THE SAUDI ARABIAN BUDGETING SYSTEM: AN INSTITUTIONAL ASSESSMENT

This article describes and evaluates the budgetary institutions in Saudi Arabia. The primary sources of information for this study are publications from the Saudi Ministry of Finance and a survey implemented to investigate the different aspects of budget formulation and execution. We find that the Saudi budget experiences difficulties associated with incremental annual line‐item budgeting systems. Although capital expenditures in the education and health sectors are guided by five‐year plans developed by the Ministry of Planning, the rest of the budget preparation procedure is mainly driven by requests from government agencies to increase spending (i.e. a bottom‐up approach), instead of being based on an early determination of the macroeconomic constraints and the acceptable level of deficit (i.e. a top‐down approach). The result is an exacerbation of tragedy of the commons problems associated with information asymmetry and conflict‐avoidance strategies. We discuss possible reasons for this finding and offer budgetary reform proposals. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A funny thing happened on the way to the mosque: promoting civil society and religious pluralism through local conflict

Understood primarily as a meta-narrative reflecting citizens' reluctance to accept migration and Islam as permanent components of their society, grass-roots protests against mosque construction also highlight a democratic paradox regarding multi-level governance: while national governments bear chief responsibility for ensuring fundamental religious freedoms, local authorization procedures affecting mosque construction (e.g. zoning, building permits) have rendered communal spaces a Ground Zero for the regulation of Islamic faith communities. While similar protests have taken place across Europe, German officials face special problems in responding to challenges by neighbourhood groups, rooted in the complicated nature of federalism, the legacy of National Socialism and a new, if misunderstood, element of ‘militant democracy’ at local levels. The Pankow-Heinersdorf case, staged on the outskirts of eastern Berlin, shows that multifaceted interventions can help contesting parties come to terms with religious differences, develop their networking and dialogue skills and actually contribute to more effective democratic participation at the local level.     

新形势下人大财政监督职能之建构简

《宪法》将人民代表大会制度规定为我国的根本政治制度,并赋予人大立法权、监督权、重大事项决定权和任免权的职能。其中,监督权更是起到了约束政府权力的关键性作用,应充分贯彻于预算的整个过程。在社会主义法律体系已经形成的新形势下,人大在进一步完善立法的同时,亟须“一体两翼”地着力加强预算监督,促进工作重点向强化预算审批职能方面转移,不断提高理财治国能力,推动国家治理模式的现代化转型,从而与公共财政、良法善治的理念相契相合,顺应关注民生、防治腐败的时代发展要求。     

Testing for Fiscal Illusion in Wisconsin Towns

Fiscal illusion, a theory of the impact of government revenue structures on voter decision-making, has been studied extensively by economists and political scientists; however, empirical verification has been limited. This study builds on Lowery's (1987a) work by examining the relationship between suggested illusionary revenues and measures of electoral stress. Here, electoral stress is measured as constituent contacting—one possible measure of voter influence—for local government officials up for re-election. Using a combination of survey data from over 1,000 Wisconsin town board members, audited fiscal data and U.S. Census data, we were able to test for fiscal illusion. Our findings show that when looking at five revenue types (conditional grants, unconditional grants, property taxes, user fees and charges, and debt service) there is some evidence suggesting officials seeking another term in office will tend to support fees and charges as a revenue structure over other structures. Overall, there is little consistent evidence suggesting that elected officials are manipulating revenue structures for electoral gain. Revenue structures are mostly influenced by social and economic factors, such as median household income, population changes, and per capita property valuation.     

Symposium Introduction: Local Responses to ‘Austerity’

This introduction to the symposium sets out the context for local government in the United Kingdom at the current time. It outlines the scale of the reductions in funding since 2010, showing how uneven these cuts have been across the country and the reasons for this. It also describes the increased exposure to risk of both local government and of the citizens and communities it serves. The central question for the papers which follow is how local government is responding to these twin challenges. The papers provide insights from a number of detailed studies of individual authorities, exploring the strategies adopted to manage in response. The analyses focus on the distributive consequences for individuals and communities, but they also reflect on the wider consequences for local government itself. A particular concern is whether local responses are changing as austerity moves from its initial to its later phase.     

Do Electoral Risks Moderate the Effect of Partisan and Electoral Cycles on Debt-Financed Local Spending?

Governments’ use of debt as a political instrument has been widely studied from the perspective of partisan and electoral cycles, mainly concerning central government. On the whole, previous studies have attempted to determine the effects of political ideology and the proximity of elections on the opportunistic use of public spending. The current study aims to broaden the scope of attention to the effect of partisan and electoral cycles on debt, by means of a broader consideration of the motives that lead politicians to take on a deficit and that are usually linked to the associated electoral risk. More particularly, we examine whether, during the electoral period, greater confidence in re-election can modify party behaviour concerning the use of public spending, and if so, whether the change is greater or smaller depending on the ruling party’s ideology. The results obtained show that local administrations need to incur debt, although politicians take on more liability than is appropriate to their demographic and economic characteristics, especially in an election year. It was also found that political stability favours a reduction in the public deficit, a pattern that is maintained in electoral periods. This effect was found to be independent of the partisan cycle.     

The Centre Decides and the Local Pays: Mandates and Politics in Local Government Financial Management in China

Abstract

In China, ‘the centre decides and the local pays’ means the central government decides on policies but requires its local subordinates to provide the financial resources. The politics of this practice implies that local government has to take different strategies to cope with the unfunded mandates with various consequences. As an empirical study framed by Niskanen’s rational choice theory and Dunleavy’s ‘bureau-shaping’ model, this paper examines how the unfunded mandates impact local government behaviour. Its main focus is the question of how the local officials respond, the extent to which they comply or resist and the techniques they use to adapt to these mandates. This paper finds when deciding how to pay the bill for the centre, local officials have to take a number of principles into consideration. They need to stick to the people-orientated principle and to finance money for salaries and operation to the extent that they can; they also have to see if the mandates are strictly implemented or popular among local people.     

The Future of Belgian Federalism Through the Eyes of the Citizens

How do Belgian citizens see the future of federalism? In the typical consociational Belgium citizens have not had much to say about the federalization process, which has been largely elite-driven. And actually not so much is known about the future of Belgian federalism through the eyes of the citizens. Survey research shows some differences in identity and in institutional preferences between the two language groups, but also a low salience of the issue when they cast a vote. This article, therefore, looks at alternative methods to capture the perceptions of the citizens: focus groups, deliberative experiments and mental maps.     

Ideology matters: Why decentralisation has a differentiated effect on regionalist parties' fortunes in Western democracies

This article addresses the effects of decentralisation reforms on regionalist parties' electoral strength. It takes up the debate between ‘accommodatists’ (i.e., electoral loss due to policy accommodation) and ‘institutionalists’ (i.e., electoral gain due to institutional empowerment). These effects depend on the electoral venue considered – regional or national – and on the ideological radicalism of a given regionalist party – secessionist or autonomist. This study finds that increases in the level of decentralisation are positively associated with higher scores for autonomist parties in regional elections, while they are not statistically significantly correlated with secessionist parties' electoral performances. In contrast, in national elections, decentralisation reforms seem to penalise autonomist parties more than secessionist ones. These findings are based on the analysis of a novel dataset which includes regional and national vote shares for 77 regionalist parties in 11 Western democracies from 1950 until 2010.     

The Benevolent Prince in Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Teutscher Fürsten Stat</Emphasis> with Special Consideration of the Prince’s Revenues,Regalia and Taxes: Comment

The comment considers Seckendorff’s Teutscher Fürsten Stat as an ambitious outline of a developmental strategy, in which predominant role is played by education. On the assumption of this perspective Helge Peukert’s contribution is evaluated and criticised. Alternative interpretations and categorisations pertaining to Seckendorff’s ideas on social and economic policies are offered. Questions of further research regarding the principles of ideal government and guidelines for fiscal policies as propounded by Teutscher Fürsten Statare delineated.