Opis projekta
Local government budget transparency (LBT) is of extreme importance as local authorities’ decisions upon spending public money have an impact on each and every citizen. LBT refers to how easily and to what extent citizens can access information on local government revenues and expenditures. Transparent budgets are a first step toward democratizing the budget process and giving citizens a say in policy formulation and resource allocation. A non-transparent budget cannot be properly analysed, its implementation cannot be thoroughly monitored nor can its outcomes be evaluated. Despite the importance of LBT, research into its measures, causes and consequences is thin. Our aim is to fill this literature gap and investigate: LBT in Croatia and Slovenia, how it changes over time and why some local budgets are more transparent than others. We will also try to answer: whether LBT affects budget outcomes in election years; whether it affects election outcomes and whether its changes over time influence incumbents' and voters’ preferences regarding budget outcomes. Building upon the existing literature and our previous works, the aim is to construct the basis for future research into LBT, resulting in an open local budget index (OLBI). We will first harmonize and adapt the already existing Croatian methodology (Ott, Bronić and Petrušić, 2013; 2014) so that it can be further continually, annually applied in the same way in Croatia and Slovenia. Since this will be the first time that LBT will be empirically measured and monitored for a fairly long period of time in two countries, and since except for our own work (Ott, Bronić and Petrušić, 2013; 2014) we could find no other papers dealing with the causes and consequences of LBT, our continuous research will represent a unique contribution to the existing literature. Our results will also enable better policy-making and greater citizens’ participation in local budget deliberations.
Akronim
OLBI
Šifra projekta
IP-2014-09-3008
Poziv
2014-09
Financijer
HRZZ - Hrvatska zaklada za znanost
Detalji financiranja
IP - Research Projects
Ukupan iznos financiranja projekta
373.000,00 HRK
Trajanje projekta
2015-09-01 - 2019-01-09
Ustanova - uloga
Institut za javne financije, Zagreb - (373.000,00 HRK)
Osoba - Ustanova - uloga
Katarina Ott - nema - Voditelj projekta
