IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/poango/v9y2021i3p135-144.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Independent Fiscal Institutions Enhance Parliamentary Accountability in the Eurozone?

Author

Listed:
  • Cristina Fasone

    (Department of Political Science, LUISS University, Italy)

Abstract

Independent fiscal institutions (IFIs) have been established or reformed in all eurozone countries following the reform of economic governance. As they are expected to counter the deficit bias of the governments and the information asymmetry of the legislatures and the public over the management of the budget, IFIs may support or even strengthen parliamentary accountability. This hypothesis is tested with regard to three IFIs, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, the Italian Parliamentary Budget Office, and the Spanish Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility. Although the economic context in which the IFIs were created was similar in the three eurozone countries, as was their mandate, these institutions have a rather different institutional positioning, being within the Parliament, in Italy; within the Executive, in Spain; and a stand-alone body in Ireland. This is likely to influence the IFIs’ contribution to parliamentary accountability, we hypothesize that the closer the position of an IFI and its contacts to the parliament, the stronger is the scrutiny of the executive on budgetary policies. The analysis of parliamentary questions, hearings, and of the activation of the ‘comply or explain’ procedures shows that, overall, the IFIs’ potential role to enhance parliamentary accountability has remained underexploited by the three legislatures, with no significant differences as for the institutional positioning of the IFI.

Suggested Citation

  • Cristina Fasone, 2021. "Do Independent Fiscal Institutions Enhance Parliamentary Accountability in the Eurozone?," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(3), pages 135-144.
  • Handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:135-144
    DOI: 10.17645/pag.v9i3.4244
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/4244
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/pag.v9i3.4244?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:135-144. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.