How political institutions, history and experience affect government budgeting processes and ways of achieving ‘value for money’

Abstract

All governments face the challenge of scarce resources, requiring budgetary management processes for identifying the resources required by and available to government, and then for allocating them and ensuring their use or deployment represents value for money. Such budgetary and financial management processes need to routinely inform decision-making and protect the integrity of the way public resources are used—with some public accountability to indicate that their uses are properly authorised and reflect the policies of legitimate government leaders. The processes ideally should also facilitate assessments of how well the resources have been used, and of whether and how efficiently