Financial accountability, as the obligation of public institutions to explain the way in which they manage public funds before the citizens or their representing fora, is undoubtedly linked to systemic legitimacy in any political system, especially in times of economic harshness. Within the...

The "Institutions of Accountability" (IOA) are considered as important instruments for ensuring horizontal accountability and of these, the role played by the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) is particularly important. These SAIs are set up based on the constitutional and legal framework of...

The executive (federal government of Nigeria) has recently been accused by the lower legislative house of deliberately underfunding SAI (office of the Auditor-General of the Nigeria federation) in order to conceal fraud. The legislature was reacting to the erratic reduction of SAI's budget from...

Internal audit functions (IAFs) of organisations are regarded as crucial components of the combined assurance model, alongside the audit committee, management and external auditors. The combined assurance model aims at having integrated and aligned assurance in organisations with the overall aim...

From a stakeholder theory approach, this paper reports on a comparative case study between the Board of Audit of Japan (BOAJ) and the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea (BAIK) on how to balance independence and responses to stakeholders' needs within their limited resources. The empirical...

Countries increasingly rely on independent fiscal councils to constrain policymakers' discretion and curb the bias towards excessive deficits and pro-cyclical policies. Since fiscal councils are often recent and heterogeneous across countries, assessing their impact is challenging. Using the...

Budget is an important tool in the hands of state for affirmative action for improvement of gender relations through reduction of gender gap in the development process. It can help to reduce economic inequalities, between men and women as well as between the rich and the poor Hence, the...

The ATO transformed itself into a pre-eminent tax administration over a period of 20 years. It changed from an unremarkable administration into a thought leader on tax administration globally. It did this through inspired and inspiring leadership and the engagement, commitment, innovation and...