I had a chance to participate in the World Bank’s Reimagining Public Finance conference last week. It’s been the culmination of several years of work by Tim Williamson, Paolo de Renzio and many others on how to make public finance reforms work today, 25 years after the batch of handbooks came out that most of us grew up with. A couple of things really stood out to me: - Much highly relevant work in political science, accounting, economics and so on is not noticed by mainstream “PFM”, because there are few shared fora to make up for the lack of a disciplinary focus. - To move towards an outcome-led approach to reform would be a profound shift far more important than any changes to the PFM goals (or roles, or objectives). It changes the whole logic from “do items 1-24, these things will be good for you eventually” to “We want to fix problem X, which options are best suited to get us there?" - There wasn’t much discussion about how PFM reforms will be financed and supported in the coming years. Being able to explain how reforms might lead to better results in health, transport, or fiscal sustainability, sounds like a good idea anyway. It’ll also help to keep stakeholders on side who might otherwise use their resources and political energy elsewhere. Lots more info here: https://lnkd.in/dnTMZb4n
At risk of a superficial cheap shot... I don't see the P word (politics, political economy) in the agenda at all - so was learning from political science noted as a gap (because of few shared fora)(including this one!), or was there some useful contribution?
Independent Consultant
2wI heard the question about resourcing reforms on the sidelines, especially since this methodology would take more intensive work. An open question is seems, though presumably countries themselves could invest more.