In countries throughout the world, few public decisions have a greater impact on people’s lives than decisions about public budgets and spending. It is here that governments make fundamental choices about the quality of education that children will receive, the availability of health care to the poor, the course of development, and laying the groundwork for their national future. It is for that reason that it is vital for citizens and civil society organizations (CSOs) to be engaged in those decisions. That involvement rests on three fundamental tasks — getting access to budget information, understanding the implications of the choices involved, and, through advocacy, taking action to help shape those budget choices.
This section is dedicated to helping you strengthen your skills, strategies, and capacities as a budget issues advocate. In every region of the world CSOs are making real differences in the budget choices their governments make. Here we will draw lessons from that experience to help give you insight into the approaches that can make your own budget advocacy as effective as it can be.
This is what you will find here:
- What is budget advocacy, and why it is critical for civil society to be engaged
- Why Advocacy?
- Why Budget Advocacy?
- What is Evidence-based Budget Advocacy?
- Understanding the political context in which budget decisions are made
- Tools for scanning your budget advocacy landscape
- Taking Action: strategy, tools, tactics, and opportunities
- Crafting a budget advocacy strategy
- Budget advocacy skills, tools, and tactics
- Building support and participation in your budget advocacy
- Engaging different institutions and levels of government
- Budget advocacy and the courts
- How to work with media
- Budget advocacy at the international level
In each of these sections we offer not only ideas about how to be an effective budget advocate but also real examples of budget advocacy in action and what we can learn from those stories.
The IBP has designed these pages to offer resources for a wide variety of users, from newcomers to budget work to those who already work in the field and are interested in getting a view of the cutting edge of how budget work is being carried out around the world. You will find links to that more advanced information in each of the pages in this section of the website.