The purpose of this paper is to examine the expanding contribution of civil society organisations to public budgets in developing countries. It provides examples of civil society budget activities in a variety of country contexts in order to measure the value of this work to public budgeting. The intervention of civil society has generally enabled broader understanding and participation in the budget process. In part, these benefits occur indirectly through other organisations or legislatures as a result of training and dissemination activities that deepen public debate and expand public participation. Many groups are still developing skills and organisational capacity. Some examples are cited which point to a significant impact of this in Mexico, Israel, South Africa and Russia.
It is noted that applied budget organisations may add value to budgets in the following ways:| Able to bring new information to the public debate on citizen priorities;| Through training, the capacity of communities to take part is built;| The contribution of applied budget organisations includes building budget literacy and training and analysis that brings a pro-poor perspective;| Help in the collation of information on programme impact;| Able to play a bigger role in helping legislatures to monitor the impact of the official audit and in interpreting and disseminating the findings of the auditor-general.