Nonpartisan Legislative Budget Offices: A Tentative Step toward Improving Legislative Oversight

Strengthening the budgetary powers of legislatures through nonpartisan budget offices adds to the capacity‐building repertoire of development donors. Budget offices are supposed to provide legislatures with information and analysis independent from the executive. The United States Agency for Interna...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Governance (Oxford) 2011-01, Vol.24 (1), p.167-173
Main Authors: STRAUSSMAN, JEFFREY D., RENONI, ARI
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Afghanistan
Appropriations and expenditures
Budgets
Expenditures
Fiscal policy
Governance
Government and politics
Government spending
Jordan
Legislation
Legislative Bodies
Legislators
Legislatures
Morocco
Power
Studies
Surveillance
Sustainability
United States
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Summary:Strengthening the budgetary powers of legislatures through nonpartisan budget offices adds to the capacity‐building repertoire of development donors. Budget offices are supposed to provide legislatures with information and analysis independent from the executive. The United States Agency for International Development believes that strengthening the legislature's power of the purse improves governance. We highlight USAID‐funded legislative strengthening projects implemented in Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, and Afghanistan to show how these budget offices function. There is a significant potential for these units to assist members of parliament in understanding the budget process, the broad fiscal challenges facing government, and expenditure control and budgetary trade‐offs that affect present and future spending. These cases demonstrate the challenges of creating and sustaining a parliamentary budget office. Finally, in an effort to make budget offices effective and sustainable, we outline several key steps that we believe are important both for donors and the legislative bodies.
ISSN:0952-1895
1468-0491
DOI:10.1111/j.1468-0491.2010.01515.x