Search results for "Government"
showing 10 items of 1098 documents
Valencian territorial division: background, problems, and Valencian Government’s policy
2013
La Comunitat Valenciana cuenta con una división territorial oficial en dos niveles, formada por 3 provincias y 542 municipios, que se encuentra muy arraigada en la conciencia de la sociedad valenciana. Sin embargo, con el fin de evitar duplicidades y adelgazar la administración, notables políticos y empresarios abogan hoy por la supresión las competencias de las diputaciones provinciales. Algunos intelectuales valencianistas han denunciado además los inconvenientes de la división territorial valenciana en tres provincias, ya que el hecho que una de las tres (la de València) lleve el nombre de todo el territorio debilita la identidad valenciana, especialmente entre los ciudadanos de las otra…
Are Citizens Significant Users of Government Financial Information?
2006
This article reports on the use that the public makes of the budgetary and financial reporting produced by Spanish local authorities. The authors show financial reporting influences voting behaviour. Although citizens cannot decide how much tax they have to pay or the volume or quality of the services, they can control public management when it comes to election time. Accounting information can reflect the results of public policies and consequently serve as a vehicle for communicating the economic effects of political management. The authors make a strong case for more ‘popular’ financial reporting so that government accounts can be understood and properly used by non-specialists.
Squaring the welfare circle and government ideology: Greece and Spain in the 1990s
1999
This article examines the “squaring the welfare circle” thesis and its usefulness to our understanding of welfare developments in Greece and Spain in the 1990s. The welfare state in both Greece and Spain was expanded considerably in the early 1980s by the newly elected socialist governments, only to hit the buffers of diminishing resources and rising demands in the late 1980s as well as the hostile neo-liberal welfare ideology. The process of welfare expansion was halted in the 1990s, labour market deregulation was encouraged and containment of welfare expenditure became the dominant aim of government policies. This article concentrates on the actual policies of governments in the 1990s rat…
Local Government Reforms in Latvia, 1990-2003: Transition to a Democratic Society
2004
This case study of Latvian local governments focuses on the qualitative aspects of reform legislation passed and implemented between 1990 and 2003 as the best available measures of changes made. Special attention is given to historical influences and inherited Soviet practices, the uncertain and conflicting value systems of reformers, and a gradual shift to concerns about the services provided. Power relationships are examined, together with the funding of local governments and minority relations. It is anticipated that in 2005 Latvia will adopt new elected regional development boards to work with the EU and other external institutions, leading to more democratic and cooperative modes of go…
BUILDING FOREIGN AFFAIRS CAPACITY IN THE EU: THE RECRUITMENT OF MEMBER STATE OFFICIALS TO THE EUROPEAN EXTERNAL ACTION SERVICE (EEAS)
2013
The Treaty of Lisbon introduced common action capacities in the EU's external relations administration, notably the European External Action Service (EEAS). One essential capacity is staff resources. This article analyses to what extent and under what conditions the practice of staff recruitment to the EEAS is independent of government influence, and in particular the recruitment of officials temporarily assigned from EU member states. The data draw on interviews with officials from all 27 member states as well as the EEAS which is charged with the selection of national public servants to the EEAS. Key findings suggest substantial independence of recruitment to the EEAS, and this independen…
Developments in financial information by local entities in europe
2010
In recent years, most Organisation for Economic and Cooperation Development (OECD) countries have brought in important reforms into their public accounting systems with the objective of both improving public service management and increasing the transparency and accountability of governments. Reforms of government accounting share a common direction towards the implementation of accrual-based accounting systems. In this context, this paper presents the situation of local government accounting systems in European countries with the aim of showing the degree of uniformity/ heterogeneity that currently exists among the countries considered and why differences persist nowadays, trying to classi…
Innovation policy mix in a multi-level context: The case of the Baltic Sea Region countries
2014
Innovation policies are no longer the responsibility of national-level governments alone, because regions and supra-national organizations also implement these policies. This paper aims to identify the character of the relations between different government levels which implement innovation policy in six Baltic Sea Region (BSR) countries (Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania). Expansion of innovation policy to different government levels may create a risk of overlapping between various initiatives, therefore a distribution of tasks and policy coordination is important. The theoretical background of the paper focuses on the concept of policy mix which emphasizes the role o…
Quality of government and economic growth at the municipal level: Evidence from Spain
2021
This paper analyzes the relationship between quality of government and economic growth at the municipal level in 1,820 Spanish municipalities during the period 2008–2015. At this level of dis- aggregation, the literature is virtually non-existent due to severe data constraints. To address this limitation, we proxy institutional quality with a measure of local government efficiency, which provides an accurate indicator of how good local authorities are at managing their budgets. This variable is expected to be highly correlated with other more traditional quality of government indicators such as corruption. After computing our measure, we then use it in a growth regression framework. We find…
SOCIAL WELFARE POLICY PREFERENCES IN LATVIA: EVIDENCE FROM ISSP SURVEYS
2018
This study seeks to find out how social welfare policy preferences have changed over time and what factors account for those preferences in Latvia. The author analyses ISSP survey data gathered in 1996, 2007 and 2016. The data analysis shows that most Latvians still support government interventions in providing social welfare. However, economic factors like material wellbeing and self-interest have decreased the overall support for social welfare policies during the last 20 years. The article provides a long-term perspective missing in previous studies on social welfare policy preferences in Eastern Europe.
Exploring Public Sector’s Roles in Collaborative Consumption – A Research Agenda
2018
Part 2: Digital Collaboration and Social Media; International audience; Motivated by the growing significance of sharing economy within our society, we here discuss which role the public sector may have within collaborative consumption (CC). CC refers to a business model grounded on peer-to-peer based sharing of goods and services through community-based online services. While public sector to a large extent has transformed from formalised bureaucratic structures into more hybrid organisations, focusing on the co-creation between public and private stakeholders, public sector’s role within the sharing economy is still in need for further investigation. We reflect on the need for studying ho…