Public Budgeting in the United States - Annotated Bibliography Example

PARTICIPATIVE BUDGETING of affiliation Participative budgeting Beckett, J., & Simrell, C. K. (2003). THE CHALLENGE TO IMPROVE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC BUDGETING: A DISCUSSION. Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management., 30(1), 5-154. The discussion in this article focuses on the significance and value of engaging citizens in public budgeting in the United States. For several decades, the issue of citizen involvement in government budgeting process received great attention. Attention normally arises from the fact that most states and local governments struggle with fiscal pressure which necessitates the need to have the opinions of citizens to assist the elected officials in the determination of the best solutions. In addition, citizen involvement is essential given that some of the solutions needed in regards to spending and services reduction or tax and fees increments affect the society. Beckett & Simrell (2003) discuss the factors considered in involving citizens in fiscal and budgetary matters like the need to make decisions informed by the values and opinions of the citizens and to increase the information available to decision makers regarding the effects on the communities hence guarding against unintended consequences. In addition, citizen involvement enhances citizen scrutiny to improve decision makers’ efficiency, accountability and responsiveness and enhancing public trust and overcoming cynicism. The study also defines types of citizen participation, which include citizen control, delegated power, partnership, placation, consultation and informing all of which involve power redistribution between decision makers and citizens. Although citizen participation is a great way of involving citizens in public budgeting, success is requires implementation of strategies such as provision of civil and political rights, trust in their co-participants, feeling of inclusion and belief in their participation. Additionally, citizens should understand and want to participate, have knowledge of how and where to participate, have access to technology and social media, and have relevant education and training for empowered participation. Braeutigan, D. A. (2004). The Peoples Budget: Politics, Power, Popular, Participation and Pro-Poor economic Policy. Citizen Participation and Pro-Poor Budgeting, 22(6), 653-668. In her article, Brautigam acknowledges the trend towards participatory budgeting and the impact it has on raising the expectations of the citizens towards more positive and accountable spending and generation of revenue. In order to evaluate this aspect, the article reviews pro-poor and participatory budgeting process in Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mauritius, and Ireland. Successful evaluation of these experiences involves analyzing the participants, the necessary institutional framework, and understanding the nature of pro-poor budgeting. The findings indicate that in order to have pro-poor spending and taxation, power has to be in pro-poor political parties for it to be sufficient and necessary. In order to participate, citizens can be involved directly, formally, or informally. In Brazil and Ireland, direct participation in fiscal policy occurs and involves inquiring whether citizen participation led to pro-poor results. However, democratic pro-poor economic policymaking is common in Costa Rica, Mauritius, and Chile and involves evaluating whether pro-poor results emanated from participation. For all cases, citizen participation involves understanding who, how, and when aspects that are crucial aspects in boosting successful economic policy management through ownership and credibility. However, lack of transparency and reluctance by some government and donors to relinquish tight control over crucial political processes challenges fiscal policy and budgeting. These challenges encourages participation that does not necessarily meet the goal of being pro-poor like Ireland where macroeconomic stability is achieved other than solving the issue of social exclusion. However, in nations like Costa Rica, Chile, and Mauritius, the result of participatory budgeting is pro-poor outcomes and characterized by being highly democratic with the participants being directly involved. Conversely, Porto Alegre citizen participation involves citizens representatives from varying neighborhoods unlike the use of city council. As a result, only a minority is involved. Ebdon, C., & Franklin, A. L. (2006). Citizen Participation in Budgeting Theory. Public Administration Review, 66(3), 437-447. Ebdon & Franklin (2006) reveal that in the tendency of citizens to become cynical and distrustful in the 1990s and the new millennium prompted governments to focus on acquisition of citizen input during budgeting. Distrust and cynicism demonstrated disconnection in the expectations of citizens from their governments and what governments were willing to pay. However, Ebdon & Franklin (2006) distinguish citizen participation from the empty ritual of participation by the fact that real power has to be present in order to affect the participatory process outcomes. When effectively utilized, citizen participation can be useful in informing the public about core substitutions while obtaining helpful inputs from citizens regarding their precedences and inclinations. In the presence of informed participations, citizens move from demanding for services to knowledgable participation which is more successful. However, there are significant limitations which influence participation process including environment, process design, mechanisms, and goals and outcomes. The elements of environment affecting citizen participation include structure and form of governance, legal requirements, political dynamics and cultures, and population mass and heterogeneity. Numerous methods or mechanisms have different strengths and weaknesses and include meetings, focus groups, surveys, committees, and simulations. Such public mechanisms are very crucial in preliminary information sharing especially with high attendance. Goals and outcomes should be set in the initial process and outcomes assessed and compared to the expected goals. These elements and variables are crucial in establishing and implementing participation of citizens in budget process. The article presents a reasonable model that suggests there are methods of structuring participation inputs that differ depending on the desired outcomes. Heinle, M. S., Ross, N., & Saouma, R. E. (2014). A Theory of Participative Budgeting. The Accounting Review, 89(3), 1025-1050. Heinle, Ross, & Saouma (2014) complement the theory on participative budgeting by judging against its financial benefits relative to a top-down budgeting option. In top-down and bottom-up budgeting methods, confidential information communication is vertical between a manager and a principal and this article reveals that top-down choice is relatively cheap. Information flow is dependent on organizational structure. In this paper, Heinle, Ross, & Saouma (2014) recognize that the budgeting process formalize information use and sharing within firms by governing coordination and communication among its subunits. The principal’s choice model in this paper brings out participatory budgeting as involving the use of bottom up process where the manager must be offered informational charter to bring forth truthful reporting. In this case, the manager receives interim information and an incentive to misreport favorable information as unfavorable. Consequently, the bottom-up or participatory budgeting results to optimal surplus hence always sustaining truth-telling with little destruction of surplus. Unlike emphasizing on budgeting, the principal’s choice model by Heinle, Ross, & Saouma (2014) emphasizes on communicating private information during the budgeting process and that the flow of private information is mostly a mixture of top-bottom and bottom-up budgeting. By combining the two budgeting private information flow processes, then both the principal and the manager must receive private information. However, the overlapping of private information by the principal and managers means that the results is non-contractible reporting that can only be prevented by setting reasonable punishments for parties reporting information that conflicts with the other. Although this paper offers viable participatory budgeting model, the limitation is its ignorance of conduct tensions that result to the chosen budgeting mode for any organization. Liao, Y., & Zhang, Y. (2012). Citizen Participation in Local Budgeting: Mechanisms, Political Support and City Managers moderating Role. International Review of Public Administration, 17(2), 19-38. This article by Liao & Zhang (2012) acknowledges predictors of civilian participation in local budgeting including involvement mechanisms, settings factor, and function of public supervisors from previous studies. However, previous studies fail to recognize interaction amongst these factors, which is the focus of this article. The focus of this paper is to exploit the inconclusive nature of why some local governments encourage citizen participation while others do not. For councils that do allow citizen participation, council-manager type of government have high possibilities of soliciting input from citizens although Liao & Zhang (2012) acknowledge that it is impossible to generalize such results. This study however, argues that the use of interactive engagement mechanisms and political setting will have undeviating impact on the level of civilian involvement and budgeting. In the presence of city managers, citizen involvement takes the form of public hearings, citizen surveys, and community meetings. In addition, city managers’ characteristics and perceptions are attributed to influencing the level of citizen involvement in local governments especially with high willingness for accountability. Positive attitudes by city managers prompt them to encourage citizen participation as adding value to budget process unlike discouraging and discounting it. In addition, city managers play the crucial role of emphasizing citizenship values over technocratic values especially since society participation and building comes as a norm for management professionals and a management innovation. In order to test the hypothesis that city managers moderate interactive citizen engagement in budgeting, Liao & Zhang (2012) utilizes data from New Jersey Municipal administrators’ survey. The findings indicated that in the presence of positive city managers’ attitude, citizens are more confident and willing to participate. Novy, A., & Leubolt, B. (2005). Participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre: Social innovation and the dialectical relationship of state and civil society. Urban Studies, 42(11), 2023-2036. The article by Novy & Leubolt (2005) focuses on urban development with particular interest on the contribution by social innovation, and the conflicting association between civil sociey and state. The contradictory relationship is understood by thoroughly analyzing participatory budgeting process in Porto Alegre the capital city of Rio Grande. By emphasizing on social innovation, this article refers to the foundation identified in previous research that identify social innovation as arising from the satisfaction of basic human needs, high level of political participation for various groups, and elevated capability socio-politically as well as availability of resources needed for rights promotion to guarantee human participation and needs satisfaction. This paper acknowledges that social innovation is as a result of intertwined state and civil society. The four approaches to this relationship involve liberal theory, republican tradition, public sphere model, and critical state theory. In Brazil, the dominant civil society section is forcefully interlinked with state power excluding all other segments and this limits the civil society autonomy. In Porto Alegre, the irregular, poorer districts organized into municipal organizations and through civil society rallied against military dictatorship. As a result, participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre works by sharing power with the people and institutionalization of participatory budgeting. Novy & Leubolt (2005) acknowledge that participatory budgeting was an attempt to elaborate a substitute governance model and founded on civil society. As a result, power strategy and the party remain a priciple actor in participatory budgeting and in Porto Alegre, the results involved direct satisfaction of basic needs, adoption of less authoritarian associations between local governements and citizens, and dissolved participants individualistic approaches. OToole, D. E., & Marshall, J. (1988). Citizen Participation Through Budgeting. The Bureaucrat, 17. Kindly provide this article, I could not find it since the link given is wrong Petri, M., & Shields, J. (Budgeting). Producing a Citizens Guide to the Budget: Why, What and How? OECD Journal on, 10(2), 1-14. In this article, Petri & Shields (2010) offer suggestions for guidelines of production and dissemination of a citizen’s guide to budget. These suggestions are founded on previous research that illustrate why governments need to publish annual guide, on what contents and qualities a good guide, should have and how citizens can access such a guide. Through publicized guides, the article acknowledges that citizen participation will contribute towards open doors management of public finances while encouraging public oversight. This way, transparent budgeting will result to prosperous societies unlike closed-door governance that encourages irresponsible borrowing and spending by government. This article acknowledges that publicizing citizen’s guide to budget would provide citizens with information needed to understand how government is making use of its powers to spend, borrow and make use tax. In addition, guides direct citizens on how to participate in public debate in the budget process, and seize government accountability. The government can assist in discrediting the budget further than the necessarily multifaceted aspect in budget credentials. Further, publicizing citizens’ guide allows a government to clarify in plain language the goals of the budget and to increment and compliment additional resources. It also assists citizens to assess the impact on their own situations and that of other specific groups in the society. In order to ensure that citizens guides effective, they are written in easy to understand and plain-language, and use neutral language to describe the budget. The guide should also contain general core information, additional information, and a suggested outline. In order to disseminate information to most citizens, the use of numerous methods is required including posters, leaflets, radio messages, leaflets and among others. Zainuddin, S. (2013). Distributative Fairness and Motivation in Participative Budgeting Setting. Actual Problems of Economics, 139(1), 292-301 Zainuddin (2013) acknowledges that previous studies are inconsistent in their findings regarding budget involvement and motivation and the mediating variable may be the source of such conflict. This study examined distributive fairness as the mediating role in the relationship between budget participation and motivation. In order to analyze the significance of distributive fairness, Zainuddin (2013) uses Partial Least Square technique. The results are that distributative fairness is a crucial intermediary in participative budgeting scenery. Distributive fairness defines effectivenes of the numerous participative budgeting forms since it is grounded on the theory of equity. Distributive fairness in participatory justice involves matching ability and effort to budget attainability. The result is that satisfaction and performance are increased. References Beckett, J., & Simrell, C. K. (2003). THE CHALLENGE TO IMPROVE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC BUDGETING: A DISCUSSION. Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management., 30(1), 5-154. Braeutigan, D. A. (2004). The Peoples Budget: Politics, Power, Popular, Participation and Pro-Poor economic Policy. Citizen Participation and Pro-Poor Budgeting, 22(6), 653-668. Ebdon, C., & Franklin, A. L. (2006). Citizen Participation in Budgeting Theory. Public Administration Review, 66(3), 437-447. Heinle, M. S., Ross, N., & Saouma, R. E. (2014). A Theory of Participative Budgeting. The Accounting Review, 89(3), 1025-1050. Liao, Y., & Zhang, Y. (2012). Citizen Participation in Local Budgeting: Mechanisms, Political Support and City Managers moderating Role. International Review of Public Administration, 17(2), 19-38. Novy, A., & Leubolt, B. (2005). Participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre: Social innovation and the dialectical relationship of state and civil society. Urban Studies, 42(11), 2023-2036. OToole, D. E., & Marshall, J. (1988). Citizen Participation Through Budgeting. The Bureaucrat, 17. Petri, M., & Shields, J. (2010). Producing a Citizens Guide to the Budget: Why, What and How? OECD Journal on, 10(2), 1-14. Zainuddin, S. (2013). Distributative Fairness and Motivation in Participative Budgeting Setting. Actual Problems of Economics, 139(1), 292-301. Read More