Affiliated Network for Social Accountability (ANSA-Africa)

Home

Feedback

Site map

Français

Português

Keywords:

Advanced search

Your email address:

Publications

Engaging the public in National budgeting: A non-governmental perspective
31 May 2007
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Budget experts everywhere complain that citizens’ seemingly unending appetite for more public services and benefits is not matched by a corresponding willingness to pay for them. The public does not seem to understand the need for short-term fiscal tradeoffs, let alone grasp the potentially serious impact that demographic changes may have on long-term budget outlooks. While citizens welcome spending that provides them with visible and immediate benefits, many seem blind to the need for essential public goods and resist paying for them.

Many public officials, academic researchers, civil society organizations, and government experts view public engagement as one solution to the absence of popular support for responsible fiscal policies. Public engagement in civic affairs is both “means” and “ends” of well-functioning, democratic government. It is a necessary element of efforts to improve official accountability: it results when citizens feel connected to their government. An engaged public demands that government be efficient, responsive, transparent and accountable. Government, in turn, becomes more open to the public’s input and participation. Thus public engagement creates mutual benefits: citizens become better educated about public policies and government activities; and by tapping into the experience and expertise of their constituents officials can build more effective and responsive government.

The alternative to an engaged public is not an apathetic one, but one that is cynical and mistrustful of government. Public officials in many countries are concerned that disengaged voters could make it more difficult to make constructive policy changes. In response, many of those concerned with improving government, including multinational institutions such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United Nations (UN), and the World Bank, as well as government officials, civil society organizations and academic scholars, have established the goal of increasing the public engagement as a top priority.¹ Although civil and political contexts differ from country to country, public engagement activities share the same basic objectives of making government work better by bringing it closer to citizens, improving the accountability of the public sector, overcoming mistrust between people and their elected leaders and instilling a stronger sense of national purpose and common direction.

This paper explores ways in which citizens can be and are being engaged in an important area of national policy making -- budgeting -- and suggests ways in which budget officials can use a powerful resource -- the Internet -- to be supportive.

Budgeting is a fundamental activity of government, symbolizing an explicit agreement between people and their government -- private resources in exchange for the public services and benefits that fulfill national priorities and objectives. Citizens rightfully expect governments to deliver on that promise. They further expect that public budgets be fair, equitable and transparent. If citizens believe that the management of government's finances is subject to corruption, inefficiency and waste, they question the motives of their leaders and are less willing to accept tough policy choices such as structural program reforms, tax increases and spending cuts. Their resistance is further hardened if they feel that government does not represent their interests or respect their opinions about how to allocate public resources.

Strengthening the transparency and openness of public budgets can help promote social accountability and restore the public’s confidence in overall government. That will enable citizens to become more engaged, and, in the process, learn more about the budget and fiscal policy concerns. As they do, cynicism should dissipate and trust in government should improve.

Globally, there is increasing recognition of the importance public engagement in budgeting. There is growing experience, particularly in Latin American and in Europe, with different approaches to incorporating citizens in budgeting at sub-national levels of government. Municipal and regional public authorities, often in partnership with civil society organizations, are actively involving citizens in the budget process and are achieving promising results. Some have gone as far as adopting participatory budgeting measures that allow citizens direct influence over selected budget categories and fund allocations.

At the national level, however, the citizens’ ability to participate in budgeting (as with other areas of policy making) is limited to periodic elections of representatives who will act on their behalf. The direct approaches used by sub-national public authorities clearly are not workable at the national level. The very barriers that inhibit local initiatives are magnified at the national level. For example, physical distance, even given technological assistance, constrains the number of people who participate; the numbers of citizens who want to be involved limit meaningful participation by single individuals; and the time required to understand the complex issues excludes all but the most committed members of the public.

In addition, some elected leaders, policy officials and budget experts may prefer to maintain distance between voters and the national budget process. Budgeting is already one of the most difficult tasks of government. More public participation would further complicate the process. Few voters have the time -- even if they have the inclination -- to become sufficiently knowledgeable about the complex economic, social and political issues embedded in national budgets. Some experts fear that if voters become more involved, they will not appreciate the need for essential public goods and, if given the choice, would not agree to pay for them. In any case, the practical challenges of securing representative and widespread public participation in the budget process would be significant. For those reasons, among others, greater civic engagement in budgeting might seem to offer public officials a great deal of political pain with very little gain.

Or would it?

Direct participation by citizens in the national budget decisions may not feasible or desirable, but this paper argues that other forms of engagement can promote good government objectives. Moreover, budget officials can be supportive with relatively little effort. Governments create and control budget and accounting information. They are in the unique position of being able to provide access to the information required by civil society to understand fiscal policies and performance. By improving the quality and presentation of budget information, budget officials can enable non-expert audiences to become more informed about the budget. As they do, citizens can become more thoughtful about government, more realistic in their expectations, and better prepared to exercise their oversight of elected representatives.

With the rapid expansion of technology, governments are no longer dependent on intermediaries -- such as the public media -- to communicate with constituents. Official websites provide unfiltered information directly to the public on a cost-effective basis. Many public agencies already make good use of their web sites to communicate information about their activities, programs and benefits. Budget office web sites, however, seem to ignore the wide range of users inside and outside of government that now have access to them. That may reflect the inwardly-focused nature of government budgeting and accounting. As a result, budget officials are missing a valuable opportunity to communicate with wide audiences about fiscal policies and budget realities.

In Part 1, this paper discusses the merits of greater civic engagement in budget policy. The discussion looks beyond the direct government-to-citizen approaches that are the focus of rather extensive study by the OECD, the World Bank, the UN and participatory governance experts. That is because such initiatives involve municipal or regional governments. Although the experience at the national level with public engagement activities is thin, there is evidence that they hold promise.

Part 2 of the paper focuses on online approaches to public engagement -- the most efficient approach to national efforts. Using a small number of examples,² this paper illustrates how budget officials are already making use of the Internet to educate and engage the public. Some are pursuing more effective techniques of presenting budget information while others are utilizing innovative approaches that entertain while they educate. The paper also provides examples of organized and unorganized, non-governmental activities to engage the public, which are crucial to reaching national audiences.

In the appendix, the paper provides suggestions for improving the accessibility of budget office websites for users who are not budget experts.

Engaging the public in budget policy is, by no means, an easy goal. Policy makers are not likely to change national budget processes to involve citizens in budget deliberations, but budget officials can provide support for the efforts of non-governmental and individual efforts to inform and become informed. Access to accurate, reliable and comprehensive budget information can raise the quality of the public debate. Its absence allows misinformation to go unchallenged, potentially feeding public mistrust and cynicism about government. By assuring that good information is readily available, budget officials can make an important contribution that benefits the public at large as well as the independent analysts, academic researchers, investors, civil society organizations and the media that serve as intermediaries between citizens and government.

The goal of public engagement is to empower citizens, thereby enabling them to make their governments more open, responsive and effective. Governments, however, should not encourage greater engagement by citizens because they expect immediate and measurable improvements in budget outcomes. Instead, changes are far more likely to take the form of gradual improvements in popular understanding of policy issues. However, government-sponsored activities that raise expectations that cannot be fulfilled, are purely partisan or create the illusion of participation without real impact may be counterproductive and damage the government’s credibility. They could increase levels of public cynicism instead of promoting greater trust in government.

Footnotes:
For example, see a description of OECD work in public engagement at: http://www.oecd.org/about/0,2337,en_2649_34277_1_1_1_1_37405,00.html. World Bank activities can be found at: http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/ESSD/sdvext.nsf/66ParentDoc/ParticipationandCivicEngagement?Opendocument.

The author was limited to a search of web sites and resources available in English and French. Thus the web sites selected serve to illustrate, not to survey.

Download document...