Challenges for Democratic State Budget Organization

Abstract

This thought piece is to, at a high level, address modern challenges to the manner budgets are organized in democratic states. To my mind, those challenges are manyfold and interlinked. Therefore, addressing them is dependent on an understanding of all of them. Clearly, each of the mentioned challenges in itself is intricate and deserves detailed attention. In order for the mentioned interlinks and the need for a succinct reduction of complex issues to succinct metrics become plausible I have chosen to here address the mentioned challenges from a high level and risking to not give justice to detail relevant to every of them. I find this appropriate in particular because of the tendency of intricate issues to be detailed and thereby even more difficult to understand. The discussion below shall start with taking positions of two key moments in history which, I think, are characteristic for the formation of budget rules. This historical review is followed by a discussion on how to ensure the most fundamental of relevant metrics, namely the money value that is the most obvious fundament for a population to usefully budget issues given that a majority of which will not consist of specialists that can quickly detect what is relevant about issues, and discussions around the Euro will be reviewed. Further, the consequences of state commitments to combat n against climate change having added a new type of obligations to be dealt with by state will be discussed. Finally, the consequences of states having taken substantial commitments to support investments, be it in renewable energy, be it in innovation at large, and the need having emerged to address flexible of targets will be discussed, and a summary drawn.