ABSTRACT
Budgets are indispensable to executive government; and accountable budgetary processes are a key mechanism of stable, democratic societies. Budgetary mechanisms provide the means of achieving goals without recourse to arbitrary or even capricious appropriation of resources by executive government. Although budgets and the power to budget are necessary means of matching intent to outcomes and controlling expenditures in democratic societies, governments have long complained that budgets are largely beyond their control, at best only influenced to a marginal degree from year to year. Budgets and the attendant processes have emerged as the main internal organising mechanism of the modern state. Budget processes are not framed in the abstract but in reaction to what the key actors considered to have worked or not worked in previous periods or in other jurisdictions. The public finance literature tends to be written by economists generally interested in the impact of budgets on the economy.
