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Improving the Budget Process in Fragile and Conflict‐Ridden States: Two Modest Lessons from Afghanistan
Author(s) -
Guinn David E.,
Straussman Jeffrey D.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/puar.12397
Subject(s) - transparency (behavior) , legislature , budget process , language change , index (typography) , corporate governance , accountability , accounting , good governance , public administration , general partnership , state (computer science) , political science , economics , business , public economics , politics , finance , law , art , literature , world wide web , computer science , algorithm
Both the donor community and scholars have created a cottage industry studying “fragile” states. International nongovernmental organizations that have developed indexes measuring corruption or governance have been unkind to Afghanistan. One index suggests a different and more optimistic story. The International Budget Partnership measures transparency every two years with its Open Budget Index. Afghanistan demonstrated dramatic improvement on this index between 2008 and 2012. The authors use the improvement in Afghanistan's transparency score as an entry point to explore how donors try to intervene and promote transparency as part of broader efforts in public financial management development and how legislative strengthening has also contributed to budget reform. The analysis offers a modest corrective to the overly pessimistic assessments of fragile states by showing that a fragile state can improve its budgetary transparency and enhance governance by strengthening the legislature's involvement in the budget process.