Miekatrien Sterck

Trends in Performance Budgeting in Seven OECD countries

An international trend exists to use more information on results in public budgeting, but the focus of these initiatives varies from country to country, as demonstrated in this study of performance budgeting reforms in Australia, Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. On one hand, an evolution is taking place toward output and outcome budgeting, but on the other hand, a trend is moving toward accrual budgeting. The implementation of results-oriented budgeting evokes four major challenges: (a) to align the fiscal framework with the results-oriented budget reform, (b) to create legislative interest for performance, (c) to provide high-quality results information, and (d) to establish the leadership and authority of the central budget office. Are the results of performance budgeting worth the challenge? Very little evidence seems to exist that performance information is used in the political budgetary decision-making process or in the legislative oversight function. The major impact of results-oriented budget reform appears to be situated in the internal management of departments and agencies.

Financial management reforms after a political shift : a transformative perspective

Purpose – The purpose of the article is to study the transformation of reform discourse after a major political shift and to discuss some of the factors that may explain change and continuity in reforms.Design/methodology/approach – The study is an embedded case study of four financial reform initiatives in two countries with a political majority system: Australia and the USA. Data gathering is a combination of face‐to‐face interviews and the study of secondary sources.Findings – Reforms do survive political shifts, but they are transformed through political and administrative processes. The retranslation of reforms seeks a correspondence to the dominant ideological environment and challenges the balance of power. Political elites are important but the position of political elites cannot be interpreted solely from their party political standpoint. Reform discourse is a relevant research subject to study the dynamics in reforms.Originality/value – The main research issues in reform research are about the g...