@misc{oai:iuj.repo.nii.ac.jp:02000083,
 author = {Win Thiri Myaing},
 month = {2024-07-25, 2024-07-25},
 note = {This dissertation aims to present the background circumstances of Myanmar budget 
reform, the effect of political and institutional changes on budget punctuation 
patterns, and how these punctuation patterns affect public service performance. This 
dissertation is composed of three essays that are arranged in the following sequence. 
The first essay focuses on “process”, which examines “how” the budget reform was 
adopted; the second essay focuses on “output”, which explores “what” happened due 
to the budget reform that coincided with political and institutional changes; and the 
third essay focuses on “outcomes”, which investigates the “impacts” of the budget 
reform. 
The first essay discusses the issues and development of policy solutions in the 
budgetary system before the 2011 budget reform. This essay employs Kingdon’s 
multiple streams theory (MST) to explain how and when the problems, policy 
solutions, and politics surrounding the Myanmar budget reform came together to open 
the policy window. Furthermore, this essay highlights the significance of issue 
linkage and partial coupling in the policy process (Kingdon, 1995; Dolan, 2021). All 
MST studies agree that policy cannot change without coupling the three streams. 
Furthermore, only a few studies, including ours, have discovered that multiple partial 
couplings occur before the complete coupling of the three streams. Therefore, 
policymakers or policy entrepreneurs need to be aware of partial coupling. As soon as 
partial coupling occurs, policymakers or policy entrepreneurs should try to find any 
constraints that make it impossible for the remaining stream to couple with the other 
two streams. By doing so, they will be able to find the policy factors or political 
strategies that quickly lead to complete coupling.
The second essay discusses how budget allocation patterns changed both 
before and after the budget reform. Since Myanmar’s budget reform coincided with 
political and institutional changes, this essay tries to explain the effect of political and 
institutional changes on budget punctuation patterns by employing budget 
incrementalism and punctuated equilibrium theory (PET). This study expects budget 
punctuation to have occurred in different directions and frequencies. Therefore, the 
significant theoretical contribution of this study is to extend Flink and Robinson’s 
(2020) corrective and trend models, which are rooted in the PET literature. The 
corrective and trend models are used to examine the directions of budget punctuation 
(positive or negative). By applying corrective and trend models, this study 
distinguishes nine budget punctuation patterns for Myanmar government spending on 
seven sectors from 2000 to 2019 (10 years before the budget reform and 9 years after 
the budget reform). The study reveals that political and institutional changes have had 
different effects on different sectors. Additionally, different budget punctuation 
patterns have been observed with different frequencies across sectors due to sector-
specific characteristics and evolving policy priorities.
The third essay assesses how the changes in allocation patterns after the 
budget reform have affected public service performance. This study differentiates 
public performance into the three competing dimensions of public service 
performance (3Es: efficiency, effectiveness, and equity). It is assumed that different 
magnitudes and directions of budget changes have different performance outcomes. 
To examine how budget allocation changes made after the reform have affected the 
3Es, this study applies PET by incorporating other theories from the public 
administration literature. As the current study uses a two-level dataset—budget 
allocation data at the ministry level and performance data (3Es and other control 
variables) at the individual level—multilevel modeling, which provides the unique 
advantage of examining the associations between the variables measured at different 
hierarchical levels, is employed. To measure the changes in resource allocation, we 
define the four categories of budget changes (i.e., positive punctuation, negative 
punctuation, positive annual percentage changes, and negative annual percentage 
changes) by using the annual budget allocation of 18 ministries for the fourteen years 
(including both before and after the budget reform). Performance data are obtained by 
administering surveys to public officers from different ministries. Through multilevel 
analysis on a two-level dataset, the results of the current study reveal that budget 
increases have not uniformly improved all 3Es. The different magnitudes and 
directions of budget changes have had different effects on 3Es.
Keywords: Multiple streams theory, partial and complete couplings, Myanmar 
budget reform, decentralization, budget deficit, transparency and accountability, 
budget allocation, corrective and trend models, incrementalism, punctuated 
equilibrium theory, political and institutional changes, public service performance, 
hierarchical linear model},
 title = {Three Essays on Myanmar’s Public Budgetary Dynamics},
 year = {}
}