Project description:
Local government budget transparency (LBT) is of extreme importance as local authorities’ decisions regarding how public money is spent 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.
Transparency at the local level is especially important because local budgets deal with expenditures that are particularly visible and tangible for citizens. In this sense, LBT has the potential to provide answers to basic questions such as whether plans to build a new neighbourhood school or carry out local road works were actually implemented. Despite the importance of LBT, research into its measures, causes and consequences is thin. Our aim was 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 also tried to answer the following questions: 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 was to construct a basis for future research into LBT, resulting in an open local budget index (OLBI). We first harmonized and adapted the already existing Croatian methodology (Ott, Bronić and Petrušić, 2013; 2014) so that it can be further applied in the same way in Croatia and Slovenia on a continuous annual basis. OLBI will offer numerous opportunities to analyse the extent of LBT in different countries and the differences between them, its causes and consequences and its policy implications and it could result in numerous scientific and technical articles relevant for the scientists, policymakers, and consequently for the end-users, i.e. the citizens.
As part of the project, a glossary and list of relevant literature was prepared, workshops and presentations on budget transparency were held, and research results were published every year in the form of an interactive map: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019.
Details of the project are available in the Croatian Research Information System and a list of published articles in the Croatian scientific bibliography.
Program: Croatian Science Foundation research projects