Budget process and corruption:
5. How to reduce corruption in the budget process
5.3 Attitudes, culture, and citizen oversight
While transparency may help remedy bureaucratic corruption, it is not a sufficient solution for political corruption when the electorate is largely illiterate. An example of a long-term policy to reduce corruption is by improving basic education. Also, public financing of electoral campaigns is another possible factor.
It is clear that civil society can play a very important role in increasing
contestability and accountability of institutions. In addition to the
transparency mechanisms, ongoing innovations in a number of countries
include:
- Activist business associations of small and medium-scale entrepreneurs,
as pressure groups for levelling the playing field and mitigating state
capture by larger conglomerates.
- Promoting transparency in access to information on parliamentary votes.
- Promoting transparent access to assets and income declarations of
leaders and senior public officials and their dependants.
- NGOs dealing with judicial/legal issues who monitor and provide information
on the integrity of the judiciary, transparent access to judicial decisions,
lists of judges with high integrity, and which promote non-public sector
institutional alternatives such as ADRs.
- Discussing role of a responsible media in enhancing transparency and
providing rigorous information in this area.
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Public Financial
Management and Procurement |
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Budget process |
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Revenue administration |
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Fiscal decentralisation |
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Direct budget support |
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Public Expenditure Tracking |
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Procurement |
Query the U4 helpdesk about PFM |
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U4 welcomes any | CONTACT |
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Hannes Hechler
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| RECOMMENDED READING |
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“It is our money. Where is it gone?” is a short documentary, released by the International Budget Partnership, on an initiative, in Mombasa (Kenya) to involve communities directly in monitoring the Constituency Development Fund, a fund managed by Kenyan parliamentarians. Through social audits, communities monitored budgets and held their government accountable for managing the public’s money and meeting the needs of the poor.
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| RELATED U4 PUBLICATIONS |
This U4 Brief assesses how banks facilitate illicit capital flows from developing countries. The shortcomings of the existing regulatory frameworks are discussed, and recommendations are made for donor governments on what can be done to curb the flow of corrupt money out of the developing world. |
