ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ research has contributed towards reforms that improve legislative scrutiny and accountability in public finance.
What was the problem?
Accountability and transparency in government are crucial for many reasons, including to help improve policies, maintain public trust, and address challenges. Dr Wehner’s research is committed to promoting reforms that improve legislative scrutiny and accountability in public finance..
What did we do?
Dr Wehner’s research combines interests in comparative politics, political economy, and public policy. Over the past decade his work has largely been concerned with accountability and transparency in government, especially in the context of public finances. A long-standing focus has been the role of , which Wehner examined in his doctoral research, yielding a book and journal publications. This work explores the institutional prerequisites for legislative control of the budget and their relationship with fiscal policy. Wehner’s approach is comparative and includes detailed studies of legislative budgeting.
A second and growing focus of Wehner’s work relates to and its determinants and consequences, which he has examined in several publications. Since 2006, Wehner has also contributed six assessments of and oversight practices in the UK to the Open Budget Index, an independent cross-national ranking and analysis of budgetary disclosure across more than a hundred countries. In addition, he has worked with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to document , including fiscal councils and parliamentary budget offices, which support transparency and legislative scrutiny. This second strand of Wehner’s research stresses the importance of high-quality budgetary information for accountability and sound and sustainable public finances.
What happened?
Over the past six years, Dr Wehner’s research has been the basis of evidence for six legislative bodies that has directly benefited members and parliamentary committees in four different countries:
- March 2017: submission on to the Budget Committee of the German Bundestag.
- February 2017: report for the of the Scottish Parliament and Government.
- April 2016: evidence to the by the Procedure Committee of the UK House of Commons. Also linked evidence to a parallel by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee.
- February 2016: presentation on parliamentary budget scrutiny to the State Budget Control Select Committee of the Parliament of Estonia.
- May 2014: evidence to the inquiry into best practice budget processes by the Finance Committee of the National Assembly for Wales.
- March 2012: evidence to the by the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates of the Canadian House of Commons.
This work has some emerging impacts. Since 2016, the Government of Canada has piloted that draws on Wehner’s testimony, and which a committee report subsequently recommended.
In the UK, the Procedure Committee in 2018 announced a further inquiry into the reform of the budget process, including the possibility of creating a budget committee and a parliamentary budget officer to support scrutiny.
While institutional change is often slow to materialise, Wehner’s work has contributed to a growing debate about how to improve legislative scrutiny of public finances.