Accountability in Public Expenditures in Latin America and the Caribbean
Accountability in Public Expenditures in Latin America and the Caribbean

Author: Omowunmi Ladipo

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 0821379852

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Fiscal discipline and public sector efficiency became prominent issues in Latin America and the Caribbean in the late 1980's following external debt crises that troubled many countries in the region. Resolution of the debt crises necessitated a first wave of reforms that largely focused on upgrading legal and regulatory frameworks or improving information systems. Nearly twenty years later progress in matching OECD practices and performance in public financial management and procurement has been uneven and has been one of the factors that impeded higher growth and competitiveness in Latin America and the Caribbean. Countries such as Chile, Brazil and Costa Rica with relatively good performance, in this respect, have shown what other countries in the region can do and how they would benefit. Increased globalization, seemingly intractable issues of income inequality, the onset of the recent global financial crises and the emergence of an assertive middle class that demands better governance, are all reasons why Latin America and the Caribbean governments should closely examine incomplete financial management and procurement reform programs and embark on trajectories that will improve their performance and be better responsive to the needs of their citizens. This book sets out, based on more than a decade of World Bank diagnostics, key areas that remain to be addressed by governments in the Latin America and the Caribbean region to underpin sustainable arrangements that deliver efficient and effective services, which are accountable to citizens. Success will have the important additional benefit of serving to notify international financial markets of the integrity of their stewardship function.

The Politics of Public Accountability
The Politics of Public Accountability

Author: Guillaume Fontaine

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-11-13

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 3030289958

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This book seeks to consistently explain the role of ideas and institutions in policy outcomes, and addresses the problem of how resource nationalism causes a deficit of public accountability in oil producing countries from Latin America and the Caribbean. The authors present a causal mechanism linking ideas and policy outcomes through institutional arrangements, focusing on policy design to describe the role of instruments selection and combination in improving or reducing public accountability through agenda setting, policy formulation, cross-sectorial coordination and political interplays.

Government at a Glance: Latin America and the Caribbean 2020
Government at a Glance: Latin America and the Caribbean 2020

Author: OECD

Publisher: OECD Publishing

Published: 2020-03-20

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9264455469

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This third edition of Government at a Glance Latin America and the Caribbean provides the latest available evidence on public administrations and their performance in the LAC region and compares it to OECD countries. This publication includes indicators on public finances and economics, public employment, centres of government, regulatory governance, open government data, public sector integrity, public procurement and for the first time core government results (e.g. trust, inequality reduction).

Democratic Accountability in Latin America
Democratic Accountability in Latin America

Author: Scott Mainwaring

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2003-07-31

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0191531340

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This volume on democratic accountability addresses one of the burning issues on the agenda of policy makers and citizens in contemporary Latin America: how democratic leaders in Latin America can improve accountability while simultaneously promoting governmental effectiveness. Written by well-known scholars form both Latin America and the United States, the volume enhances understanding of these key themes, which are central to the future of democracy in Latin America. - ;This volume on democratic accountability addresses one of the burning issues on the agenda of policy makers and citizens in contemporary Latin America. In much of Latin America, disenchantment and cynicism have set in regarding the quality of elected governments raising the prospect of a new round of democratic erosion and breakdowns. One of the important emerging challenges for improving the quality of democracy resolves around how to build more effective mechanisms of accountability. A widespread perception prevails in much of the region that government officials are not sufficiently subject to routinized controls by oversight agencies. Corruption, lack of oversight, impunity of state actors, and improper use of public resources are major problems in most countries of the region. Dealing with these issues is paramount to restoring and deepening democratic legitimacy. The fundamental question in this volume is how democratic leaders in Latin America can improve accountability while simultaneously promoting governmental effectiveness. These issues have acquired urgency in contemporary Latin America because of heightened public concern about corruption and improper governmental actions on the one hand, yet on the other, uncertainty about the potential tradeoff between tightened accountability of officials and effective policy results. The volume enhances understanding of three key issues. First, it enriches understanding of the state of non-electoral forms of democratic accountability in contemporary Latin America. What are some of the major shortcoming in democratic accountability? How can they be addressed? What are some major innovations in the efforts to enhance democratic accountability? A second contribution of the volume is conceptual. Accountability is a key concept in the social sciences, yt its meaning varies widely form one author to the next. The authors in this volume, especially in the first four chapters, explicitly debate how bet to define and delimit the concept. Finally the volume also furthers understanding of the interactions between various mechanism and institutions of accountability. Many of the authors address how electoral accountability (the accountability of elected officials to the voters) interact with the forms of accountability in which state agencies oversee and sanction public officials. The volume provides extensive treatment of this important but hitherto under-explored interaction. -

Open Government and Targeted Transparency
Open Government and Targeted Transparency

Author: Marcela Restrepo Hung

Publisher: Inter-American Development Bank

Published: 2012-10-30

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13:

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Transparency and integrity are key factors in consolidating democratic governance and deepening the modernization of the state. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has been supporting country efforts to achieve open government, providing technical support and knowledge on transparency in the LAC region. With the support of the Norwegian government, the IDB created the Anticorruption Activities Trust Fund (AAF), aimed at strengthening the institutional capacity of the Bank's borrowing countries in their efforts to prevent and control corruption. After four years in operation, the fund has gained recognition, both inside and outside the Bank, as a source of innovation and best practices in terms of access to information and targeted transparency. This publication compiles some of the experiences and lessons learned from five different countries (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Guatemala), with direct support from the AAF.

Regional Study on the Management, Control, and Recording of Fixed Assets
Regional Study on the Management, Control, and Recording of Fixed Assets

Author: Dmitri Gourfinkel

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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This report represents a series of studies on the status of the implementation of the International Public Sector Accounting Standards in the Latin America region. The first report of this series, Public Sector Accounting and Financial Information in Latin America, was developed by the World Bank team and issued in April 2015. The general purpose of this second report is to document the status of the management, control, and recording of fixed assets in the countries surveyed, and to propose a comprehensive asset management model to strengthen the region's public financial management systems in terms of public sector accounting, public investment, transparency, and accountability. The report aims to address the following asset management challenges: (a) accounting methodologies that have been adopted or implemented in the surveyed countries do not necessarily capture all government fixed assets; (b) incomplete or unreliable information on infrastructure assets and projects and other fixed assets, as well as on the provisions related to their upkeep and replacement, creates obstacles to improving public investment policies and enhancing the region's ability to promote productivity and competitiveness; (c) greater control of fixed assets is directly related to the improvement of transparency and accountability indexes; and (d) governments' inability to obtain an objective picture of their financial position and performance limits the quality of analysis on the efficient use of public resources related to electoral commitments, fiscal stability, and economic growth in the medium and long term.

PEFA, Public Financial Management, and Good Governance
PEFA, Public Financial Management, and Good Governance

Author: Jens Kromann Kristensen

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2019-11-24

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 146481466X

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This project, based on the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) data set, researched how PEFA can be used to shape policy development in public financial management (PFM) and other major relevant policy areas such as anticorruption, revenue mobilization, political economy analysis, and fragile states. The report explores what shapes the PFM system in low- and middle-income countries by examining the relationship between political institutions and the quality of the PFM system. Although the report finds some evidence that multiple political parties in control of the legislature is associated with better PFM performance, the report finds the need to further refine and test the theories on the relationship between political institutions and PFM. The report addresses the question of the outcomes of PFM systems, distinguishing between fragile and nonfragile states. It finds that better PFM performance is associated with more reliable budgets in terms of expenditure composition in fragile states, but not aggregate budget credibility. Moreover, in contrast to existing studies, it finds no evidence that PFM quality matters for deficit and debt ratios, irrespective of whether a country is fragile or not. The report also explores the relationship between perceptions of corruption and PFM performance. It finds strong evidence of a relationship between better PFM performance and improvements in perceptions of corruption. It also finds that PFM reforms associated with better controls have a stronger relationship with improvements in perceptions of corruption compared to PFM reforms associated with more transparency. The last chapter looks at the relationship between PEFA indicators for revenue administration and domestic resource mobilization. It focuses on the credible use of penalties for noncompliance as a proxy for the type of political commitment required to improve tax performance. The analysis shows that countries that credibly enforce penalties for noncompliance collect more taxes on average.