs and to leverage additional financial resources for programs that have already received legislative sanction.

The case study findings are now available as a practitioners guide for those engaged in budget activities and as a synthesis paper for an academic audience.  A short briefing paper will be prepared for donors.

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