Boom and Bust Budgeting: Repetitive Budgetary Processes in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana

One of the least studied topics in comparative budgeting is how governments budget during economic and boom and bust cycles. Theory and past evidence suggest that national budgets of poorer countries are made and remade continuously over these periods. Case material from Nigeria as well as supplemental information from Ghana and Kenya illustrate the principal features of the persistence, types, and sequence of such repetitive budgeting. The experience of the three countries in boom and bust budgeting has considerable implications both for a theory of comparative budgeting and for national budget management and policy in Subsaharan Africa specifically.     

State Performance‐Based Budgeting in Boom and Bust Years: An Analytical Framework and Survey of the States

The authors examine the track record of applying performance‐based budgeting (PBB) across three time periods within a sample of U.S. state governments: (1) throughout the 1990s, (2) in the early 2000s, and (3) during the Great Recession. State‐level PBB is analyzed according to four elements: (1) the development of performance measures, (2) its applicability to budgeting and management processes, (3) its utility across the business cycle, and (4) its usefulness for budget players. An analytical framework is devised that highlights the “publicness” of American government, draws on the principal–agent model, and considers incentive mechanisms theory. Findings confirm that a good performance measurement system takes time to develop and operate well and that PBB functions more effectively for executive management than legislative purposes. PBB is used more by the states during strong economic times as opposed to during economic downturns. More importantly, PBB is only selectively applied by legislators in most states, whereas top executive policy makers, middle managers, and staff embrace and utilize PBB systems more extensively.     

Rwanda: the aftermath

Book reviews: Des Forges, Alison, Leave None to Tell the Story. Genocide in Rwanda (reviewed by Mark Levene); Gourevitch, Philip, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families. Stories from Rwanda (reviewed by Mark Levene); Sibomana, André, Hope for Rwanda. Conversations with Laure Guibert and Hervé Deguine (reviewed by Mark Levene)     

Trustworthiness: the Commentators

Mark Thompson deplores the decline in the public trust of government and of public service institutions such as the BBC. But there has also been a decline in another form of trust: government's trust in the ability of professionals such as doctors and teachers to deliver high quality public services. And, unlike Thompson's type of trust, this decline was inevitable, because it was based on untenable assumptions concerning professional motivation. The author discusses the importance of trust in an unwritten constitution, including trust in the use made of public resources, trust that appointments are being made on merit, trust that the civil service is ‘speaking truth unto power’ behind the scenes and ultimately trust that it retains the ability to serve future governments. In a world where trust in institutions is diminishing, there are still surprising levels of trust in the world of private philanthropy. The public are only too ready to give donations without seeking to question, especially in the wake of major disasters. Yet the nature of aid agencies has changed dramatically in the past thirty years into major global enterprises with sophisticated media and marketing operations. In this case a greater degree of scepticism from those who donate and paradoxically less trust might actually result in better outcomes from aid and better use of funding. Trust is critical to the mission of the FCO. The public needs to trust the competence and sound judgment of the professional diplomats. The diplomats themselves need to be able to rely on the commonsense of their fellow colleagues. Ministers and diplomats need to trust each other. And other governments need to have confidence in the discretion of their British counterparts. This is an increasing challenge in the world of instant news. Trust can be quickly lost by indiscreet or self‐serving revelations. But the key is to be as open and transparent as possible about the processes of diplomacy. A new survey commissioned by the British Journalism Review demonstrates that public confidence in journalism has collapsed over the last five years. This is particularly true for the commercial broadcasters ITV and Channel 4, whose journalism has traditionally commanded as much public esteem as the BBC. Trust in the BBC and print journalists has also declined, and journalism suffered more than any of the other 16 occupational groups being assessed. This is partly due to the cumulative effect of various “fakery” scandals that have afflicted broadcasters over the last 18 months and partly down to a more widespread cynicism directed at those in authority.     

Afterword: the usual suspects

Anthropology has been widely identified as the colonial science par excellence. General propositions that anthropologists advanced about the nature of races, cultures or societies, or about particular populations, are supposed to have motivated and justified a variety of colonial and postcolonial policies, including even genocidal massacres. There are a number of problems with arguments of this sort. The theories of the anthropologists were diverse and much disputed, and their political views were by no means predictable or undifferentiated. Nor is it generally easy to specify the pathways by which these ideas supposedly exerted their influence.