Dr Joachim Wehner

This is a compulsory course for the first year of the MPA in Public Policy and Management.  It is also an option to students on the MPA in Public and Economic Policy/MPA International Development/MPA European Public and Economic Policy, MSc Political Science and Political Economy, MSc Public Policy and Administration and MSc Public Management and Governance, as well as interested MSc and research students with appropriate backgrounds up to a maximum of 40 students in total.

The course examines contemporary issues in public budgeting and financial management, and how they interface with public management drawing on comparative experience in OECD countries and elsewhere.

Topics include: theories of budgeting, time horizons in budgeting; legal frameworks; fiscal rules; top-down budgeting; legislative budgeting; fiscal decentralisation; performance budgeting; budget transparency; budget reform; special issues in developing countries; accounting and auditing in the public sector; parliamentary scrutiny of audit findings.

Twenty lectures and seminars, plus three revision sessions.

Students are expected to produce two formative essays, one each in the MT and LT.

A full reading list will be distributed at the beginning of the course. Relevant items include: A B Wildavsky and N Caiden (2004), The New Politics of the Budgetary Process, New York, Pearson/Longman; D-J Kraan (1996), Budgetary Decisions: A Public Choice Approach, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; A Schick (1998), A Contemporary Approach to Public Expenditure Management, Washington DC, World Bank Institute; M Hallerberg (2004), Domestic Budgets in a United Europe: Fiscal Governance from the End of Bretton Woods to EMU, Ithaca, Cornell University Press; M Power (1999), The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Consists of three parts: (i) an unseen three-hour written examination in ST (60%); (ii) a coursework essay of up to 5,000 words, due in the first week after the end of LT (30%); (iii) two application exercises, carried out in groups, together account for 10%.