Conference Agenda

The State Budget is the main tool for the implementation of government policies. However, the State Budget is usually complex due to its technical nature and is accompanied by a set of detailed technical documents. Understanding, therefore, the State Budget is a difficult process even for specialists who deal with public finance. As pointed out by various organizations of civil society, the State Budget should not simply be available, but it should also be accessible to citizens, in the sense that it can become understood by them. A modern means to achieve accessibility for citizens in the State Budget is drafting a citizens' budget, which increase citizens knowledge of what the government is doing and enhance their capacity to participate in governmental affairs.

The Citizens' Budget is a non-technical presentation of either the draft budget or budget enacted, by which is presented to the general public the Government options for the collection of revenues and their distribution to citizens through the implementation of public expenditure, and whose main feature is that it is designed to be understood as widely as possible segment of the population. The Citizens' Budget is, in fact, a simplified summary of State Budget for the purpose of facilitating of public debate, which can get various forms.

While Citizens Budgets have been mostly produced by civil society groups themselves, it is essential that governments issue such a text. In Greece, it is not provided by the Fiscal Law the drafting of such a report by the Government. Until recently, the Ministry of Finance provided information on the budget process, mainly by allowing them to download the annual budget documents from a special website. However, in the budget process for 2024, the Greek government has for the first-time attempt to inform citizens about the National Budget and its principal priorities and corresponding funds to accomplish them through two presentations, one for the Annual Budget and one for the new form of Performance Budget, including “Green” Budget, comprising data visualizations. Although the above presentations did not contain all the elements that according to various organizations of civil society a citizens' budget should contain, this initiative by the Ministry of Finance is nevertheless a positive step towards improving transparency and raising citizens awareness regarding the budget process. Moreover, it was disseminated at the same time that the government presented the annual budget to the legislature, with the aim to engage, at least theoretically, the public in the discussion in time and to have an impact on the legislature’s deliberations on the budget.

Furthermore, a research team called “Budget Transparency”, whose scientific responsible is me and whose members are graduate students of the Interinstitutional Postgraduate Program Studies “Law and Economics” of Department of Economic Studies of the University MACEDONIA and the Law School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, has proceeded to the drafting of the first Citizens' Budget in 2020. Since then and until today the academic team drafts Citizens' Budget every year and present it in workshops and seminars, online events and in an event within the framework of the Thessaloniki International Fair. Although, existing Citizens Budgets are almost always confined to guides to the budget proposal, rather than to the enacted budget, the Citizens Budget drafted by the above research team presents the data of the enacted budget. The team uses Citizens Budget as a tool for civic education by explaining how the State Budget is formulated, enacted, and executed, and who is responsible at each stage. Moreover, the presentation of Citizens Budget brings together members of the government, the administration and the Parliament, members of Independent Fiscal Authorities and fiscal Court (Court of Auditors), academics and students, representatives from media, and the public.

Of course, accessibility of the budget by citizens is not sufficient. Citizen’s engagement in the budget process remains limited, at least, at the national level of the State Budget. However, citizens participation would be even more active in the case of adoption of Citizens Budget in the field of local government, since the relevant legislation provides a form of participatory budget. Within the framework of the “Kallikratis Programme” (reform of the local government in 2010), the operation of municipal consultation committees, through which it is possible to gain institutional recognition and implement participatory budgets projects by Municipalities and Regions. According to the rules of procedure of Consultation Committees, these are composed of representatives of local community bodies, citizens registered to vote lists while the right to participate has the mayor or deputy mayor appointed by decision. A series of municipalities in Greece have attempted to implement participatory budgets on a smaller or larger scale, with different methodology (i.e. on line consultations, public meetings, phone surveys etc) and results.

The purpose of the proposed paper is to demonstrate the way by which the drafting, presentation and dissemination of the Citizens Budget can contribute to achieve both fiscal transparency and accountability and to promote citizens' confidence in the management of public revenue and their familiarity with national and EU fiscal framework and policies and how they affect but also protect their interests. Special attention is given to the dissemination of Citizens Budget and the choose of right media for achieving the broader possible dissemination.

In a 2007 revision to the IMF’s Fiscal Transparency Code, a provision was included providing for publication of a clear and simple summary guide to the annual budget, fact that reveals the growing consensus on the importance of Citizens Budgets. Therefore, the draft in a systematic way from the Greek Ministry of Finance of a Citizens Budget or a user-friendly summary of the enacted budget would be useful, both for citizens and the Parliament. In any case preparation of such Citizens Budget by our scientific team contributes to the information of citizens on overall budget figures, mainly resource allocation, and enable them to participate, even limited, in the budgetary process, while facilitates public debate on the relevant issues. Finally, the combination of Citizens Budget with Participatory Budget in the field of local government can help to strengthen citizens participation and contribute to the achievement of sustainable change, with positive impacts on public governance, public policies, and public services.

References

Ebdon, C., & Franklin, A. L. (2004). Searching for a role for citizens in the budget process. Public Budgeting and Finance, 24(1), 32–49.

Ebdon, C., & Franklin, A. L. (2006). Citizen participation in budgeting theory. Public Administration Review. May/June: 437–447.

Heinrich Boll Stiftung, Participatory Municipal Budget: A democratic experiment (in Greek language), Thessaloniki.

International Budget Partnership (IBP), Guide to Transparency in Government Budget Reports: Why are Budget Reports Important, and What Should They Include?, 2010, prepared by Ramkumar Vivek, Shapiro Isaak, available at: http://internationalbudget.org/wp-content/uploads/Guide-to-Transparency-in-Government-Budget-Reports-Why-are-Budget-Reports-Important-and-What-Should-They-Include-English.pdf and www.openbudgetindex.org.

International Budget Partnership (IBP), The Power of Making it Simple. A Government Guide to Developing Citizens Budgets, 2012.

International Monetary Fund, 2007a. Manual on Fiscal Transparency. Washington, D.C. http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/2007/eng/051507m.pdf

International Monetary Fund, 2007b. Guide on Resource Revenue Transparency. Washington, D.C. http://www.imf.org/external/np/fad/trans/guide.htm

OECD (2017), OECD Budget Transparency Toolkit: Practical Steps for Supporting Openness, Integrity and Accountability in Public Financial Management, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264282070-en.

OECD (2017). Best Practices for Budget Transparency. OECD Journal on Budgeting, Volume 1, Number 3. 2001. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/33/13/1905258.pdf

PEFA Secretariat, 2005. Public Financial Management Performance Measurement Framework. World Bank. Washington, D.C. June 2005. http://www.pefa.org/pfm_performance_frameworkmn.php

Savvaidou K., Fiscal Transparency: Initiatives, Standards and Codes, Tools for assessing Public Financial Management, Fiscal Rules and Fiscal Councils, the Greek Fiscal Reform (in Greek language), editor: Nomiki Bibliothiki, 2017, book in Greek, awarded by the Academy of Athens by Ioannis and Ionos Tsatsaroni Prize.

Semih Bilge, A New Approach in Public Budgeting: Citizens’ Budget, Journal of International Education and Leadership Volume 5 Issue 1 Spring 2015 http://www.jielusa.org/

Shields Jon, Petrie Murray, “Producing a Citizens’ Guide to the Budget: Why, What and How?”, OECD Journal on Budgeting, volume 2010/2, http://internationabudget.org/wp-content/ uploads/Producing-a-Citizens-Guide-to-the-Budget.pdf

Originally started in 1989 in Porto Alegre (Brazil), Participatory Budgeting (PB) has been spreading all over the world. In 2008 it had already reached hundreds of implementations in Europe (Sintomer et at. 2008). Since then, the number of European cities which implemented PB at least once has been growing.

However, literature proved that on many occasions PBs are interrupted, and referred to instability as «a key element to understand participatory budgeting» (Alves and Allegretti 2012). This raises questions about the conditions for the irreversibility of the process. Indeed, one of the problems nowadays, with all participatory procedures, is that they tend to be ad hoc projects (Chwalisz 2019) which rarely manage to become part of communities’regular political cycles (Chwalisz 2019; Dryzek 2017). Or, as other authors put it, to become «ordinary government tools» (Allulli 2011, 444). That is, participatory policies are only rarely «institutionalized».

This paper will explore under which conditions Participatory Budgetings manage to become institutionalized policies. The work will focus on the set of the 17 biggest Italian cities, for historical and theoretical reasons which will be fully explained in the final version of the paper. After determining the degree of institutionalization of PB in these cities, the paper will answer the following research question: why is PB institutionalized in certain cities and not in others? To do so, a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) will be run to detect the (combinations of) conditions necessary or sufficient for the presence (and absence) of the outcome. Conditions will be selected based on previous literature (both theoretical and empirical) on the topic and on the knowledge of the specific administrative-political situation in Italy. Processes of measurement and calibration for these conditions will be explained too.

This study investigates the relationship between local governments' own-source revenues and the scale of local subsidy expenditures, with a particular focus on the moderating effect of the participatory budgeting system. Using panel data from 243 local governments across South Korea from 2017 to 2020, the analysis explores how fiscal autonomy, represented by local taxes and non-tax revenues, impacts local subsidy allocations. The findings reveal that while local governments with higher local tax ratios tend to reduce subsidy expenditures, those with higher non-tax revenue ratios are more likely to increase them. Furthermore, the participatory budgeting system was found to significantly moderate the relationship between local tax ratios and subsidy expenditures, although it did not exhibit a similar effect on non-tax revenues. These results suggest the importance of distinguishing between local taxes and non-tax revenues when assessing fiscal autonomy and subsidy expenditures. The study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the role of participatory budgeting in enhancing fiscal efficiency and accountability, offering valuable policy implications for improving the management of local subsidies in South Korea.