Raising revenues: an introduction

Raising revenues, although necessary to budgets, has received relatively scant attention from students of public budgeting. This special issue focuses attention on that topic. The contributions to this special issue show the diverse ways in which raising revenues is important.     

When revenues are not revenues: the influence of municipal governance on revenue recognition within Swedish municipal waste management

This paper explores the influence of municipal governance forms and structures on accounting compliance in municipal organisations. If municipal governance forms and structures influence accounting compliance, then understanding these relationships becomes important when discussing heterogeneous practice and efficient accounting regulation. The context and object of analysis is the practices of revenue recognition within the Swedish municipal solid waste management sector. Overall, this analysis identifies that financial accounting compliance is influenced by municipal governance forms and structures, and the results further highlight how financial accounting practices might diffuse through local intra-organisational processes. The results emphasise that municipal governance forms and structures are important factors when considering heterogeneous accounting practices in the municipal sector which complement the more conventional analysis of how external institutional, political and economic forces influence accounting choice and compliance.     

Managing Tax Regimes: A Call for Research

Most academic research on taxation relates to higher-level issues of fiscal policy. Much public debate takes place about the calculation and incidence of different taxes, but little academic research addresses the management problems that are specific to national taxation regimes. This paper identifies emerging issues and calls for joint practitioner/academic attention on an international basis to address these issues.     

Meeting the challenge: state revenue raising

Recent trends in state tax revenue reveal that overall reliance of states on taxes have been declining for the last 43 years. Faced with reduction in tax revenues, states have restructured their tax systems to meet public demand for more services. State income taxes are the one type of tax that has risen consistently. What causes state policy makers to rely on this type of tax? This research addresses this question.     

Inclusive local governance: normative proposals and political practices

This article specifies the conditions that a democratic expansion process would require in order to be inclusive in the face of complex forms of inequality. The dialogue between the qualitative analysis of an inclusive local governance experience initiated in Ottawa in 2004 and proposals to integrate the egalitarian perspective of critical deliberative theory and intersectionality theories throws up two elements that facilitate inclusive deliberative governance: (1) the incorporation of the intersectional perspective into the design and running of local governance apparatuses and (2) the implementation of enclave deliberation.     

Parties,ideology and elections: the politics of federal revenues and expenditures forecasting

Some scholars view problems in the accuracy of federal fiscal forecasts as being largely technical in nature .Others intimate that there may be a political component as well. This paper exlpores the relative merits of these two perspectives finding some support for each. Executive forecasts were found to be random with respect to direction of errors , error magnitudes increased in absolute terms over time , and revenues estimate error s tended to cluster in short bursts. Executive forecasting errors were also linked to presidential party , ideology and year in the election cycle.     

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正《国际展望》是由上海国际问题研究院主办、上海市国际关系学会协办,国内外公开发行的国际问题研究类学术双月刊。本刊刊文突出战略视野和问题意识,注重服务于国家外交工作的需要,服务于中国面向世界扩大对外交往与对外合作的需要,强调刊文的前瞻价值。目前刊文以国际关系、国际政治经济学、战略层次的国际经济问题研究为主。本刊采取专题设计与自由来稿结合的刊文办法,     

The State and the Internet: A Call for Collective Responsibility

The other great transformation in the world besides the rising power of the emerging economies has been the ever deeper penetration of the Internet in civil society and the economy. Alone among world leaders, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has sought to address the sticky issue of how to “civilize the Internet” in the G‐8, a key forum of global governance which France chairs this year. As a kind of historical document, in this section we publish Sarkozy's speech to the leading information technologists and entrepreneurs he gathered in Paris in May for the first “e‐G‐8” Summit. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, was among the attendees. We include his report to the 21st Century Council of the Nicolas Berggruen Institute.     

Shaping the Future of Mid-range Northern ngdos: ten challenges,ten proposals

In recent years the financial crisis in traditional donor countries, the aid effectiveness debate and the approaching end of the Millennium Development Goals agenda have opened the door to new goals, instruments and actors in development. This is shaping a new and more complex global aid system. As a consequence, traditional actors like mid-range Northern ngdos (nngdos), born and raised in an oda-based development system, face a challenging scenario. This paper has two aims. First, it aims to summarise the 10 most important challenges nngdos face today. As will be shown, such a complex landscape calls for adaptation, especially if nngdos want to keep playing a key role in the development aid system. The second aim therefore is to present 10 proposals which could help nngdos to overcome these threats, shaping the future this relevant actor could play in the new global aid system.     

Twenty Years Later: A Call for Existential Revolution: Vaclav Havel in Conversation with Adam Michnik

In light of the fact—despite a widespread impression to the contrary—that the collapse of Communism in the fall of 1989 did not happen overnight, the paper explores the kind of gradual societal work that had led to the emergence of democratic polities in Central Europe but that had generally escaped the notice not only of policy makers and the leaders of the “free world” but also of theorists. The concept and practices of performative democracy as it manifested itself in the period of late Communism (1970s–1989), but also in South Africa at the dusk of apartheid, and the conditions for political performativity, as well as its main features, are then discussed.