Who Controls the Budget and What Is It For? Parliaments and the Power of the Purse in Contemporary Representative Democracies

Several observers have discussed the deterioration of the overall role of contemporary legislatures. Unlike in the past, however, this decline is increasingly connected to exogenous factors, such as the shift towards supranational governance, the growing role of technocracy, and the increasing complexity of policy-making. Recent crises have further accelerated this trend, in parallel with a broader decline in the reputation of traditional representative institutions. Many scholars therefore conceive of the crisis of parliament as part of a wider decline of representative democracy.
Budgeting sits at the centre of this debate. Due to its complex rules and regulations, the budgetary process has long been recognized as the most advanced frontier of the evolutionary trends that affect the legislative process. Across Europe, governments increasingly struggle to pass the budget. Fragile or minority coalitions, fiscal constraints, unbalanced public accounts, and contested policies have made budget approval a recurrent site of political (and institutional) tension in several countries. Yet this is not a uniform trend, and the room left to parliaments to represent citizens' long-term needs varies markedly across institutional settings. Budgetary policy and process thus represent a litmus test for assessing the balance of power between the executive and the legislature.
This open panel invites contributions that investigate the balance of power between government and parliament throughout the budget process. We welcome studies on spending allocation and amendments, on the legislative procedure, and on the specific role of domestic and external actors, such as ministries, budget committees, and supranational organizations. Comparative and single-country analyses (not limited to European countries) are equally encouraged, as are contributions combining quantitative and qualitative approaches.
Taken together, the papers should help us assess what role parliaments still play in budgeting across different democracies, and whether the budget today operates primarily as an instrument of responsiveness – reflecting citizens' preferences – or of responsibility – meeting external and fiscal constraints. In doing so, the panel speaks directly to broader questions about the health and future of representative democracy.