Open Budgets and Open Government: Beyond Disclosure in Pursuit of Transparency, Participation and Accountability

Teresa M. Harrison and Djoko Sigit Sayogo
June 17, 2013

Abstract

Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o2013)

Although disclosure is at the heart of transparency, simple disclosure does not beginto address more complicated questions about the qualitative nature of transparency and whether participation and accountability processes ensue. In this paper,we inquire about the socio-political conditions that are related to [a] qualitative aspects of budget transparency, definedin terms of three types of desirable budget content and timely disclosure of budget documents, [b]two types of public participation in budget processes, and [c] qualitative aspects of four types of audit documents. Wefound that a country's level of democratization and its level of budget document disclosure wasconsistently related to the release of qualitatively better budget content, qualitatively better accountability content and the involvement of the Supreme Audit Authority withthe public. However, neither of these factors, or any other, wasrelatedto the tendency to engage in general public participation processes related to the budget.

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