Decisions about "who gets what, when, and how" are perhaps the most important that any government must make. So it should not be remarkable that around the world, public officials responsible for public budgeting are facing demands --from their own citizenry, other government officials, economic actors, and increasingly from international sources --to make their patterns of spending more transparent and their processes more participatory.

Surprisingly, rigorous analysis of the causes and consequences of fiscal transparency is thin at best. Open Budgets seeks to fill this gap in existing knowledge by answering a few broad questions: How and why do improvements in fiscal transparency and participation come about? How are they sustained over time? When and how do increased fiscal transparency and participation lead to improved government responsiveness and accountability?

Contributors: Steven Friedman (Rhodes University/University of Johannesburg); Jorge Antonio Alves (Queens College, CUNY) and Patrick Heller (Brown University); Jong-sung You (University of California --San Diego) and Wonhee Lee (Hankyung National University); John M. Ackerman (National Autonomous University of Mexico and Mexican Law Review); Aaron Schneider (University of Denver) and Annabella Espa?a-Naj?ra (California State University?Fresno); Barak D. Hoffman (Georgetown University); Jonathan Warren and Huong Nguyen (University of Washington); Linda Beck (University of Maine?Farmington and Columbia University), E. H. Seydou Nourou Toure (Institut Fondamental de l'Afrique Noire), and Aliou Faye (Senegal Ministry of the Economy and Finance).

Which SUVs are most likely to rollover? What cities have the unhealthiest drinking water? Which factories are the most dangerous polluters? What cereals are the most nutritious? In recent decades, governments have sought to provide answers to such critical questions through public disclosure to force manufacturers, water authorities, and others to improve their products and practices. Corporate financial disclosure, nutritional labels, and school report cards are examples of such targeted transparency policies. At best, they create a light-handed approach to governance that improves markets, enriches public discourse, and empowers citizens. But such policies are frequently ineffective or counterproductive. Based on an analysis of eighteen U.S. and international policies, Full Disclosure shows that information is often incomplete, incomprehensible, or irrelevant to consumers, investors, workers, and community residents. To be successful, transparency policies must be accurate, keep ahead of disclosers' efforts to find loopholes, and, above all, focus on the needs of ordinary citizens.

"With the clarity of a finely etched drawing and the sparkling craft of a careful researcher, Archon Fung rediscovers the best traditions of American self-government. He introduces us to democracy's heroes in community police beat meetings and school council sessions. Look to the streets, he urges in a book bristling with insight and inspiring stories, a book that should be required reading for every student, scholar and citizen of democracy."--Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor, Harvard Law School, and coauthor of "The Miner's Canary"

"For readers who like theory grounded in a careful examination of concrete experience, "Empowered Participation" is a definite treat. Author Archon Fung demonstrates that state and civil society are intertwined in multiple ways, and the details of that intertwining bear importantly on the health of local democracy. Fung displays a remarkable capacity to look at imperfect reforms, assess the gains from these reforms, and draw from these observations an appreciation of what is possible. His concept of accountable autonomy opens a window on how deliberative democracy can work even in unpromising circumstances. Democratic theory and urban politics both stand to profit from this important book."--Clarence Stone, George Washington University

"This well-written, briskly argued book represents a significant addition to the field of democratic theory. Fung uses convincing analysis and illuminating case studies to produce a work that will be widely discussed and cited."--Stephen Elkin, University of Maryland, author of "Citizen Competence and Democracy"

"Fung combines fine-grained analysis of case studies with well-developed theoretical interests indemocratic empowerment and deliberation. His book is a very fine contribution to a new and exciting genre of democracy studies focused on institutional design."--Mark E. Warren, Georgetown University

The institutional forms of liberal democracy developed in the nineteenth century seem increasingly ill-suited to the problems we face in the twenty-first. This dilemma has given rise in some places to a new, deliberative democracy, and this volume explores four contemporary empirical cases in which the principles of such a democracy have been at least partially instituted: the participatory budget in Porto Alegre; the school decentralization councils and community policing councils in Chicago; stakeholder councils in environmental protection and habitat management; and new decentralised governance structures in Kerala. In keeping with the other Real Utopias Project volumes, these case studies are framed by an editors' introduction, a set of commentaries, and concluding notes.

Governments in recent decades have employed public disclosure strategies to reduce risks, improve public and private goods and services, and reduce injustice. In the United States, these targeted transparency policies include financial securities disclosures, nutritional labels, school report cards, automobile rollover rankings, and sexual offender registries. They constitute a light-handed approach to governance that empowers citizens. However, as Full Disclosure shows these policies are frequently ineffective or counterproductive. Based on a comparative analysis of eighteen major policies, the authors suggest that transparency policies often produce information that is incomplete, incomprehensible, or irrelevant to the consumers, investors, workers, and community residents who could benefit from them. Sometimes transparency fails because those who are threatened by it form political coalitions to limit or distort information. To be successful, transparency policies must place the needs of ordinary citizens at centre stage and produce information that informs their everyday choices.