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Informal Institutions and Horizontal Accountability: Protocols in the Chilean Budgetary Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Ignacio Arana Araya
Ignacio Arana Araya*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh iga3@pitt.edu
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Abstract

Studies of executive-legislative relations are usually based only on the analysis of formal institutions, although informal institutions also shape interbranch behavior. This omission leads to questionable results when scholars examine the capacity of state institutions to audit other public agencies and branches of government. This article explores how the protocols, an informal institution that shapes the Chilean budgetary negotiations, have increasingly allowed the congress to have a more relevant budgetary role than what the constitution permits. It argues that protocols accommodate some of the undesired consequences of a charter that is strongly biased toward the central government, and describes how this institution has departed from its stringent budgetary focus to encompass broader executive-legislative agreements that enhance the legislature's capacity to oversee the executive.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , Winter 2013 , pp. 74 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2013

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