Since the mid-1990s, the budget process in Ecuador has experienced a series of institutional reforms that sought to increase the President’s agenda-setting powers over the budget process while eliminating legislators’ ability to bargain over provincial allocations. Constitutional reforms and other legislation were first approved, then the adoption of dollarization and the subsequent adoption of the Fiscal Responsibility Law further sought to enforce fiscal discipline. This paper evaluates the impact of these reforms on the capacity of various budget actors to influence the budget process at the elaboration, approval, and execution stages. The paper documents the fact that the combination of a stronger executive and the influence of high oil prices contributed to generating more efficient and more sustainable budget outcomes. However, it also argues that the budget process in its current form is not sustainable in the long run for two reasons. Firstly, greater dependence on oil revenues makes the Ecuadorean economy vulnerable to shifts in international oil prices. Secondly, political bargaining over the budget was shifted from the national to the subnational arena, where politicians still lack incentives to form credible, effective, and durable coalitions around the redistribution of government revenues.