9 - Failure of Parliamentary Control

Summary

Drawing together the book's analyses of public finance law and parliamentary constitutionalism, this chapter argues against the descriptive validity of the idea of parliamentary control of public money and observes the implications of that argument for democratic control of public finance. It begins by settling on an analytical framework for assessing whether parliament does indeed 'control' public finance built upon an idea of 'financial self-rule'. That framework is then applied to the legal and institutional practices which were observed in earlier chapters: concluding that parliaments cannot be said to have control of public finance in any studied jurisdiction. After discussing how broadly that conclusion can be generalised, the chapter evaluates different descriptive models of public finance in parliamentary constitutions: executive control, financial interdependence and parliamentary ratification. The chapter concludes that the latter 'ratification' model is most compelling and explains why that model secures a low level of financial self-rule.