Determinants of Online Local Budget Transparency in Croatia and Slovenia

Abstract

As a part of the public governance, transparency started to come forward during the New Public Management reforms, mostly for the evaluation of public sector efficiency. This article focuses on online local budget transparency (OLBT) in two neighbouring countries – Croatia and Slovenia. The article is pioneering in a comparative study of the determinants of budget transparency in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, based on a unique database and measure of transparency. The article tests the determinants of OLBT that reflect the accountability of local authorities and a cornerstone for public participation in the budget process. The following methodology was applied: using a data set of 768 Slovenian and Croatian local governments over the 2015–2017 period and testing it against several financial and socio-economic variables, and a random effects panel logistic regression, separately for Croatia, Slovenia, and a pooled sample. The results indicate that greater size of the population, higher administrative capacity and lower unemployment rate in individual local governments significantly contribute to higher levels of OLBT. This study demonstrates the possibility of developing a standardised measure of local budget transparency and using it to investigate the reasons for different levels of transparency in the two – and potentially other – CEE countries. The results of this and similar studies can serve as a basis for establishing cohesive local budget transparency policies for different countries and creating a combination of policy instruments to enhance transparency.

Improving Budget Transparency to Achieve Effective and Sustainable Governance

“…The conceptual framework of our study leans on the up-to-date studies (Ott et al, 2019;Khagram et al, 2013;Ríos et al, 2013;Rios et al, 2016;Carlitz et al, 2009;Wehner and De Renzio, 2013;Sedmihradska, 2015), which have confirmed the political factor as one of the most important in budget transparency assessment. Additionally, and based on the interview with the state secretary at the Ministry of Finance, which oversaw the evaluation of the OBI survey for 2019, the main purpose of which was to detect and/or verify the main barriers, political will and two other barriers have been isolated.…”

“…Connected to citizens' perception of budget transparency, the influence of the internet and formal education of citizens increase the budget transparency (Rios et al, 2016;Rios et al, 2013), although full disclosure of all relevant fiscal information does not necessarily mean that citizens know if they are getting a good deal for their money (Sedmihradska, 2015). Additionally, the internet and web-based tools can improve openness and transparency in terms of online budget transparency, although this "online transparency" seems to be in the initial phase of research (Ott et al, 2019).…”

“…Those interests are presented as re-election, career building, income increase, etc. (Ferejohn, 1986;Ott et al, 2019).…”

Riau Province’s land and forest governance: The tendency of budget information transparency among Riau’s 12 regencies

“…This is relevant to the opinion of Sedmihradská (2015) on how budget policies are fragmented so that commitments to transparency in the form of policy statements have no impact. Ott et al (2019) stated that it is necessary to motivate citizens to demand local governments to offer greater budget transparency, such as sharing of document information, access, mechanisms, and other budget rules, which are still considered something that needs to be kept secret.…”

Whether to Trust Local Government? : From the Good Governance Perspectives

“…Androniceanu (2021) also contend that applying the principle of transparency would lead to greater trust in laws and regulations. Ott et al (2019) and Klun et al (2019) mentioned that transparency might reduce uncertainty and increase citizens' trust in managing the public budget.…”