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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Thursday, January 10, 2002CONTACT: Jim Jaffe, Michelle Bazie
(202) 408-1080CITIZEN INPUT, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ACCESSIBLE INFORMATION LACKING IN
BUDGET SYSTEMS OF FIVE LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES, STUDY FINDS
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A groundbreaking examination of "budget transparency" conducted by a team of independent researchers from Latin America finds that budget systems in the five countries studied — Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Peru — generally fall far short of providing adequate opportunities for citizen participation, ensuring adequate accountability, and offering accessible and timely information to the public.
"Three important aspects of governance are citizen participation, accountability, and the accessibility and timely publication of government information," observed two of the report authors, Juan Pablo Guerrero of the Mexican university CIDE and Helena Hofbauer of the Mexican group Fundar. "The weaknesses we found in all three areas and in all five countries suggest the fragility of the fundamental democratic relationship between the government and society. The problems uncovered by this report should be addressed with a sense of urgency."
The study examined 14 areas of budget transparency and accountability and found that in only one of these areas did the countries generally receive a positive rating. The study also found that good budget laws are not always implemented adequately. Argentina and Peru, for example, have reasonably strong budget laws but inadequate budget practices.
Results from the Survey on Budget Transparency
The first part of the study consists of a survey that was conducted in the five countries based on an index of budget transparency. The researchers who developed the survey and prepared the study come from some of the leading academic and non-profit institutions in Latin America: Citizen Power in Argentina; the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE); the Economics Department of the University of Chile; the Research Center of Pacific University in Peru; and, in Mexico, the Center on Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE), and the groups Gender Equity and Fundar. This effort is part of a broad initiative on budget transparency that is being undertaken by researchers around the world with the assistance of the International Budget Project of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C. This study and the Center's assistance have both been funded by the Ford Foundation.
In each country a wide range of experts and key users of budget information, including legislators, researchers, members of the print media, and non-governmental organizations took the survey. The survey was distributed to 792 individuals, with 320 of them responding. The response rate was exceptionally low in Argentina, where only 15 percent of survey recipients responded. The experts were surveyed on 78 specific questions. These questions were grouped into 14 areas, such as citizen participation, information about the macroeconomic assumptions contained in their nation's budgets, the adequacy of agencies that supervise, evaluate, and monitor budget policies and their implementation, and the accessibility of budget information to the public.
Among the key findings are:
- Chile received the highest overall rating in terms of its level of budget transparency, receiving an average rating of 5.9 out of 10 (a score of 10 is the best possible rating). Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico all received scores of about five. Peru received the worst rating, with an average score of 3.7.
- Only in one of the 14 areas discussed in the survey — macroeconomic information — did more than half of the survey participants give their country's budget system a positive response.(1)
All five countries fared worst in terms of providing opportunities for "citizen participation." On average, only 11 percent of those surveyed gave positive ratings concerning the degree of citizen participation in their country; positive responses ranged from 6 percent in Peru to 21 percent in Chile. "Citizen participation" was defined in the study as the opportunity for the public to provide input into the budget decision-making process, as well as the degree to which the government informs the public either about changes made when the budget is enacted or about the impact of budget policies.
- The study found that the countries also generally lacked other mechanisms of accountability. In this area, Chile garnered a positive response score of 39 percent, but the other countries received very low scores — between 19 percent and 25 percent positive responses. For example, the governments were typically rated as quite deficient in assessing programs and evaluating their impact.
- The governments were also rated poorly in terms of the accessibility and timeliness of budget information. On average, only 20 percent of the experts in the five countries judged budget information to be accessible and only 16 percent thought that this information is provided in a timely manner.
The inadequacies found by this study are intertwined. For instance, public understanding and participation are clearly inhibited if budget information is neither accessible nor timely.
Study of the Legal Framework
In the second part of the study individual researchers in each of the five countries undertook in-depth examinations of the legal framework for the budget processes in their countries. The combination of the survey with the legal study makes it possible to determine whether the lack of transparency is due to legal gaps or to deficient implementation of budget laws.
The countries fared somewhat better according to the legal standards. On a scale of 0 to 1,000 (with 1,000 being most transparent), all scored above 500. Argentina received a score of 700, Chile 674, Brazil 636, Peru 598, and Mexico 507.
The correlation between these scores and the survey results is weak, however. Argentina, for instance, scored the best in terms of its legal framework but was squarely in the middle in terms of the survey results. Peru scored close to the middle in terms of its legal framework, but last according to the survey results.
The Argentinian and Peruvian examples — as well as the general finding that countries fared somewhat better according to the legal analysis than in the survey approach — suggest that sound laws on budget transparency and accountability are not always adequately implemented, and thus do not always translate into budget transparency and accountability in practice.
General Level of Budget Transparency Country Survey Results Score of the Analysis of the
Legal Framework1 to 10 Out of 1,000 points Argentina 5.1 700 Brazil 5.1 636 Chile 5.9 733 Mexico 5.0 507 Peru 3.7 598 For Additional Information
Two documents detailing the five-country study have been translated into English and are available from the International Budget Project of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. One document consists of a slide presentation of the study and its results; the other is a 21-page summary report of the findings of the study and its methodology. In addition, Spanish-language versions of several of the individual country studies and a synthesizing analysis can be found on the CIDE web site: <http://transparencia.org.mx/Temas.htm>, see ("transparencia presupuestaria"). The authors of the report can be reached through the Center.
The International Budget Project of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities assists non-governmental organizations and researchers in analyzing and improving budget policies and decision-making processes.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization and policy institute that conducts research and analysis on a range of government policies and programs. It is supported primarily by foundation grants.
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End Note:
1. A "positive response" indicates that an individual question received a response of a 4 or a 5 out of a maximum of 5. (In the expert survey, the question on the overall level of budget transparency was scored on a scale of 1 to 10; questions concerning specific aspects of transparency were scored on a scale of 1 to 5.)