Civil Society, Democracy and Budgeting: Citizens Engagement and Transformations in Nigeria’s Budgeting

IF 0.9 4区社会学 Q3 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Politikon Pub Date : 2021-07-03 DOI:10.1080/02589346.2021.1956293

B. Nwosu, Uzochukwu Amakom, T. Isife

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

ABSTRACT Democracy in the sphere of policy-making warrants fulfilling the popular will by opening spaces for citizen knowledge of the governance processes participation, inclusion and a framework for accountability. The four budget stages of preparation, approval, implementation, and audit necessarily ought to integrate the above principles for an essential nexus with democracy. Using the work of two groups of civil society partners working on Nigeria’s budgeting, we studied the 2016–2019 period around the principles of democratic budgeting as well as explored changes related to civic engagements over the period. We found a monopoly of budget preparation by cloistered bureaucratic experts. The approval stage is marred by politics of vested interests in the legislature and executive with resulting delays in implementation and limited monitoring of the process by citizens. Budget audit suffers delays and non-response to its sensitive findings. Nonetheless, participatory civic engagements have led to a legal framework for civic vigilance in budgeting and enabled the country to save US$500,373,421.40 from frivolous allocations as well as annual budget adjustments for pro-poor inclusiveness and fair distribution of capital projects. Hence, civil society work for democratic budgeting regime is slow but incremental and unfolds amidst encumbering political and institutional dynamics.

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公民社会、民主与预算:尼日利亚预算中的公民参与与变革

决策领域的民主保证通过开放空间让公民了解治理过程、参与、包容和问责框架来实现民意。预算的编制、批准、执行、审计四个阶段必须综合上述原则，与民主形成本质联系。利用两组致力于尼日利亚预算的民间社会合作伙伴的工作，我们围绕民主预算原则研究了2016-2019年期间，并探讨了这一时期与公民参与相关的变化。我们发现预算编制是由与世隔绝的官僚专家垄断的。立法机关和行政部门的既得利益政治破坏了批准阶段，导致实施拖延，公民对程序的监督有限。预算审计受到拖延和对其敏感发现不予回应的困扰。尽管如此，参与性的公民参与已经形成了一个公民在预算编制方面保持警惕的法律框架，并使该国能够从无意义的拨款中节省500 373,421.40美元，以及每年调整有利于穷人的包容性和公平分配资本项目的预算。因此，民间社会为民主预算制度所做的工作是缓慢但渐进的，并在阻碍政治和体制动态的情况下展开。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Politikon POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

1.90

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

32 weeks

期刊介绍： Politikon focuses primarily on South African politics, but not exclusively so. Over the years the journal has published articles by some of the world" leading political scientists, including Arend Lijphart, Samuel Huntingdon, and Philippe Schmitter. It has also featured important contributions from South Africa"s leading political philosophers, political scientists and international relations experts. It has proved an influential journal, particularly in debates over the merits of South Africa"s constitutional reforms (in 1983 and 1994). In the last few years special issues have focused on women and politics in South Africa, and the South African election of 1999.