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IBP Briefs

The IBP has the pleasure of launching its new publication series – IBP Briefs. The IBP Briefs aim to keep you up-to-date on debates and challenging new thinking relevant to the work of monitoring public budgets. They will not only draw on new work by the IBP and its partners but also on new academic literature and developments in the broader governance, civil society and poverty fields. The IBP Briefs will be produced as short, accessible reports or think-pieces and will be published on an occasional basis.

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Budget Brief No. 9: Accounting for Results: Ensuring Transparency and Accountability in Financing for Climate Change by Athena Ballesteros and Vivek Ramkumar

Adaptation, mitigation, conservation, new technologies—when it comes to dealing with climate change, the costs will be shared and significant. As 190 countries meet in Copenhagen to negotiate the next global agreement on climate change, they will need to tackle not only the question of “how much?” but also “how?”

While much of the energy so far has focused on securing contribution commitments from countries, it is critical how these commitments are managed. To get this right, resources and management must be considered simultaneously. In this brief, Athena Ballesteros from the World Resources Institute and Vivek Ramkumar from the IBP examine:

  1. How these funds might be collected, distributed, and accounted for at the international level, and

  2. The mechanisms needed to ensure that recipient countries manage these funds in ways that are transparent and responsive to the needs and input of the public.

Send your comments on this Brief to info@internationalbudget.org. We will be happy to post them on this website.
 

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Budget Brief No. 8: Quantity Without Quality? Rethinking Education Goals by Ruth Carlitz

A global commitment to universal primary education was made explicit as one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), helping to  mobilize resources and build political will to improve the education sector in countries around the world. In this Budget Brief, Ruth Carlitz presents evidence from Tanzania that shows how, too often, additional spending to achieve the education MDG has been channeled disproportionately toward quantity (dramatically increasing enrollment), possibly at the expense of quality. Carlitz argues that educational quantity without quality is a hollow promise and calls on the international education community to take on the challenge of reprioritizing education budgets and devising policies that expand access and quality.

 Send your comments on this Brief to info@internationalbudget.org. We will be happy to post them on this website.
 

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Budget Brief No. 7: Improving Budget Transparency and Accountability in Aid Dependent Countries: How Can Donors Help? by Vivek Ramkumar and Paolo de Renzio

Why should donor agencies care about budget transparency? And what can they do to increase it in the countries they support? This brief describes how a lack of transparency in aid-recipient countries reduces the potential effectiveness of that aid to reduce poverty and lead to sustainable economic growth because of leakages, corruption, and mismanagement. In aid-dependent countries, improved transparency of aid flows is also key for enhancing domestic accountability around the budget process. In this Brief, IBP also provides general recommendations to the international donor community and International Financial Institutions (IFI) on how they can support better budget transparency practices in countries to which they provide assistance.
Send your comments on this Brief to info@internationalbudget.org. We will be happy to post them on this website.

Budget Brief No. 6: Indonesia: A Civil Society “Budget Movement”? by Debbie Budlender, Community Agency for Social Enquiry, Cape Town and Hana A. Satriyo, The Asia Foundation Indonesia

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How would you define a civil society “budget movement”? Is it characterized by the number of organizations engaged in budget work and advocacy, the level of coordination and collaboration between the groups, the extent to which there are mechanisms for shared learning and common agendas? Or would the definition capture the interaction of these and other factors, including the context in which the organizations do their work?

In this brief, Debbie Budlender looks at the unique case of Indonesia, where over 100, mostly grassroots, organizations are engaged in some form of budget analysis and advocacy. As in many countries, Indonesia’s civil society budget work is being done by organizations that had been formed to take advantage of and strengthen new opportunities offered by political change. However, Indonesia is unusual in the sheer number of organizations that engage in budget work, and how that work fits in with the other activities of the groups. Although the budget work of the different organizations is not coordinated, Budlender posits that one can, nevertheless, speak of a civil society “budget movement” in Indonesia because of the strong networking and collaboration that occurs across organizations, and the broad similarities in approach. Let us know what you think makes a civil society “budget movement.”

Send your comments on this Brief to info@internationalbudget.org. We will be happy to post them on this website.

Budget Brief No. 5: The Transparency Gap: Resource-Dependent Countries Perform Poorly on Open Budget Index

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 To see the OBI 2008 results visit: www.openbudgetindex.org

Too many developing countries are still trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and stagnation, despite being endowed with significant stocks of natural resources—a phenomenon often referred to as the “resource curse.”  Is the problem just one of economics (e.g., the negative effect of resource-driven currency appreciation on a country’s manufacturing sector), or do we need to take a closer look at the impact of politics, governance and economic management on development in resource-dependent countries?

In this brief, we bring together different strands of evidence, including findings from the 2006 Open Budget Index, to explore the role of different factors in the “resource curse.” In addition to the correlation found between a country’s resource wealth and its level of budget transparency, Michael Ross finds that resource-dependent countries tend to have weaker democracies. This raises the question of how transparency, resource dependency, and democracy interact to affect development performance across the world.

Send your comments on this Brief to info@internationalbudget.org. We will be happy to post them on this website.

Budget Brief No. 4: Towards a Global Health Fund: Extending the Health Finance Revolution of theFight against AIDS to General Health Services by Gorik Ooms, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp

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In too many countries, access to basic health services is severely limited because of a lack of funding. Commitments for assistance from the international community are variable and provided for finite periods. Financial support of this kind doesn’t allow for the long-term investments needed to build a comprehensive health care system, such as infrastructure and training the necessary personnel.

In this brief, Gorik Ooms proposes the creation of a Global Health Fund that could provide constant long-term support to poor countries.  He argues that—as the creation of such a fund has done in the fight against AIDS—a Global Health Fund could provide an international foundation on which national social health protection could be built. He argues further that concerns about the affordability and sustainability of such a fund could be addressed by moving from a national to an international perspective.

Send your comments on this Brief to info@internationalbudget.org. We will be happy to post them on this website.

Bydget Brief No. 3: Community Budget Hearings: An Innovative Approach to Civil Society Budget Advocacy by Vivek Ramkumar, International Budget Partnership

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Budget advocacy groups have often struggled to involve the wider public directly in budgeting processes; instead, they frequently end up speaking to the government on behalf of poor and disadvantaged communities. This has limited their impact.

Budget hearings at the local level can give hundreds of thousands of citizens — perhaps even millions — the opportunity to participate directly in budget-making and budget evaluation processes. If budget advocacy organizations promote the adoption of these systems successfully, they can truly change the nature of governance in their countries. Challenging as it may be, this is the price that budget advocacy organizations will have to pay before they can truly claim to be promoting transparency, accountability, and citizen participation in budgeting!

This brief discusses innovative examples from Brazil and India of strategies to help ensure that citizens directly participate in budget processes at the local level.

Send your comments on this Brief to info@internationalbudget.org. We will be happy to post them on this website.

Budget Brief No. 2: Making Governments More Accountable: The Impact of Civil Society Budget Analysis and Monitoring by Gary Hawes, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas

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Effective and democratic government is impossible without transparency and accountability. Without transparency, citizen participation is less well informed and less effective. Without accountability, those in positions of power can safely ignore the will of the people.

Recent research shows that a handful of civil society organizations have developed new forms of citizen oversight over public finances. In the process they are making governments more accountable. They are also empowering citizens to engage in more effective forms of advocacy and thereby make governments more responsive.

This Brief described the work of six civil society organizations and the nature of the impact that they have had.

Send your comments on this Brief to info@internationalbudget.org. We will be happy to post them on this website.

Budget Brief No. 1: Linking Budget Analysis with Aid Advocacy:  How Civil Society Groups Can Monitor Donor Budget Support

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Foreign aid makes up a significant percentage of government income for low-income countries, in some cases half of the budget. Aid is likely to rise as a proportion of the budget if richer countries fulfill their commitments to increase their foreign assistance towards reaching the MDGs. At the  same time as the expected rise in aid volumes governments have pledged a series of important changes in how aid is delivered, notably a trend towards donors providing money as direct budget support. This Budget Brief describes what donors and civil society organizations can do to make the budget support approach succeed.

Send your comments on this Brief to info@internationalbudget.org. We will be happy to post them on this website.

 

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