III.IS THERE AN OPTIMUM LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE BUDGET SYSTEM?

The requirements to be embodied in law vary according to whether there are unicameral or bicameral legislatures, and on the extent to which the legislature is separate from the executive. Using law, the legislature may choose to delegate to the executive the authority to perform many of the steps in budget preparation and execution, as many of the detailed steps are too complex for legislatures. Unless there is strong technical support, legislatures are ill-equipped relative to the large bureaucracies that sustain the executive branch of government in preparing and executing the annual budget. By adopting primary laws, the legislature may choose to delegate many of these detailed processes to secondary law: ordinances, orders or decrees (Table III.1). On the basis of authority delegated to them by the legislature, high-level executive personalities or organs (presidents, prime ministers, cabinets of ministers, the minister of finance) could delegate authority further, to the central budget authority (often the ministry of finance) or other budget managers (e.g. in spending ministries), by way of guidelines and instructions. By contrast, external audit is a constitutional issue whose details are best formulated in a primary law, supplemented with secondary legislation if necessary. An appropriate use of primary and secondary law associated with the allocation of budget responsibilities could be as described in Table III.1.

Table III.1. Stages of the budget cycle and legal instruments

Table III.1 is simply a guideline for indicating areas of budget processes that should primarily be governed by primary or secondary law. Watertight compartmentalisation is not suggested. Clearly primary law could (and should)