Public accountability and the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability tool: an assessment
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852315597773 |
| Author | André Loozekoot,Geske Dijkstra |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2017, Vol. 83(4) 806–825
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852315597773
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International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Article
Public accountability and the
Public Expenditure and Financial
Accountability tool: an assessment
Andre
´Loozekoot
Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Netherlands
Geske Dijkstra
Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract
Since 2005, the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability tool has been widely
used in developing countries and emerging economies to evaluate the performance of
public financial management systems. In this article, we assess the strengths and weak-
nesses of the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability instrument tool for eval-
uating public financial accountability. We examine the theoretical literature on public
accountability in order to derive a suitable normative framework to assess the Public
Expenditure and Financial Accountability tool. However, given that this literature is
based on experiences in developed countries, we must extend it to also take into
account the political cultures and practices in developing countries. Using this extended
framework, we assess the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability indicators
related to, in particular, parliamentary committees for financial oversight and Supreme
Audit Institutions. We conclude that the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability
tool could devote more attention to the independence of Supreme Audit Institutions,
the nature of accountability debates, democratic inclusion and horizontal accountability
mechanisms
Points for practitioners
The Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability tool has been applied in more than
116 countries and its reports offer valuable information for practitioners and research-
ers around the world. It is the only publicly available data set that measures the
performance of financial committees of parliament and Supreme Audit Institutions.
The strengths and weaknesses revealed in this article should be taken into account
when using the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability tool for research or
for evaluating the quality of financial accountability systems in particular countries.
Corresponding author:
Geske Dijkstra, Erasmus University Rotterdam, PO Box 1738, T17-34, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The
Netherlands.
Email: dijkstra@fsw.eur.nl
The international financial institutions and donor agencies governing the Public
Expenditure and Financial Accountability Secretariat can use the recommendations of
this article to further improve the framework.
Keywords
accountability, public administration, democracy, developing countries, public finance
Introduction
Public accountability cannot be taken for granted; it must be earned by an account-
able, transparent, controllable and responding government. Without accountabil-
ity, there is space for abuse of power, corruption and totalitarianism. For this
reason, accountability is the legitimating foundation of democracy (Flinders,
2001: 9). Yet, in order to stay in office, some governments need to be more account-
able than others. Countries widely diverge in their rules and regulations on how the
government collects and spends public funds and on the extent to which legislative
bodies are involved in approving and scrutinizing the use of these funds. In par-
ticular, in developing countries, mechanisms for public accountability are not as
strong as they are in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) member states.
In 2001, a group of multilateral and bilateral donors joined forces and created a
common diagnostic tool for assessing financial accountability performance. Using
and combining earlier assessment tools, such as the Public Expenditure Review and
the Country Financial Accountability Assessment, the Public Expenditure and
Financial Accountability (PEFA) instrument was designed (see: www.pefa.org).
Since then, it has become the international standard for assessing public financial
management in developing countries and emerging markets. The PEFA Secretariat
at the World Bank has coordinated and completed more than 200 PEFA assess-
ments in over 116 countries between 2005 and 2011, thus covering 65% of all
countries (PEFA Secretariat, 2011). The PEFA outcomes are not only used by
donors in order to assess the strength of national financial systems, for example,
when considering budget support, but also increasingly used by country officers
themselves for benchmarking their systems and as guidelines for reforms. Finally,
they are also used by researchers. It is therefore important to assess to what extent
the PEFA scores are valid assessments of public financial management performance.
This article aims to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the PEFA instru-
ment for assessing public accountability, thus focusing on those aspects of the
PEFA that are key for public accountability: parliamentary financial oversight
via the Parliamentary Budget Committee (PBC) and the Public Accounts
Committee (PAC), and Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs). Although more mech-
anisms are important for public accountability, these three mechanisms form the
top of the democratic chain of control in parliamentary systems. Examining public
Loozekoot and Dijkstra 807
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