PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING IN ZIMBABWE: EXPERIENCES AND REFLECTIONS FROM HARARE CITY COUNCIL (Published)
Participatory budgeting (PB) presents a direct-democracy approach to budgeting. It offers residents an opportunity to learn about Harare City Council operations and to debate and influence the allocation of public resources. PB incontrovertibly strengthens all-encompassing governance by giving marginalised and excluded groups the chance to have their voices heard and to influence public decision making vital to their interests. Therefore, PB remarkably promotes good governance. PB faces a lot of challenges in local authorities in Zimbabwe. There is serious lack of residents’ participation in policy and decision making in council budget formulation. The residents are marginalised. The study found that there are massive institutional capacity, financial and human resources capacity gaps at Harare City Council. The policy, legal and institutional frameworks do not support PB. The study recommends that the legal instruments be amended, e-governance system be installed and the councillors should be capacitated through capacity building programmes
Keywords: Budgeting, Governance, Harare City Council, Participation, Participatory budgeting
FINANCIAL INTERMEDIATION, INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: THE CASE OF TUNISIA (Published)
The objective of our work is to show the importance of a healthy institutional framework in the finance-growth relation. In this context, we start by presenting, a theoretical lighting on this subject while trying to define the concept of the governorship and to determine its various measurements. Then, we empirically test a model of growth of Solow increased by the human capital to treating the relation between financial intermediation, institutions and economic growth. The various estimates were made by Vector Autoregressive Method over the period of 1980 to 2011 for Tunisia. Following these estimates, it seems that the quality of the institutions is regarded as an important factor which must not be neglected in the study of the relation between the financial sphere and the real sphere
Keywords: Economic growth, Financial intermediation, Governance, Vector Auto Regressive (VAR)
