Results-oriented Budget Practice in oecd countries odi working Papers 209

3.4 Summary 
The shift to an outputs and outcomes focus is based on a desire to improve programme efficiency 
and particularly effectiveness. The Canadian experience shows the importance first of ensuring that 
outputs are within the control of managers and can be linked with outcomes and second that reforms 
are properly evaluated through commissioned research. Comparison of the experience of different 
countries shows variations in the extent to which contractual mechanisms are used, with the UK 
emerging as a leader. 
The results focus is accompanied in most leading countries by a shift to accruals accounting which 
enables better links to be made between costs and outputs, with a longer-term focus enabled.
Costed outputs with causal links to outcomes are published by Australian agencies, thus enhancing 
accountabilities. This approach is beset by technical difficulties which member countries are 
tackling, supported by an OECD working party. It is recognised that the cultural shift required for 
full implementation will only be realised in the longer term. 

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Chapter 4: Accountabilities 
This chapter is divided into three sections. First it examines the cultural and constitutional contexts 
within which budgeting operates. It then examines ex-post accountability and ex ante 
accountability in turn. 
4.1 Political cultures and constitutions 
Here the political cultures in which different countries is operating is examined and the significance 
of constitutional arrangements is considered. 
A major study of administrative reform in eight democracies concluded that the public management 
reform methodology was not “universally accepted and that there was no general wave of public 
sector reforms” (Olsen and Peters, 1996, p 13). In attempting to provide an institutional explanation 
of variation in the pace and direction of public management reform, the authors distinguished 
between the “statist, public law and legalistic regimes found in Continental Europe” and countries 
with an “Anglo-Saxon tradition of separation of the state from civil society, with the latter having 
claims to primacy over the former” (1996, p 17). They argued that the European tradition involves 
a political culture which asserts the role of the state in managing society while in Anglo-Saxon 
countries the state “arises from a compact between citizens and government” (1996, p 17). This 
goes a considerable way to explaining why public management reform has been more wide-ranging 
in countries such as the UK, the United States, Canada and New Zealand. However, as we shall see 
when different countries are examined, the pace and direction of reform is neither uniform nor fully 
consistent with this analysis. 
Following Hood (1991), moves towards systems of new public management revolve around the 
relative dominance of contrasting political and managerial values. Hood identifies three clusters of 
values revolving around equity, robustness and efficiency. He argues that in countries such as the 
United Kingdom, efficiency based values dominated the public management policy agenda in the 
1980s. Thus, economy, efficiency and effectiveness have been goals in themselves. While the 
early eighties witnessed the pursuit of economy and efficiency, there was an increasing emphasis on 
effectives in the 1990s. Emphasis on these values goes part of the way to explain shifts in budget 
management policy from inputs to outputs to outcomes. 
Pollitt discusses the significance of the politico-administrative regime for management and 
budgetary reform. Looking at New Zealand, which, he asserts, amongst OECD states, has followed 
the most sweeping reform programme, he notes that this “was only lightly encumbered with 
constitutional and legal constraints. On the other hand, a consensualist regime makes it more likely 
that management change will proceed on a more cautious, incremental basis – which is mainly what 
we see in the case of Finland, The Netherlands, and Sweden” (1999a, p 41). In this context, as 
noted above, New Zealand has taken very cautious steps towards outcome based budgeting because 
of clear division of responsibilities between ministers and chief executives of departments 
(Kibblewhite and Ussher, 2002).