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This volume provides three fascinating case studies of subnational budgeting in Croatia, Macedonia, and Ukraine.
These studies, together with an excellent cross-country synthesis, will serve as a valuable resource to those in universities, civil society organizations, parliaments, and the media who are concerned with improving transparency and accountability in public financial management. This publication contributes to a growing international movement to improve budget transparency and broaden participation in public budgeting. While budgeting has traditionally been considered the exclusive preserve of the executive branch of government, this situation is changing. Over the past ten to fifteen years, researchers and activists, together with legislators, auditors-general, and journalists, have been working to bolster their own knowledge and capacity to participate effectively in the budget process.
Crpm research was on the question of sub-national budgetary monitoring in Macedonia. It offers a general analysis of the decentralization reforms in the country with a particular attention to the possibilities for budget watch on local government level. The paper argues that the legal order does not proscribe the process and there are also no clear possibilities within the law for budgetary oversight by concerned citizens and non governmental organizations. Moreover, as the examples from the two municipalities studied, Shtip and Gostivar, show, budgetary monitoring on sub-national level is very difficult to undertake in practice. To change the present circumstances the author recommends a number of policy measures aimed at strengthening the role of the civil sector in the budgetary oversight of the local governments.
