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Accountability from the Top Down? Brazil’s Advances in Budget Transparency despite a Lack of Popular Mobilization jorge antonio alves and patrick heller The Brazilian public sector is large by international standards. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it is the fourteenth largest in the world, bigger than developed democracies such as the United Kingdom or Spain. Tax revenues have continued to rise since financial stabilization in the mid-1990s, reaching a high point of 34.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).1 The importance of public sector spending has only increased since democratization, first through the expansion of social programs such as health care and education and later through the extension of the government ’s social assistance conditional cash program, Bolsa Família. These circumstances magnify the importance of budget transparency, both for public oversight and for the management of public finances. As illustrated by the relatively high scores in the Open Budget Index (OBI) of the International Budget Partnership (IBP)—74 percent in 2006 and 2008 and 71 percent in 2010—the Brazilian public sector provides a considerable amount of information regarding budget development and execution.2 Contrary to the minor decline in the latest IBP score, Brazil’s transparency efforts have increased substantially in recent years. Of note, the public sector now releases a vast array of disaggregated expenditure information shortly upon disbursement. On the federal government’s transparency portal, one can access—albeit with different 76 3 This chapter is the product of research and writing conducted primarily by Jorge A. Alves, with support and advice from Patrick Heller. 1. OECD (2010). 2. Available at www.internationalbudget.org/what-we-do/open-budget-survey. The decline in the score was credited to less-detailed year-end and audit reports. 03-2337-0 CH 3:PWW 2284-7 3/11/13 2:26 PM Page 76 degrees of difficulty—information ranging from federal transfers to states and municipalities, expenditures tabulated by government ministries or by program, and even wages for public employees.3 Clicking through the hierarchy of expenditures , one can reach information on the payee and date of payment and even report errors or malfeasance. Legislative branches report expenditures and reimbursements by individual members of Congress, down to proof of payment. In recent years, state and municipal governments have also launched transparency portals with similar fine-grain information.4 Brazil’s high ranking in budget transparency (eighth overall in 2009 and ninth in 2010 in the OBI) is puzzling in that it defies conventional social science explanations . Most structural predictors of government accountability such as socioeconomic indicators would yield contrary forecasts. Brazil ranks relatively low on income measures such as GDP per capita (fifty-five in the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook) and fares particularly poorly with regard to income inequality (seventy-five in the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report).5 Cultural and historical predictors—a Portuguese patrimonial bureaucratic heritage and modern history of state corruption—do not favor transparency. Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index ranks Brazil sixty-nine in the world (up from seventy-five in 2009) in perceived corruption.6 And though not unique to Brazil, the domestic narrative through the media is far from positive, as a constant bombardment of corruption scandals (both large and petty), misuse of funds, and ineffective spending has created popular animosity for both the political class and state employees.7 And yet, since redemocratization in the 1980s and macroeconomic stabilization in the 1990s, Brazilian governments have enacted legislation that has increased accountability, expanded participation, and introduced stringent transparency standards for the public sector. Despite political resistance from elected officials and the need to generate new administrative capacities for compliance, the public sector has largely met these new requirements. But as with most things in Brazil, the national-level narrative clouds a great heterogeneity in local experiences. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the current state of budget transparency in Brazil 77 3. www.tranparencia.gov.br. Although the disclosure of individual wages is common practice in a wide range of countries, it is highly contested in Brazil. Public sector unions are particularly combative on the issue and have used the judicial system to prevent governments from disclosing such information. See, for example, “Prefeitura de SP volta a publicar salários de funcionários na web,” Folha de São Paulo, January 19, 2011. 4. Brazil is a three-tier federal system consisting of a federal...

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