A Study On Legal Mechanism To Realize The Citizen's Right Of Participation Under The View Of Budget Governance

The thought of modern budget demands the transfer from ‘the budget of administration' to ‘the budget of governance'. Governance, which means closer connection and better communication with the government, society and market. What's more, it also brings more effective interaction between power and right. In the process of improving the system of national governance capability and the modernization of governance capability, the importance of deepening the reform of finance system cannot be ignored. The upgrade of both the concept and the system of budget will bring about new situation of budget management as it is a vital part of the financial system. The new Budget Law shows its purpose of legislation to ‘regulate the revenue and expenditure of the government, strengthen the control of budget, improve the management and supervise of budget'. Besides, there will be more actions to insure effective procedures of public participation, such as public disclosure and hearing. The changes above not only implement of the concept of governance, but are also good for realization of citizen rights of participating in budget.Public participation in budget governance goes beyond the usual feature of other public participation rights. Based on the parts of budget, it can be divided into the right to participate in budgeting, the right to participate in budget approval, the right to participate in budget enforcement, the right to participate in budget supervision. Classifications from the view of the nature of rights contains the right to know the budget, the right to make suggestions to the budget, the right to decide on the budget, the right to supervise the budget, the right to remedy the budget.There are no explicit provisions in the existing laws in our county talking about the right of participation in budget, but we can still find basis in the constitution and budget law. In the aspect of practice, some places such as Wenling in Zhejiang Province, Jiaozuo in Henan Province, Shunde in Guangdong Province are trying to carry out participatory budget, which provide valuable experience for the realization of the right of participating in budget.As an innovative way to allow citizen to participate in budgeting, the experience of participatory budget is by far not so perfect. As a result, there will be room to correct the wrongs and summarize the good points as well as we make further adjustments.As early as the 1980 s, Porto Alegre in Brazil has begun to push forward participatory budget and it gradually extended to the whole country. Depending on states and scenarios, there are many ways to make sure that citizen can take part in budget in America, such as public hearing, questionnaires to citizens or consumers and citizen jury. While in France, the primary focus is to gather the opinions of citizen. The legal system and empiricism in foreign countries enlighten us in how to take better actions to implement the citizen right to participate in budgeting. Through the summaries from both domestic and overseas, we suggest that measures can be taken from several angels including procedures, substantive rights, social organization and ways of remedy to improve legal mechanism for right to participate in budget. We hope that the measures will lead to the advancement of budget management and achievement of the rule of law in the field of budget.