The impact of performance budgeting on the role of the legislature: a four-country study

Performance budgeting initiatives are often partly justified as improving accountability to the legislature. However, it is not always clear whether this is the case. In this article we describe and explain the effects of performance budgeting on the role of the legislature in the budget process. We compare performance budgeting initiatives in the Australian Commonwealth government, the central government of the Netherlands, the Swedish central government and the Canadian federal government. The conclusion of this study is that the performance budgeting initiatives that we studied have a dominant focus on changing the budget structure, but do not seem very successful in altering the budget functions.