Perspectives On Fiscal Federalism

This book addresses a variety of issues relating to intergovernmental finance and the provision and financing of local services including budgeting and financial management, the institutional framework for the conduct of intergovernmental relations, appropriate methods of service delivery in metropolitan agglomerations and remote rural areas, local government enterprises, user charges, property taxes, income and value-added taxes, natural resource taxes, and local business taxes. Throughout, the authors draw on experience both in Canada and in other decentralized countries and consider to vary.

Contributors provide a fascinating account of how federal countries are confronting the traditional challenges of conflicts over division of fiscal powers while also coping with emerging challenges of globalization and citizen empowerment arising from the information revolution. They analyze how relationships and roles in different orders of government are being reshaped and show how local solutions inspired by global principles help strengthen government accountability and improve the quality of life for citizens.

This collection focuses on the ways in which federalism has affected and been affected by economic reform, especially global integration. The editors and contributors focus in particular on the political economy of institutional and economic change - how the division of authority between national and subnational governments shapes debates over policy changes, as well as how the changing economic environment creates incentives to modify the basic agreements between levels of governments. Each chapter contains a historical overview, and an in-depth account of division of authority, lines of accountability, and legislative, bureaucratic, and other arenas in which the levels of government interact for a particular country. The analyses are based on reform (or non-reform) episodes for each country - most from recent history, but some spanning the century. As a collection, the country studies span a range of developing and industrial countries with varying political systems.

Over the past few decades, a clear trend has emerged worldwide toward the devolution of spending and, to a lesser extent, revenue-raising responsibilities to state and local levels of government. One view is that the decentralization of spending responsibilities can entail substantial gains in terms of distributed equity and macroeconomic management. The papers in this volume, edited by Teresa Ter-Minassian, examine the validity of these views in light of theoretical considerations, as well as the experience of a number of countries.

"Fiscal Federalism and Equalization Policy in Canada is a concise book that aims to increase public understanding of equalization and fiscal federalism by providing a comparative and multidisciplinary perspective on the history, politics, and economics of equalization policy in Canada. The authors provide a brief history of the equalization program, a discussion of key economic debates concerning the role of that program and its effects, an analysis of the politics of equalization as witnessed over the last decade, and an exploration of the relationship between equalization and other components of fiscal federalism, particularly the Canada Health Transfer and the Canada Social Transfer. The result is an analysis of equalization that draws from the best scholarship available in the fields of economics, economic history, political science, public policy, and political sociology."--

Reprints 23 carefully selected articles intended to provide a balanced view of the Scandinavian model of local financing, including perspectives from four of the five Nordic countries, leaving out Iceland's unique design. They cover style, reform, and performance; demand; political institutions; cost and control; and theory. Among the specific topics are reforming a centralized system of local public finance in Norway, local public expenditure in Sweden as a model in which the median voter is not necessarily decisive, real and perceived effects of changing the grant system from specific to general grants, a hedonic cost approach to cost efficiency in providing child care services, and the behavior of bureaucrats and the choice between single-purpose and multi-purpose authorities. Most of the studies consider Norway, reflecting the much greater research into the subject in that country. No subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This booklet offers a snapshot of fiscal federalism in 12 federal democracies. It includes a glossary of country-specific terminology, serving as an entry point to a forthcoming book on the same theme. The booklet series is the fourth in a series created to provide accessible and comparative information on federal systems.