How do governments justify their budgets? A comparative dataset

Abstract

This dataset contains policy justifications from the annual budget plans that governments have presented to their parliaments in five eurozone countries ranging from autumn 2007 to autumn 2020. More specifically, the dataset captures governments over the course of three consecutive legislative periods between the global financial crisis of 2008 and the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, in Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Annual budget plans are speeches (or in some cases written texts) by which the finance minister presents the total of the government’s expenditure and taxation policies to the parliament. Policy-justifications are sentences in which the government provides a justification for a specific measure, a policy-package or the overall budgetary policy. Policy-justifications are coded both with regards to the policy type they refer to and to the contents of the justifications. The dataset contains an original categorical variable “responsive-responsible” coded by the author. It distinguishes justifications into those that on the one hand commit resources to domestic constituencies and on the other express a commitment towards balancing the budget.