Download or read book Fiscal Management in Federal Democracies written by William R. Dillinger and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1999 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: May 1999 - Argentina and Brazil-two of the most decentralized public sectors in Latin America and (along with Colombia and India) among the most decentralized democracies in the developing world-faced similar problems in the 1980s: excessive public deficits and high inflation exacerbated by subnational deficits. In the 1990s, Argentina was more successful at macroeconomic stabilization, partly because it imposed harder budget constraints on the public sector nationally and partly because it had stronger party control of both national legislators and subnational governments. In shifting to decentralized public finances, a country's central government faces certain fiscal management problems. First, during and soon after the transition, unless it reduces spending or increases its own tax resources, the central government tends to have higher deficits as it shifts fiscal resources to subnational governments through transfers, revenue sharing, or delegation of tax bases. Reducing spending is hard not only because cuts are always hard but because subnational governments might not take on expected tasks, leaving the central government with a legal or political obligation to continue spending for certain services. Second, after decentralization, the local or state government faces popular pressure to spend more and tax less, creating the tendency to run deficits. This tendency can be a problem if subnational governments and their creditors expect or rely on bailouts by the central government. Econometric evidence from 32 large industrial and developing countries indicates that higher subnational spending and deficits lead to greater national deficits. Dillinger and Webb investigate how, and how successfully, Argentina and Brazil dealt with these problems in the 1990s. In both countries, subnational governments account for about half of public spending and are vigorous democracies in most (especially the largest) jurisdictions. The return to democracy in the 1980s revived and strengthened long-standing federal practices while weakening macroeconomic performance, resulting in unsustainable fiscal deficits, high inflation, sometimes hyperinflation, and low or negative growth. Occasional stabilization plans failed within a few years. Then Argentina (in 1991) and Brazil (in 1994) introduced successful stabilization plans. National issues were important in preventing and then bringing about macroeconomic stabilization, but so were intergovernmental fiscal relations and the fiscal management of subnational governments. State deficits and federal transfers were often out of control in the 1980s, contributing to national macroeconomic problems. Stabilization programs in the 1990s needed to establish control, and self-control, over subnational spending and borrowing. This paper-a product of Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, Latin America and the Caribbean Region-is part of the LCR regional studies program on fiscal decentralization in Latin America. The authors may be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].
Download or read book Fiscal Management in Federal Democracies written by William Dillinger and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argentina and Brazil - tw ...
Download or read book Government Budgeting and Financial Management in Practice written by Gerald J. Miller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The right turn in U. S. politics has increased conflict over both ends and means in government budgeting and financial management. Overlapping and competing views of the way the world works drive finance officials’ practice. Taking a new look at public financial management that acknowledges the multiple, competing realities, Government Budgeting and Financial Management in Practice: Logics to Make Sense of Ambiguity examines transaction cost economics and other small government, managed-by-the-market techniques as the latest reincarnation of public budgeting and financial management orthodoxy. Gerald J. Miller reviews new research on the continuing validity of the political dimension of government finance decisions and the multiple, intensely argued constructions of reality the finance official must make sense of. Miller discusses major advances in interpretive approaches to budgeting and finance and how they dominate writing in the broader field of public administration. He also examines the effects of the explosion of information systems, new budget techniques, nonconventional ways of spending, and new technologies. The book uses a question as the motivating force to understand some facets of today’s government budgeting, finance, and financial management: where do the critical assumptions come from to drive financial management? Miller takes the history of reform, developments in the field and the logics finance officials say they use as sources for these assumptions and examines what they reveal about constructions of the government finance world. Exploring new avenues of financial management thinking, the book discusses ambiguity and interpretations that move the unclear preferences, ends, and goals toward consensus. The author identifies an alternative approach to research that explains important facets of financial management. This approach is drawn directly from practice, events and problems in public organizations and from the creedal bent of many political actors in competition.
Download or read book Fiscal Federalism in Switzerland written by Bernard Dafflon and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Its highly fragmented structure of local governments and serious horizontal fiscal imbalances make Switzerland a surprisingly powerful model for Eastern European countries that are currently facing the challenge of fiscal decentralization. In spite of the substantial differences in the tradition and current practice of intergovernmental fiscal relations, transition economies may learn valuable lessons from the Swiss case in the fields of direct democracy, horizontal cooperation, expenditure and revenue assignment, and fiscal discipline. Among other conclusions, the authors suggest that subnational authorities can effectively fend off recentralization attempts of the central government if they engage in spontaneous cooperation to enhance the efficiency of public service provision. Together with an adequate fiscal equalization scheme, interjurisdictional cooperation also permits the reconciliation of the objective of an increasing devolution of powers with the existing regional disparities. The authors also show that the principle of subsidiarity can best be safeguarded by anchoring the expenditure and revenue powers of subnational governments in the constitution or in a similarly strong law. With regard to fiscal discipline, the combination of a "golden rule" with direct democratic instruments of budget control is proven to be successful in enhancing the accountability of local politicians toward their constituencies.
Download or read book Budgeting and Financial Management in the Federal Government written by Jerry L. McCaffery and published by IAP. This book was released on 2002-02-01 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Budgeting and financial management in the U.S. federal government is highly complex and highly differentiated, e.g., in the process employed by the Executive branch versus those used by Congress. In this book we attempt to cover the processes of both the Executive and Congress and the relationships between the two. The book provides views from several perspectives, e.g., managerial and political. We attempt to provide readers with an understanding of how federal budget and financial management processes are supposed to operate. However, we then go a step further to show how these processes actually operate often in contrast to the intended template. Additionally, this book is intended to capture and combine the views of the academic and the practitioner, including those of the participants in the process."--Introduction.
Download or read book Tools for State and Local Fiscal Management written by Hathaway, Alex and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governments have always endured economic woes, but the increasing severity of such challenges, from the Great Recession starting in 2008 to the unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlights the need for better-developed fiscal analysis capacity in governments of all sizes using the most practical—yet robust—techniques available. This volume presents an array of real-world analytical approaches in a variety of service areas at the core of state and local government.
Download or read book The Rise of Regional Authority written by Liesbet Hooghe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-04-05 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most countries around the globe have one or two levels of regional or intermediate government, yet we have little systematic idea of how much authority they wield, or how this has changed over time. This book measures and explains the formal authority of intermediate or regional government in 42 advanced democracies, including the 27 EU member states. It tracks regional authority on an annual basis from 1950 to 2006. The measure reveals wide variation both cross-sectionally and over time. The authors examine four influences – functional pressures, democratization, European integration, and identity – to explain regionalization over the past half-century. This unique and comprehensive volume will be a vital resource for students and scholars of comparative politics, public administration and public management, federalism, democratization, nationalism, and multilevel governance.
Download or read book Deficits Debt and Democracy written by Richard E. Wagner and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely book reveals that the budget deficits and accumulating debts that plague modern democracies reflect a clash between two rationalities of governance: one of private property and one of common property. The clashing of these rationalities at various places in society creates forms of societal tectonics that play out through budgeting. The book demonstrates that while this clash is an inherent feature of democratic political economy, it can nonetheless be limited through embracing once again a constitution of liberty. Not all commons settings have tragic outcomes, of course, but tragic outcomes loom large in democratic processes because they entail conflict between two very different forms of substantive rationality; the political and market rationalities. These are both orders that contain interactions among participants, but the institutional frameworks that govern those interactions differ, generating democratic budgetary tragedies. Those tragedies, moreover, are inherent in the conflict between the different rationalities and so cannot be eliminated. They can, as this book argues, be reduced by restoring a constitution of liberty in place of the constitution of control that has taken shape throughout the west over the past century. Economists interested in public finance, public policy and political economy along with scholars of political science, public administration, law and political philosophy will find this book intriguing.
Download or read book Open Budgets written by Sanjeev Khagram and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Brookings Institution Press and Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation publication Decisions about "who gets what, when, and how" are perhaps the most important that any government must make. So it should not be remarkable that around the world, public officials responsible for public budgeting are facing demands—from their own citizenry, other government officials, economic actors, and increasingly from international sources—to make their patterns of spending more transparent and their processes more participatory. Surprisingly, rigorous analysis of the causes and consequences of fiscal transparency is thin at best. Open Budgets seeks to fill this gap in existing knowledge by answering a few broad questions: How and why do improvements in fiscal transparency and participation come about? How are they sustained over time? When and how do increased fiscal transparency and participation lead to improved government responsiveness and accountability? Contributors: Steven Friedman (Rhodes University/University of Johannesburg); Jorge Antonio Alves (Queens College, CUNY) and Patrick Heller (Brown University); Jong-sung You (University of California—San Diego) and Wonhee Lee (Hankyung National University); John M. Ackerman (National Autonomous University of Mexico and Mexican Law Review); Aaron Schneider (University of Denver) and Annabella España-Najéra (California State University–Fresno); Barak D. Hoffman (Georgetown University); Jonathan Warren and Huong Nguyen (University of Washington); Linda Beck (University of Maine–Farmington and Columbia University), E. H. Seydou Nourou Toure (Institut Fondamental de l'Afrique Noire), and Aliou Faye (Senegal Ministry of the Economy and Finance).
Download or read book Improving the Federal Government s Financial Management Systems written by United States Government Accountability Office and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Improving the federal government's financial management systems
Download or read book Democratic Federalism written by Robert P. Inman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-26 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Federalism, defined generally as a collection of self-governing regions under a central government, is widely viewed as a sensible choice of polity both for emerging democracies and for established states. But while federal institutions are positively correlated with valued economic, democratic, and justice outcomes, ultimately it is unclear how they are connected and which cause which. In Democratic Federalism, Robert Inman and Daniel Rubinfeld explore how federalism works and propose concrete and proven policy guidance on how federalist policies can be designed and implemented successfully. The authors define federalism according to three parameters: how much federal revenue comes through local governmental bodies, the number of local governmental bodies, and the extent to which these local bodies are represented federally. In applying these parameters to economic concepts and theory, Inman and Rubinfeld explain how federalism works in a way meant to engage scholars in political science and sociology and policymakers drafting regulation in federalist governments. The book offers applicable ideas and comparative case studies on how to assess potential policies and how to actually design federalist institutions from scratch. Both authors have real experience with both, most notably in their work advising the South African government on how to build a federalist democracy. This book will be an essential guide to understanding and applying federalist concepts and principles"--
Download or read book The Politics of Fiscal Responsibility written by Tonya E. Thornton and published by Westphalia Press. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiscal policy challenges following the Great Recession forced members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to implement a set of economic policies to manage public debt. Most actions centered on major spending cuts and increasing taxes in an attempt to manage political and social fallout. Governments put fiscal austerity measures in place when their debt is so large that the inability to honor required service payments or the risk of total default to obligations becomes a significant possibility. Accountability is an iconic concept in public management, offering symbolic responsibility and reassurance. It is part of an ethical principal of transparency situated in administrative accountability. The resilience of national economies worldwide ultimately requires a balance between near-term growth and longer-term fiscal consolidation. Still, the reality of social stressors raises questions for politically sustainability. As the OECD member nations emerged from the fiscal fall out in 2008, question about whether democratic countries can take pro-active leadership before a crisis forces their hand emerged. This book is a collection of country chapters detailing their austerity response to such an interconnected and punctuating event. Tonya E. Thornton, PhD, is a Principal with and Founder of Delta Point Solutions, LLC, an interdisciplinary, social, policy, and administrative sciences consulting firm with expertise in community resiliency, emergency management, and public safety. She is also a subject matter expert in critical infrastructure for the U.S. Department of Defense. Dr. Thornton's work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, and she is the editor of Managing Challenges for the Flint Water Crisis (2021). F. Stevens Redburn, PhD, is a lecturer, budget advisor, and expert authority on financial management, government performance, and public policy with over 25 years of experience as a senior government official in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. As a participant in deliberations of the National Budgeting Roundtable since 2014, he has helped lead research on reform of the federal government's budget process. Internationally, he has consulted on budget processes World Bank and for the International Monetary Fund.
Download or read book Swiss Public Administration written by Andreas Ladner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swiss citizens approve of their government and the way democracy is practiced; they trust the authorities and are satisfied with the range of services Swiss governments provide. This is quite unusual when compared to other countries. This open access book provides insight into the organization and the functioning of the Swiss state. It claims that, beyond politics, institutions and public administration, there are other factors which make a country successful. The authors argue that Switzerland is an interesting case, from a theoretical, scientific and a more practice-oriented perspective. While confronted with the same challenges as other countries, Switzerland offers different solutions, some of which work astonishingly well.
Download or read book PEFA Public Financial Management and Good Governance written by Jens Kromann Kristensen and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2019-11-24 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This project, based on the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) data set, researched how PEFA can be used to shape policy development in public financial management (PFM) and other major relevant policy areas such as anticorruption, revenue mobilization, political economy analysis, and fragile states. The report explores what shapes the PFM system in low- and middle-income countries by examining the relationship between political institutions and the quality of the PFM system. Although the report finds some evidence that multiple political parties in control of the legislature is associated with better PFM performance, the report finds the need to further refine and test the theories on the relationship between political institutions and PFM. The report addresses the question of the outcomes of PFM systems, distinguishing between fragile and nonfragile states. It finds that better PFM performance is associated with more reliable budgets in terms of expenditure composition in fragile states, but not aggregate budget credibility. Moreover, in contrast to existing studies, it finds no evidence that PFM quality matters for deficit and debt ratios, irrespective of whether a country is fragile or not. The report also explores the relationship between perceptions of corruption and PFM performance. It finds strong evidence of a relationship between better PFM performance and improvements in perceptions of corruption. It also finds that PFM reforms associated with better controls have a stronger relationship with improvements in perceptions of corruption compared to PFM reforms associated with more transparency. The last chapter looks at the relationship between PEFA indicators for revenue administration and domestic resource mobilization. It focuses on the credible use of penalties for noncompliance as a proxy for the type of political commitment required to improve tax performance. The analysis shows that countries that credibly enforce penalties for noncompliance collect more taxes on average.
Download or read book Federalism and Health Policy written by Alan Weil and published by The Urban Insitute. This book was released on 2003 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The balance between state and federal health care financing for low-income people has been a matter of considerable debate for the last 40 years. Some argue for a greater federal role, others for more devolution of responsibility to the states. Medicaid, the backbone of the system, has been plagued by an array of problems that have made it unpopular and difficult to use to extend health care coverage. In recent years, waivers have given the states the flexibility to change many features of their Medicaid programs; moreover, the states have considerable flexibility to in establishing State Children's Health Insurance Programs. This book examines the record on the changing health safety net. How well have states done in providing acute and long-term care services to low-income populations? How have they responded to financial incentives and federal regulatory requirements? How innovative have they been? Contributing authors include Donald J. Boyd, Randall R. Bovbjerg, Teresa A. Coughlin, Ian Hill, Michael Housman, Robert E. Hurley, Marilyn Moon, Mary Beth Pohl, Jane Tilly, and Stephen Zuckerman.
Download or read book The Future of Federalism written by Richard Eccleston and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global financial crisis had a dramatic short-term effect on federal relations and, as the twelve case studies in this illuminating book show, set in place a new set of socio-political factors that are shaping the longer-run process of institutional change in federal systems. The Future of Federalism illustrates how an understanding of these complex dynamics is crucial to the development of policies needed for effective and sustainable federal governance in the 21st century. The book finds that growing fiscal pressures are interacting with domestic political variables to produce country specific federal dynamics. Arguably the first detailed study of the medium term impact of the financial crisis and its aftermath on federal governance, this volume highlights how growing budget pressures are contributing to increased centralisation in many federations, while in others national governments are devolving power to appease regional grievances and preserve the federal union. Contributions from leading federalism and public finance scholars test recent theoretical explanations of change in federal systems against the experiences of a diverse cross-section of federal jurisdictions. The case studies include both established federations and 'federalizing' jurisdictions, such as the UK and China, and highlights the complex dynamics which shape the evolution of federal governance Comprehensive and interdisciplinary, this timely book will appeal to students and scholars - from political science, economics and law - studying federalism, governance studies and comparative political economy. It is essential reading for public officials and policy makers interested in intergovernmental relations, public finance and budgeting and tax policy. Contributors include: J.R. Afonso, D.M. Brown, C. Colino, T.J. Conlan, L. de Mello, E. del Pino, R. Eccleston, R. Hortle, R. Jha, R. Krever, S. Lee, R. Mabugu, E. Massetti, P. Mellor, J. Schnellenbach, N. Soguel, C. Wong
Download or read book Fiscal Management written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accountability of government to citizens is the foundation for good governance. Unfortunately, many developing countries suffer the results of dysfunctional governance systems that fail to provide even minimal levels of vital public services. The key message of the New Institutional Economics is that incentives matter. In the public sphere, the countries' accountability frameworks rewards, sanctions, and measurement of performance shape public sector performance. This book applies this fundamental insight to fiscal/budgetary analysis and public service delivery, giving the reader tools and around the globe examples of institutional arrangements that help citizens hold government accountable for their performance.
