Impact of Constitutional Amendments on the budgeting process in Armenia

Abstract

At the end of 2015, Armenia underwent a major constitutional reform to revise in its entire governance system. The constitutional amendments apparently also affect the budget cycle and modify the roles of executive and legislative bodies on all stages of the cycle. The aim of this essay is to understand how these amendments affect the budgeting process in Armenia, whether they increase the role of the legislative body in the budgeting process, as well as strengthen the independence of the Chamber of Audit. Firstly, a comparative analysis of the Constitution of Armenia with the amendments of 2005 and the Constitution with the amendments of 2015 is made. Each article related to the budgeting process in the Constitution of 2005 is compared with the corresponding article in the corresponding Chapter of the Constitution of 2015. Secondly, based on the findings of this analysis, interview questions were formulated, and in-depth interviews were conducted with a number of experts in budgeting and public finance, politicians directly involved in the budgeting process, as well as those who participated in the process of drafting the constitutional amendments. The combined results of comparative analysis and interviews prove that the constitutional amendments strengthen the independence of the Chamber of Audit, as well as increase the role of the legislative body in the budgeting process.