Youth's Perception of the Power of Purse: An Evaluation of Students of Manisa Celal Bayar University Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences

Abstract

The discourse of “no tax without representation” emerged thanks to Magna Carta (1215), paving the way for the emergence and development of the budget right. The budget right is the determination of public revenues and expenditures by the representatives elected by the people. Today, the budget right is exercised by the legislature. The right to budget is a value that allows the development of a culture of democracy. The adoption of such an important value by young people means transferring the culture of democracy to the future generation. Young people's knowledge of public revenues and expenditures increases their awareness of taking public responsibilities. This study, which aims to measure the perception of the budget right, tried to reach this with the field research method. The selected sample is students of Manisa Celal Bayar University Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences. Sampling questions were asked through the questionnaire prepared by us and the answers were analyzed statistically. IBM SPSS Statistics (24.0) program was used to process the data. In the data analysis obtained by the survey method, T test and One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used. The perceptions of the students participating in the survey about power of purse were examined in terms of gender, age, departments and classes through descriptive analysis methods. 430 randomly selected students participated in the budget right perception survey consisting of fifty (50) questions. According to the results obtained, it was seen that the budget sensitivity was higher in the students of the Department of Public Finance. In this study, transparency, efficiency in public financial management, perception of public expenditures and education were determined as the factors affecting the perception of budget right. According to the results of the linear regression analysis, the coefficient of determination R2= 0.541, it was found that the factors assumed to affect the perception of the power of the purse in the research explained only 54% of the perception of power of the pürse. Key Words: Power of Purse, Public Expenditure, Non-Representational Taxation, Tax Awareness JEL Classification: H60, H50, H20, H23