Parliaments and the Budget

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Budgets affect all of us, are the most important economic policy tool of governments, and detail national priorities. In this course, we learn how legislatures ensure that the budget optimally matches a nation’s needs with available resources. This facilitated course contains the following modules, with weekly discussions among people in the parliamentary community throughout the world:

• Module 1: The Evolution of Parliament’s Power of the Purse: Parliaments have struggled for a role in the budget process. This module provides an historical overview of parliamentary involvement in public finance. Much of it focuses on the development of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom, which was at the forefront of claiming the ‘power of the purse,’ but other countries are also considered.
• Module 2: Introducing the Budget: This module provides a basic introduction to the budget and some related concepts that are frequently featured in budget discussions. It looks at the definition of “budget” and its components, including revenues, expenditures and the deficit, as well as some of the key objectives of budgeting.
• Module 3: The Budget Process: The budget cycle in government typically involves a number of different actors and follows a sequence of essential steps. This module introduces some of the main participants of the budget process and presents a simplified and generalized outline of planning, approving, implementing and auditing expenditures.
• Module 4: Parliamentary Approval of the Budget: One or perhaps the main task of parliaments in budgeting is to review the draft budget tabled by the executive for the upcoming fiscal period. This module provides an overview of some of the key issues for effective scrutiny of the draft budget, including parliament’s constitutional powers, its committees, the timing of the budget process, and access to relevant information.
• Module 5: Parliament and the Audit of Public Accounts: Many parliaments not only approve the budget, but also assess the integrity of budget execution through involvement in the audit process. This module looks at different approaches to the parliamentary audit. It covers the types of supreme audit institutions and the types of audits they conduct, the interaction of auditors with parliament, the role of parliamentary committees and, finally, the use of follow-up mechanisms to ensure that governments implement recommendations for improvements generated through the audit process.
• Module 6: Opening up the Parliamentary Process: Many parliaments are considering whether to open up the parliamentary budget process to the media and the public, or whether they could more directly benefit from outside expertise for the scrutiny of government finance. This module looks at the pros and cons of opening up committees to the public and how a committee can organize public hearings on the budget.
• Module 7: Strengthening Parliamentary Involvement: The final module offers a short diagnostic framework that can be used to assess the effectiveness of legislative financial scrutiny in particular countries.