https://theconversation.com/the-citizen-budgets-of-africa-make-governments-more-transparent-58275?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2027%202016%20-%204747&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2027%202016%20-%204747+CID_a61b62b7c232cba6550fafc8cea36575&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=The%20citizen%20budgets%20of%20Africa%20make%20governments%20more%20transparent

Some of the least developed African nations are leading the way with budget transparency using what is known as “citizens budgets”. These documents, while not the official papers of government, help to translate government fiscal policy into a simple and digestible format that ordinary citizens can engage with.

“Citizen budgets” are often created as a collaboration between civil society groups and government departments. One example of this is in Ghana, where the fiscal process is made more understandable to the general public by producing abridged and user-friendly versions of the budget.

According to the Open Budget Index,the most comprehensive international budget transparency survey, some of the best improvements in budget transparency reform are happening in the weakest ranking countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A small amount of improvement in budget transparency can create very large positive impacts for developing nations, in terms of reducing the misuse of money by powerful interests, enhancing the level of trust in government, labelling government priorities and persuading citizens to contribute to the tax base.

More

http://www.internationalbudget.org/opening-budgets/open-budget-initiative/open-budget-survey/publications-2/full-report/

The International Budget Partnership collaborates with civil society around the world to use budget analysis and advocacy as a tool to improve effective governance and reduce poverty.

Why Budgets?

The International Budget Partnership (IBP) focuses on government budgets because they are at the core of development. Budgets are the government’s most powerful tool to meet the needs of its people, especially those who are poor and marginalized. Whether it’s about health, education, or pensions, the most well-meaning public policy has little impact on poverty until it is matched with sufficient public resources, and those resources are used effectively to provide public services.

Our experience shows that when ordinary people have access to comprehensive and timely budget information, skills, and opportunities to participate, broader public engagement in government budget processes can promote substantive improvements in governance and poverty.

But in too many countries, budgetary decisions are made behind closed doors with little or no regard for the public interest. The results are poor policy choices and squandering of scarce public resources.

In order to foster more open, participatory, and accountable public budgeting, IBP partners with civil society organizations around the world, leveraging their knowledge of their country’s political context, their experience navigating policy processes for social change, and their relationships with the public in order to transform their country’s budget system.

https://theconversation.com/a-cheat-sheet-for-reading-the-federal-budget-57640?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2027%202016%20-%204747&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2027%202016%20-%204747+CID_a61b62b7c232cba6550fafc8cea36575&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=A%20cheat%20sheet%20for%20reading%20the%20federal%20budget

The federal budget rolls around, usually on the second week of May, every year. Last year there was over 600 pages of budget papers, pored over by politicians, journalists and lobbyists alike.
...
Is there a budget deficit, how much is it and how long until we balance the books?

The place to look is Budget Paper No. 1: Budget Strategy and Outlook,
...

more

http://phys.org/news/2016-04-relationship-trade-related-job-losses-political.html

In recent years economic studies have illuminated the extent to which global trade agreements, while benefitting many consumers, have also led to significant job losses in the U.S.—particularly due to jobs moving to China after 2001. Now a new study co-authored by MIT economist David Autor (along with non-MIT colleagues David Dorn, Gordon Hanson, and Kaveh Majlesi) identifies a political effect from this economic process. From 2002 through 2010, in U.S. congressional districts particularly affected by job losses due to trade, elected members of the House of Representatives becamemore ideologically extreme, with moderates consistently losing out in both parties. Autor spoke to MIT News this week about the headline-grabbing results.

Q. Your new working paper establishes a strong relationship between job losses in the U.S. due to global trade, and political changes in the U.S. Congress—but the phenomenon at work is not what many people might guess. What did you find?

A. There's been a 30-year trend of rising polarization in the U.S. Congress. A lot of areas economically affected by rising trade exposure, especially in the South, have also been moving politically to the right. We wondered if these economic shocks might be contributing to the political factionalization. There are multiple ways this could work. One would be an anti-incumbent effect: It's well established that politicians are punished for bad economic outcomes. But we don't find that. Another possibility might be that the effects of trade shocks would just strongly favor one party over another. But the answer there is also no, not really.

However, if you look at ideology rather than party, you do see very sharp movements. But they're movements across ideological space. So moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans are being voted out of office in trade-exposed areas and being replaced with much more ideologically ardent substitutes. A lot of these gains are on the right. But that's not entirely the case. If you look at initially Democratic voting districts, you see a very sharp movement to the left—as well as, to some degree, gains for Republicans in some of those districts. So you see this polarization occurring where moderates of both parties are being removed in trade-affected areas, and are being replaced by candidates who win by smaller margins and have more ideological views.

Q. Is it fair to say this also corresponds to the ethnic composition of the voters in these congressional districts? And what accounts for this subtle wrinkle in the findings, in which a few of these districts do flip from the Democrats to the Republicans?

More