Constitutional reform, democratic governance, and budgetary politics: Comparative cases from Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa

Over the last 25 years a number of emerging democracies in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia have engaged in constitutional reforms. There is a widespread assumption that constitutional reforms improve governance, but the links are not well understood. Building on current institutional debates, this research probes the relations between constitutional reforms and fiscal policy outcomes by studying the constitutional drafting process in the Philippines (1987), Thailand (1997), and South Africa (1996). This study investigates the effects of the process on two critical dimensions of fiscal policy: fiscal discipline and fiscal equity. Given the intricate relationship between the two, I question why in some countries but not others governance dynamics unleashed by constitutional reforms have contributed to greater fiscal discipline and fiscal equity.; This work contends that fiscal governance outcomes following constitutional reforms are best understood by drawing attention to (a) the impact of the reform process itself, (b) the institutional choices made, and (c) the role of social agents. It suggests that the reform process is critical in socializing actors to new rules and norms and in creating acceptance of the constitutional order; the institutional choices it makes---in particular the degree of power concentration---are critical in determining actual policy choices. Social actors, on the other hand, by exploiting the institutional discretion given help account for variation within similar institutional settings. Combined, all three elements help to account for the fiscal governance outcomes in our three cases.; The study concludes by providing an innovative analytical framework of constitutional political economy based on constitutional equilibria and disequilibria. Applicable to a number of cases, it seeks to advance the current institutional research agenda and also provide useful guidelines for practitioners in the governance field.