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Carlos Santiso
Routledge (2009)
Reviewed by Andy Wynne – andywynne@lineone.net

This book provides a welcome analysis of the role that government auditing can play in the quest
for greater transparency and accountability in the management of public finances across the
Global South. Whilst Carlos Santiso’s detailed analysis is limited to three countries in South
America, his insights will be of great value for all those interested in the role of government
auditing (and as global citizens we should all be in this position).

Carlos examines what he terms autonomous audit agencies in Argentina, Brazil and Chile.
These three countries illustrate the three main models of such agencies – parliamentary or auditor
general; accounts court (cour des comptes); and the Germanic or board. He takes a political
economy approach that addresses the context in which audit agencies are embedded. Reforming
autonomous audit agencies, Carlos concludes, must consider the trajectory of state building, the
role of law in public administration and the quality of governance.

His careful analysis of the key relationship between the audit agency and parliament highlights
the challenges which any of the models may have. Carlos explains this relationship as follows:

[Autonomous audit agencies] are essentially oversight agencies which depend on

accountability institutions to enforce accountability on government. Accountability
institutions are those state powers endowed with the constitutional prerogatives to hold
government to account. In the constitutional model of separation of powers, those
accountability institutions are the legislative and the judiciary (page 57).

As a result, Carlos argues that:

Therefore, a central paradox of [autonomous audit agencies] resides in that their

effectiveness depends both on their independence from government and the efficacy of
their functional linkages with the legislatures and the courts (page 58).

This raises the important issue of who an audit agency should be independent from. Many
commentators merely state that the audit agency should be independent or autonomous to use
Carlos’s term. Carlos considers carefully which institutions the audit agency needs to be free to
criticise without fear of suffering repercussions (line ministries and especially the ministry of
finance), but also those institutions (primarily the legislature) where a positive and constructive
inter-relationship is key to the success of the agency. But even here the relationship may be
complex as it depends on politicians acting in an a-political or selfless manner. Something
which can be incredibly difficult to achieve in many countries!

 

 







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Due to his choice of countries, Carlos does not consider the added complexities of, for example,
French African countries. Here there are usually two types of audit agencies neither of which
may have strong relationships with their parliaments. The first of these is the traditional French
style accounts court (cour des comptes) whose main role is to try (in a judicial sense) the public
accountants who play such a key role in the French approach to public expenditure management.
The other agency is the general state inspection (inspection générale d'État) which is often
dismissed as not being independent of the executive, as in some countries it is a tool of the
president or prime minister.

However, many other audit agencies do not have adequate independence, for example, an
INTOSAI survey undertaken in 2000 found that of 113 Supreme Audit Institutions around 70
had their primary accountability to parliament whilst in near 40 cases it was to the head of state.
Similarly AFROSAI-E (the regional body for English speaking Africa) found in 2001 that only
5% of their members considered that they had adequate independence. In Botswana, Lesotho and
Zimbabwe the Auditor General’s annual reports are submitted to the Minister of Finance to pass
on to parliament, whilst in Zambia the report is submitted to the president. Similarly, the
Auditors General in Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania, for example, are appointed by the president of
these countries (as are the heads of most accounts courts, including that in France). Similarly the
president of an accounts court will typically be appointed by the president of the country will
submit their annual report to the president to pass on to parliament.

Six Francophone governments have designated their general inspector of the state as their
Supreme Audit Institution whilst 10 have designated a cour (or chambre) des comptes. Thus the
following are all members of INTOSAI and so are the Supreme Audit Institution for their
countries:
• Burundi - Inspection Générale des Finances
• Cameroun - Contrôle Supérieur de l’Etat
• Centrafrique - Inspection Générale d'État
• Guinée (Conakry) - Inspection Générale d'État
• Mali - Contrôle Générale des Services Publics
• Niger - Contrôle Générale des Services Publics
• Togo - Inspection Générale d'État.

These two types of audit agency, accounts court and general state inspection, may in fact be
complementary. The accounts court concentrates on issues of regularity (especially legality)
whilst the general state inspection may take on a wider role including performance or value for
money audit. With this role it may be thought that the role of the general state inspection would
be welcomed by many reformers who support this move for audit agencies, but in most cases the
general state inspection has been ignored. Carlos shows the great variety of approaches to the
organisation, remit and work of audit agencies. If, as has been shown in practice, it is so difficult
for traditional audit agencies to adopt performance audit, why not establish a second agency with
this specific responsibility.

The distinction between internal and external audit may also be blurred. Carlos points out that
some audit agencies may undertake ex ante compliance control, or pre-audit as it is termed in
many English speaking African countries, where it is the staple work of the internal auditors. In

 

 







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French speaking African countries the general finance inspection (Inspection Générale des
Finances) is generally considered to be the internal audit function. The general finance
inspection reports to the ministry of finance on the quality of financial management in other
ministries. However, these countries also have the function of the contrôleur financier who
undertakes a similar role to internal audit in Anglophone countries.

Each agency has its own role and several countries have established general state inspections in
recent years (for example, Benin and Djibouti) and Togo is establishing an accounts court in
addition to its general state inspection. Mali has gone further. In 2002, it established a Bureau
du Vérificateur Général (Office of the Auditor General on the Canadian model). This agency
has been created to complement the roles of its existing accounts court and general state
inspection (Contrôle Générale des Services Publics).

Relationships may also change over time, so, for example, Carlos points out the case of Brazil
where:

The logic of external auditing gradually shifted from being an instrument of executive
control of the bureaucracy to becoming an instrument of legislative restraint on the
executive (page 97).

In French African countries this could also occur with a move from the general state inspection
being a mechanism for the president to control of the bureaucracy to the accounts court (or
auditor general) being an instrument of parliaments. With these complexities it is re-assuring
that Carlos believes that his research “does not find a direct correlation between the model of
external audit agency and the effectiveness of external auditing (page 123).

The key findings from his comparative analysis are:

1. Effective autonomous audit agencies improve the credibility of the budget and the quality
of governance.
2. External audit agencies are part of the broader system of checks and balances in
government financial management.
3. Independence is critical to guarantee impartiality, but should not be an end in itself.
4. Shortcomings in government financial accountability reflect deeper dysfunctions in the
relations between external audit agencies and legislatures.
5. External audit systems are in transition, seeking to redefine their role in fiscal control and
their contribution to public management.

This book provides the details of these findings and a wide variety of audit practices, but as
importantly describes how these practices developed over time in conjunction with other public
institutions. As such it is an invaluable source of information for anyone who is involved in the
reform of audit agencies in Latin America or other parts of the world. This will include audit
staff, but also the rest of us as global citizens.

 

 







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Richard Allen
IMF Working Paper WP/09/96 (2009)
www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2009/wp0996.pdf
Reviewed by Andy Wynne – andywynne@lineone.net

Some staff with the World Bank, IMF and other donors are taking slow steps in re-assessing the
effectiveness of their dominant prescriptions for public sector financial management over the last
decade. This has often included large scale mega-reforms such as a Medium Term Expenditure
Framework (MTEF), an Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) and
decentralisation.

Richard Allen has been part of this process from the beginning. In this paper he now recognises
that the development of sound budgetary institutions in countries such as France, the U.K. and
the U.S. has taken a very long timeʊ200 years or moreʊand is still evolving. Institutional
reform is also likely to be very slow in developing countries since the budget is especially prone
to rent-seeking influences. This paper discusses the currently fashionable emphasis on complex,
multiannual PFM reform strategies, which have been strongly promoted by the donor
community; and advocates a simpler approach grounded on Schick’s important principle of
“getting the basics right.”

Richard’s conclusions are first, reforming public financial management is a frustratingly slow
business. In developing countries, the progress of modernizing budgetary institutions needs to be
measured in small steps. Major reforms such as introducing a new treasury system or a medium-
term budget framework can take a decade or longer. Second, governments, donors and
multilateral institutions almost always underestimate the difficulties and challenges, and
overestimate the capacity of government to deliver reforms. They fail to learn from the lessons of
the past.

Whilst not criticising his own institution (the IMF) directly he has some trenchant views on
technical aid to governments in the Global South. Many technical aid providers, Richards says,
have a vested interest in maintaining existing approaches and instruments. Developing countries
should not be regarded as a laboratory or playground for the donors. Fresh thinking is required
but there is not much incentive for change since technical aid providers are not sufficiently held
to account for the imperfections of the models they use, and the advice they offer.

Other examples of similar hard hitting criticisms over the last year are Salvatore Schiavo-Campo
(see http://blog-pfm.imf.org/pfmblog/files/MTEFpaperFinal.doc) and Bill Dorotinsky on the
ICGFM Blog (see http://icgfm.blogspot.com/2008/12/public-financial-management-reform.html ).

The global recession appears to have provided a welcome space for those who do not accept the
current orthodoxy. Such criticism is necessary to try and increase the degree of success with
public financial management reforms. It is hoped that the current upturn does not end this
opportunity. The lessons of Richard’s paper are important and need to impact directly on reform
plans in many countries.

 

 







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Carole Pretorius & Nico Pretorius
DFID Evaluation Working Paper EV698 (2008)
http://www.sida.se/sida/jsp/sida.jsp?d=118&a=45381&language=en_US
Reviewed by Andy Wynne – andywynne@lineone.net

This review of literature on experience with Public Financial Management Reform was
commissioned by DFID on behalf of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the
Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Canadian International
Development Agency (CIDA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB). It aims to synthesise
the main theoretical approaches and findings from evaluations of PFM reform programmes, and
to identify knowledge gaps. The literature reviewed includes academic and technical articles,
development practitioner guides, manuals, handbooks and websites.
The review seeks to address two sets of information: an overview of models and approaches, and
a review of reform experience. It did not prove possible to relate reform experience to the models
presented, which represents a significant shortcoming in our understanding of PFM reform. In
reality, the links between theoretical and practical approaches are weak – in the case of the newer
approaches, reform experience has pre-dated the models, and indeed informed their
development. The evaluations reviewed here did not make use of theoretical models to inform
their evaluation frameworks. It would therefore contribute to the PFM evaluation literature if the
forthcoming evaluation was to base its design framework explicitly on recent theoretical models,
and our understanding of the institutional basis of each model.

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Paolo de Renzio
Overseas Development Institute Working Paper 302 (2009)
http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/download/3333.pdf
Reviewed by Andy Wynne – andywynne@lineone.net

The Public Financial Management (PFM) Performance Measurement Framework, an indicator-

based assessment tool developed by the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability
(PEFA) initiative, was launched in 2005 and has been applied so far in over 60 countries. PEFA
reports provide detailed accounts of the performance of PFM systems along various dimensions.
This paper is based on the results of the 57 PEFA assessments completed as of August 2007. It
looks at comparative cross-country PFM performance, overall and across the different budget
dimensions defined by the PEFA methodology (out-turns, cross-cutting features, budget cycle),
and analyses differences linked to certain country characteristics which might have an influence
over PFM system performance, using both bivariate and multivariate analysis. It is based on a
numerical conversion of the letter-scores used in the assessments, a methodology which can be
considered controversial but which nevertheless yields some interesting results.

 

 







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Sarah Glynn (Editor)
Pluto Press (2009)
Reviewed by Stewart Smyth - s.smyth@dcu.ie

In a similar manner to they way the current economic crisis (with its asset bubble, pyramid
schemes and banks being bailed-out) reminds us of past economic crises stretching back over the
past century and a half, this collection of essays shows how the clock has been turned back on
the housing needs of the poorest in our world. Neoliberalism has attempted (and in many ways
succeeded) in returning housing for the poor to the era when the deserving poor received basic
homes and the rest were left to rot. Years of under-funding and neoliberal policies have lead to
the residualisation of what was once a tenure of first choice for many and an important
expression of collective solidarity in many societies. However, all is not just despair partly
because of the framework Sarah Glynn adopts and more importantly the actions of tenants
groups and housing activists, there is hope that is captured in this book.

Glynn’s framework brings together two aspects of the research on social housing. Firstly, she
adopts David Harvey’s work on neoliberalism as the guiding framework in which to explain the
reforms that social housing has been subjected to over the last 30 years. Central to this
framework is an understanding that the neoliberal project has sought to shift power and wealth
from the poorest in our society to the richest. This process though is laden with contradictions,
not least of which is the resistance generated by social movements and housing activists to
changes in social housing. Secondly, the framework is then utilised in a series of chapters by
other contributors, to analyse and explain the changes to social housing in a number of different
countries. The outcome of which is a comprehensive assessment of the impact of neoliberalism
on a key human need across several national boundaries.

In the first three chapters, Glynn develops a framework within which to analyse the changes in
recent decades to social housing. Largely based on the UK Glynn’s arguments develop along
three strands. Firstly, there is a historical look at social housing throughout the 20th century. Two
important factors are highlighted that remain pertinent today – those in charge have only invested
in social housing building as a respond to movements (or the threat of) from below and, secondly
despite this pressure UK (and other) governments have only ever seen social housing as an
expedient, rather than integral service central to the welfare state. Secondly, Glynn sets the
housing policies of the last thirty years in the context of the rise of neoliberalism. Glynn
illustrates how Harvey’s formulation, that neoliberalism’s achievement “has been to redistribute,
rather than to generate, wealth and income” in favour of the rich and powerful and at the expense
of the poor, has been achieved in social housing. Central to this process has been the
commodification of the social housing stock through privatisations (e.g. PFIs and stock transfers)
and the introduction of the tenants’ right-to-buy schemes. Glynn shows how this has benefited
speculation from a new breed of “investors” and growing corporate organisations (such as
housing associations) that buy up former municipal housing on the cheap. In the process, the best
quality public housing has been taken into private hands leaving a residual stock of often the
poorest estates in the worse physical conditions. At this point, the third strand appears;
gentrification through regeneration. Thus, central government has reduced social housing to a

 

 







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residual service, often with the active support of local government bodies, who now come along
with plans to regenerate areas based on notions of housing market failure. Local residents are
moved out, those who may have bought their own homes are forced out by the use of
compulsory purchase orders (CPOs). The area (often in a prime location), is then handed over to
a private development scheme who have only minimal responsibilities placed on them to provide
social housing, which can in any case often be avoided through payments to the local authority.
Meanwhile the original tenants have no right of return.

It is this process of gentrification through regeneration that many find particularly invidious and
has become a front on which campaigners and academics has engaged. For example, Chris Allen
has documented the regeneration of housing in Liverpool in lead up to the “City of Culture” in
2008. In an echo of the Engels’ description of the attitudes of wealthy in Manchester in the
1840s, Allen reports a senior housing renewal manager in Liverpool commented “people driving
into the city must have a more pleasant outlook than the one that is currently there”. Thus
through the euphemisms of housing market failure and regeneration working class communities
are disbursed and private developers gain access to prime land.

Having established a framework centred around the neoliberal agenda the middle chapters apply
it to the circumstances in different economies. What quickly becomes apparent is that though
different countries all have different starting points and there are also subtle differences in the
way neoliberal reforms are pursued, the direction of travel is the same for all. Thus, two inter-
related neoliberal processes – the rolling back of the state and the rolling out of neoliberal
provision – are evident in the case studies of countries with such differing welfare traditions as
Sweden and the USA. A second point is also highlighted in the manner in which this dual
process is pursued by governments, who will attempt to divide tenants groups thus reducing
effective opposition; play on pessimism by arguing there is no alternative, and reduce the cause
of “problem estates” to one of “faulty design” thus ignoring all other socio-economic factors
such as poverty, cuts in provision and racism. There is little or no open discussion of policy
consequences (e.g. the impact on existing communities of regeneration); there is almost no
control of the regeneration processes by local communities and existing tenants (the one
exception to this is the requirement for a tenants’ ballot before municipal housing in the UK can
privatised). The language often used by policy-makers and others is drawn from the Orwellian
school of “newspeak”, as forcefully argued in the case study on the USA. In this respect, sections
of academia have been complicit, as the furore over Chris Allen’s work shows. Allen has
accused academics of imposing middle class values onto working class communities and not
understanding (either through ignorance or deliberate avoidance) the nature of those
communities.

Despite all the foregoing, the book is not left on a pessimistic note. After the case studies, Glynn
contributes the final two chapters charting the history of housing campaigns (mainly in Britain)
and the prospects for a revival of social housing. Glynn locates social housing policy as an
outcome of both campaigns over housing and broader class struggles. These campaigns come in
different forms such as the court cases against the use of CPOs or the refusal of locally elected
politicians to implement central government policies. Housing campaigns come in a variety of
forms from the direct action of the post-war squatters to Les Enfants de Don Quichotte tent
encampments set up in French cities in 2006-07 to highlight the plight of the homeless. Or the

 

 







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Defend Council Housing (DCH) campaign in Britain that has brought together tenant activists
and groups, politicians and trade unions to campaign against the privatisation of municipal
housing and in favour of increased funding for this tenure. The variety of forms of resistance
raises the question of which strategy and tactics should be adopted. Here Glynn does state her
position in favour of organising campaigns from below and to link the question of housing to
broader issues. However, this is argued in a rather abstracted manner and deserves a more
detailed consideration.

One other small criticism concerns the focus on developed economies in the case studies.
Readers of this journal in particular will note the absence of the experience of housing activists
in developing and poor countries. However, this could be rectified in a subsequent volume. That
said, “Where the other half lives” strengths far outweigh these weaknesses and the book
represents an important contribution to the literature on the impacts of neoliberalism on housing
the poorest. As such, its audience is not just those involved in housing but anybody looking for
an alternative to the current neoliberal hegemony.

 

 







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