Local Governance in Industrial Countries

Front Cover
Anwar Shah
World Bank Publications, 2006 - Business & Economics - 398 pages
The information revolution, in recent years, has worked as a catalyst to create a globalized yet localized world with local governments playing an ever-increasing role in the domestic and global economy. How these governments will be able to shoulder their responsibilities' especially the delivery of local services more effectively is the concern of this book. The book, edited by Anwar Shah, provides a comparative perspective on international practices in local governance and draws lessons from these experiences to guide future reform. Case studies include the following countries: Argentina, B.
 

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Page 321 - Municipal corporations owe their origin to, and derive their powers and rights wholly from, the Legislature. It breathes into them the breath of life, without which they cannot exist. As it creates, so it may destroy. If It may destroy, it
Page 3 - ... world during past centuries. It compares and contrasts the ancient Indian and Chinese systems of local governance with Nordic, Southern European, North American, and Australian models. The last section provides a comparative overview of local government organization and finance in selected developing countries as an introduction to the in-depth treatment of these countries in the rest of the book. The Theory: Conceptual Perspectives on Local Governance and Central-Local Relations Several accepted...
Page 4 - each public service should be provided by the jurisdiction having control over the minimum geographic area that would internalize benefits and costs of such provision...
Page 1 - For forms of government let fools contest; Whate'er is best administer'd is best: For modes of faith, let graceless zealots fight; His can't be wrong whose life is in the right...
Page 6 - The assignment of public services to local governments or to metropolitan or regional governments can be based on considerations such as economies of scale, economies of scope (appropriate bundling of local public services to improve efficiency through information and coordination economies and enhanced accountability through voter participation and cost recovery) and cost-benefit spillovers, proximity to beneficiaries, consumer preferences, and budgetary choices about the composition of spending....
Page 187 - Bird, Richard M. and Francois Vaillancourt (eds) (1998), Fiscal Decentralization in Developing Countries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Page 216 - ... outlearn" opponents) to overthrow a dominant coalition. Hence: Hypothesis 5: The core (basic attributes) of a governmental action program is unlikely to be changed in the absence of significant perturbations external to the subsystem, that is, changes in socioeconomic conditions, system-wide governing coalitions, or policy outputs from other subsystems.
Page 209 - New Zealand Fiscal rule: Local authorities are required by law to set operating revenues at a level sufficient to cover operating expenses in any financial year (with a relatively narrow exception to run deficits). Local authorities are largely self-funded, and the central government has no formal role in reviewing or approving the budgets of local authorities. Borrowing: No restrictions on borrowing.
Page 39 - Public Finance Quarterly 20 (3): 359-77. . 1994. TheReform of Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations in Developing and Emerging Market Economies. Washington, DC: World Bank. . 2001. "Interregional Competition and Federal Cooperation — To Compete or to Cooperate? That's Not the Question.
Page xxii - ... usually a country or a major region within a country. Government revenues are an important part of the transactions recorded in SNA. The System of National /Accounts 1993 (1993 SNA) have been jointly published by five international organisations: the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the World Bank. The System is a comprehensive, consistent and flexible set of macroeconomic accounts. It is designed...