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The focus of this paper is on the institutions outside the executive branch that include supreme audit institutions, legislative oversight bodies (such as parliamentary public accounts and budget committees, and ombudsmen), related independent bodies, and civil society organizations. Through their support for accountability, donor countries and international financial institutions seek to help countries: promote voice and accountability as an intrinsic human right, and improve development outcomes in terms of poverty reduction, sustainable development. The report is organized as: first, provide a brief literature review of research on accountability, and how donors and other actors can work to improve it, including a review of the experience of other bilateral and multilateral donors in supporting domestic accountability through their policies, strategies, and behaviors as well as through direct support to accountability actors and systems. Second, briefly review the guidance prepared for Bank staff toward enhancing accountability. Third, review some examples of the Bank's experience in supporting domestic accountability. Finally, we present some conclusions and accountability-related questions for further analysis.

Thailand has been pursuing the implementation of results based management techniques in the public sector for over a decade. Leading this task is the Office of the Public Sector Development Commission (OPDC) which has been supporting various agencies and departments in undertaking a wide variety of results based management reforms, including key performance indicators, balanced scorecards, and individual performance bonuses, among others. This report summarizes the results of a two week fact finding mission and a one day workshop conducted by the Office of the Public Sector Development Commission (OPDC) of the Prime Minister's office in collaboration with the World Bank's Public Sector Performance Global Expert Team (PSP-GET) held on September 24, 2010 in Bangkok, Thailand. This report covers the main areas to consider in implementing a results based management system. The report provides an overview of Thailand's Results Based Management (RBM) system, with an emphasis on lessons from international experience in leveraging performance information to deliver results. Chapters on how to link performance with planning and budgeting, as well as an overview of incentives to improve performance are included. Each chapter is loosely structured in the following way: issues identified during discussions; relevant lessons from international experiences; and overall recommendations and findings of the PSP-GET.

In this paper we take a close look at some of the particular pathways by which majoritarian and consensual institutions affect governability. We demonstrate that the mix of majoritarian and consensual institutions found within a country can influence these pathways quite dramatically, such that they produce rather different consequences for governability, even when these pathways are relatively similar in nature. Particularly, we focus on the rules governing the relationship between the President and the Legislature, especially the appropriation of amendments proposed by legislators. In some presidential countries, the President possesses a partial veto (or a line-item veto), which allows him/her to approve or strike appropriations, which legislators introduce in amendments. Concentrating on the case of Brazil, we argue and demonstrate that whether or not the President can use this tool to sustain governing majorities (i.e., to in-crease governability) depends on the kind of amendment to the budget intro-duced by legislators. One kind, individual amendment, is linked to the majori-tarian institution of a powerful presidency and therefore helps to increase governability. A second kind, collective amendment, is linked to consensual institutions and actually does not enhance legislative support for the Executive. Nesse artigo é dedicada especial atenção às trajetórias pelas quais instituições majoritárias e consensuais afetam governabilidade. É demonstrado que distintas combinações de instituições majoritárias e consensuais afetam diferentemente as estruturas de governabilidade de um determinado país, mesmo quando essas instituições têm naturezas similares. São analisadas as regras que regulam as relações entre o executivo e o legislativo, em especial a execução das emendas orçamentárias dos parlamentares. Em alguns regimes presidencialistas, o Presidente dispõe de veto parcial, o que lhe permite a aprovação ou bloqueio da execução de emendas introduzidas pelos legisladores. Através da análise do caso brasileiro, é argumentado que a habilidade do Presidente de se utilizar da execução de emendas como uma ferramenta de formação de maiorias depende da natureza da própria emenda: individual ou coletiva. É demonstrado que emendas individuais servem como uma ferramenta fundamental para construção de maiorias, o que propicia maior governabilidade. Por outro lado, emendas coletivas, por terem uma natureza consensual, não propiciam aumento de suporte legisla-tivo em favor do executivo.

This paper covers selective aspects of Spain's experience in evaluating government performance and public policies. Rather than a cohesive evaluation system, there is instead a constellation of organizations, with evaluation mandates and/or practices, which are not interrelated. These organizations and their respective practices have been evolving without coordination over the past three decades. An evaluation culture is slowly emerging, amid different conceptual approaches used by different organizations that are managing and/or conducting evaluations. Evaluation activity has been taking place in Spain for years, with a marked acceleration and qualitative shift since 2005. Despite Spain's standing as an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country as well as a European Union (EU) country, it still has not developed a consolidated evaluation system. This fact points out how long-term and complex is the task of institutionalizing an evaluation system. Finally, this paper contains several website addresses where readers can obtain additional information on aspects of the paper that most interest them and to follow the Spanish experience as it unfolds.

The public expenditure and institutional assessment (PEIA) were motivated by a number of factors. First, both the Government of Iraq (GoI) and its international development partners have recognized the critical importance of sound management of Iraq's substantial public financial resources. Both parties support the reform and modernization of public financial management (PFM), as articulated in the International Compact for Iraq (ICI). Secondly, international experience demonstrates the importance of establishing a baseline against which progress in PFM over time can be measured. This implies the need for an assessment which provides the information necessary to measure the performance of a country's PFM system. Thirdly, the devastating circumstances in Iraq during the past 5 years have made the institutional arrangements for PFM the subject of considerable uncertainty. The PEIA can help to shape and prioritize the necessary development program. The report is organized in two main parts. Volume one contains a summary of the main issues to emerge from the public expenditure and financial accountability (PEFA) assessment and a discussion of a number of specific PFM issues of current importance to Iraq, including: capital investment budgeting (CIB), oil revenue management, the Iraq financial management information system (IFMIS), public accounting and accountability, and payroll management. Volume two contains a detailed technical analysis behind the PEFA assessment.

The public expenditure and institutional assessment (PEIA) were motivated by a number of factors. First, both the Government of Iraq (GoI) and its international development partners have recognized the critical importance of sound management of Iraq's substantial public financial resources. Both parties support the reform and modernization of public financial management (PFM), as articulated in the International Compact for Iraq (ICI). Secondly, international experience demonstrates the importance of establishing a baseline against which progress in PFM over time can be measured. This implies the need for an assessment which provides the information necessary to measure the performance of a country's PFM system. Thirdly, the devastating circumstances in Iraq during the past 5 years have made the institutional arrangements for PFM the subject of considerable uncertainty. The PEIA can help to shape and prioritize the necessary development program. The report is organized in two main parts. Volume one contains a summary of the main issues to emerge from the public expenditure and financial accountability (PEFA) assessment and a discussion of a number of specific PFM issues of current importance to Iraq, including: capital investment budgeting (CIB), oil revenue management, the Iraq financial management information system (IFMIS), public accounting and accountability, and payroll management. Volume two contains a detailed technical analysis behind the PEFA assessment.

This paper synthesizes the findings from a series of case studies on the interaction between the PRSP process and the budget. The five studies, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Tanzania and Vietnam aim to assess the extent to which public finance management and budget allocations reflect the principles and content of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper PRSP, hence providing insights into progress in PRS implementation. The cases also shed light on whether the PRSP process itself has fostered more accountable, efficient and pro-poor budget processes and allocations as of 2003.The PRSP process, with its focus on data and information for evidence-based policy-making, open and participatory policy-making processes, poverty results and country-led donor coordination, alignment and harmonization has the potential to significantly improve the pro-poor focus and general accountability of budgeting processes.The cases confront a number of methodological challenges. First, in some countries and sectors, lack of appropriate data constrained the extent to which the research questions could be fully answered. Second, the PRSP remains a relatively recent innovation in all the countries studied and we recognize that many of our findings are preliminary, and require additional confirmation over time. Third, any assessment of the value added of the PRSP approach needs to be cognizant of the initial conditions in country, both to avoid ascribing successes to the PRSP which pre-date its existence, and to temper expectations about what the approach can deliver in a relatively short space of time given the starting point of each country. To address this last challenge, the case studies explicitly acknowledge the pre-existing situation in-country and try to assess the value added of the PRSP process.The four countries studied have a number of common features.Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all five countries share a high-level political commitment to addressing poverty, although the extent to which this commitment permeates throughout government agencies varies from country to country.The five countries, however, also display many distinctive features. Bolivia and Cambodia, for example, both suffer from high degrees of political fragmentation, which in Bolivia has manifested itself as civil unrest on a number of occasions in the last two years. Burkina Faso, Tanzania, and Vietnam, on the other hand, benefit from more stable political systems and an inherited commitment to pro-poor policies from socialist governments.