Liliana A. Ponguta, Carlos Aggio, Kathryn M. Moore, Elisa A. Hartwig · 9 authors
We conducted a qualitative study in four countries of the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region and explored the Early Childhood Education (ECE) policy landscape with an emphasis on the challenges and opportunities decentralization has presented for the provision of services. We content-analyzed ECE policies and documents to map national approaches to ECE. Key informant interviews were conducted to assess the implementation of decentralized ECE governance. An analytical framework that combined core constructs of ECE systems and key domains of decentralization (autonomy, institutional capacity and accountability) was developed and applied. Our analysis points to four overarching processes that contribute to the perpetuation and possible increase of inequitable ECE including (1) sparse mechanisms for participatory and autonomous policy formulation, with few systematic efforts to strengthen local institutional capacities; (2) fragmented policy approaches to promote the assessment and strengthening of quality at scale; (3) funding frameworks and financing schemes that tend to benefit enrolment in contexts of higher levels of economic development; and (4) few mechanisms for coordination to ensure operational coherence across the ECE sector.
Local government units (LGUs) in the Philippines are authorized to borrow or incur debts to finance development, but with certain limitations provided by the Local Government Code of 1991. The main controlling statutory requirement is for provinces, cities, municipalities, and villages not to exceed 20% of their annual regular income going into debt servicing. The range of purposes for which local governments are allowed to borrow are tied up with their expenditure responsibilities, and this varies according to the type and level of LGU, and their capacity to access financing. These commonly include capital investment projects, socioeconomic enterprises, and self-liquidating and income-generating projects. This paper describes the experiences of the Philippines after close to three decades of fiscal decentralization in the country, presents trends and patterns of local debt management practices, highlights the roles of national government agencies and regulatory policies, and proposes emerging ideas and recommendations on how to improve debt management as an important pillar in local finance and decentralization.
Phetcharee Rupavijetra, Ploypailin Rupavijetra, Jun Kawaguchi, Keiichi Ogawa
The research ‘Decentralization of the Financing and Administration of Public Secondary Schools in Thailand: a Case Study in Chiang Mai’ aimed at investigating the current secondary education from financial and management perspectives with a case study of a school in Chiang Mai. The methodology for data collection consists of interviews and documentary research. Interviews were conducted on 1 Deputy Director of Finance Management and 4 teachers at Yupparaj School whom were key informants, and 2 Deputy Directors of Chiang Mai Education Service Area 34.\nSince the National Education Act in 1999 which emphasizes decentralization of education and financial management on a per-student basis, funding was allocated directly to Education Service Areas in the form of block grants and later on distributed to schools. The case of Yupparaj School which is a large well-known school in Chiang Mai Province is the case study for this research. In terms of financing, Yupparaj School as the large size school and reputation so the school receives a large amount of total government subsidies on education per student each year (THB 52 million in 2014). Another aspect is the school’s financial management in that the school is capable of finding external sources of funding i.e. donations, selling self-branded bottled water, letting food stalls, and managing its own Trust Fund, the school director, school administration committee and alumni association are crucial key factors for raising external funding.\nIn terms of school administration, Yupparaj School as other schools in Thailand operate on the basis of school-based management, director of the school has a certain amount of authority in administration. A school needs to have a committee called school administrative committee which control the budget allocation to projects by each department. Moreover, the committee is responsible for finding external source of funding. Decentralization of financial policy is benefit for large size school and reputation, on the other hand, small schools, which have less students, do not have enough budgets to operate school efficiently.
Research on Local Revenue, General Allocation Fund, and Special Allocation Fund on economic growth, poverty, unemployment, and Gini ratios have often been done. However, there is no research that uses these three funding sources as latent variables that have a simultaneous influence on quality economic growth variables as a latent variable consisting of economic growth, poverty, unemployment and the Gini ratio as constructs. Similarly, capital expenditure as a moderating variable will be seen as influencing the source of funds. East Java is a province with 38 districts/cities where the level of economic growth is quite high and even exceeds the level of national economic growth. But the level of poverty, unemployment, and inequality is also very high. This study aims to look at the effect of decentralized funding sources on Quality Economic Growth in East Java. The data used comes from the Directorate General of Financial Balance of the Ministry of Finance in 2012 -2015 for realization's fund, and from the Central Bureau of Statistics for economic growth, poverty, unemployment, and Gini ratios. This study uses Partial Least Squares (PLS) in analyzing data, where quality economic growth becomes endogenous latent variables that are influenced by funding sources as exogenous latent variables and capital expenditure as a moderating variable. The results of the analysis show that the source of funds does not significantly affect quality economic growth even though the direction is positive. Likewise, capital expenditure cannot strengthen the influence of funding sources on quality economic growth. From this research, it is expected that the regional government can reanalyze the allocation of funds and the realization of regional expenditures which are prioritized for public service spending so that the triple track strategy can be implemented properly and achieve quality economic growth.
The Kenya Vision 2030 flagship projects expected to generate rapid economic growth in the country are threatened by inadequate source of funding, financial management problems and failure to link policy, planning and expenditure budgeting. The projects continue to experience inadequacies in project appraisal and implementation time overruns. Therefore, without a clear financial framework, fiscal indiscipline, resource misallocation and inefficient use of resources will militate against achieving the Kenya Vision 2030 targets. The overall objective of this study was to evaluate determinants of government expenditure on public flagship projects in Kenya. The specific objectives were to: evaluate the influence of planning process; source of funds; and management responsibility on government expenditure on public flagship projects in Kenya. The theories reviewed in the study were public finance, budget, cost-benefit analysis and principal-agent which provided grounds for conceptual framework. The study employed descriptive research design, positivist philosophy and multiple regression model. The target population was the planned 348 flagship projects for the period 2008-2012. The unit of analysis was projects based on sample size of 96 stratified random sample while data was collected using a questionnaire. The findings showed that planning process, source of funds and management responsibility had significant positive influence in determining government expenditure on public flagship project in Kenya. The study recommended that, public entities should strengthen and improve planning process by deepening MTEF within programme-based budgeting; the National Treasury should increase resources required for financing public flagship projects by considering public-private-partnerships as a potential source; and public entities should improve, strengthen and enforce management responsibility when designing public flagship projects. The two areas suggested for further research were; impact of project characteristics on the choice of Public-Private Partnership financing model; and impact of fiscal decentralization on financing public projects in light of devolved systems of governance in Kenya.
This comparative study tries to map several aspects concerning finance relation between central and local government in both countries. The main purpose is to compare fiscal implementation through decentralization policy in the two countries, especially the case of vertical fiscal imbalance. The research focuses on vertical imbalance because it is a common problem in various countries around the world. It also occurs in Japan and Indonesia in line with fiscal implementation through decentralization policy. The analysis will be in the inter-related context of decentralization policy and fiscal decentralization.
This chapter examines the linkages and hierarchy of Bangladesh&s;s local governments. It focuses on the structure as of the mid-1980s, and considers how the organization of local governments was changed in order to achieve greater decentralization. The chapter reviews the structure of the administrative system and then the structure of local governments. The structure of local government in Bangladesh is complex, largely because of the shared responsibility between central and local governments for administering and financing different public sector functions. Bangladesh&s;s local government hierarchy is at least as complex as its administrative structure. Local government has a long history on the South Asian subcontinent. Local governments in urban areas function in a manner similar to the union parishads in rural areas. Each paurashava is divided into wards for the election of commissioners and there are a set number of commissioners prescribed in the Ordinance.
Considering the critical influencing phenomena, the study explores the causal mechanism of influences, as well as how such process works that lead to shape the dominant implications of influences on local government Union Councils’ budgetary autonomy, leading to the impact on their local governance.The research reveals the fact that the effects of the influencing phenomena on the budgetary autonomy of Union Councils in Bangladesh are evident with varying degrees and dimensions, but the influences do not always collide with the budgetary autonomy of Union Councils there. The indicator-based empirical analysis reveals that the magnitude of influences is almost double than that of the budgetary autonomy of Union Councils in Bangladesh. Thus, the autonomy of Union Councils in their budgeting decisions is a concern in the study of decentralization and local governance in Bangladesh.Originality and significance:The research contributed in the literature stream of public administration, specifically in decentralization, local government finance as well as budgeting, and in local governance studies. The study findings to some extent substantiated the rationality of conditional national government transfers to the sub-national governments in Bangladesh. Beyond the general theoretical and practical significance of the study, its findings led to inviting a fundamental debate on the national-local tax base system and appreciated the fact that central hindrance towards effective functioning of the local government Union Councils in Bangladesh is the crisis of ownership and competence of UP representatives.
The implementation of fiscal balance policy is done through budget allocation for local governments, include balance fund. Furthermore, the policy has also been meant to reduce imbalance fund resources between central and local governments and to minimize fiscal gap among local governments as well. The general allocation fund (DAU) is allocated with aim to even distribution of financial capability interregional. The allocation is to finance local governments' need regarding implementation of decentralization system. The use fund is adjusted to priority and need each local government (block grant)
Abstract If fiscal decentralization promotes growth, why do some regions decentralize more than others? This article identifies the growing divergence of fiscal centralization among Chinese cities and explains it in a public finance framework. It argues that fiscal decentralization and its economy‐liberalizing effect entail significant short‐term fiscal risk. The more a locality relies on uncompetitive business ownership for fiscal revenue, the less likely fiscal decentralization is to occur. This article compiles a dataset of 20 provincial capitals between 1999 and 2016 to test for the connection between a city's tax base and its fiscal centralization level. It then pairs two “most similar” cities to trace how fiscal security concerns drove their fiscal and economic policies apart. This article adds a micro‐level perspective to the literature on fiscal federalism. By pointing out the fiscal constraints confronting local governments, it offers a new angle to understand the different growth paths of Chinese cities.
There isn´t general consensus concerning the tools for evaluating of decentralization and public administration reforms. Comparison of impacts and tools for the evaluation of decentralization process is complicated mainly by a different arrangement of public administration, researching only partial aspects of decentralization or lack of key data. The aim of this paper is to legitimize the innovative approach of evaluation of the decentralization reforms through an analysis of subnational units´ staff. This consideration is based on correlation which suggests that countries with a higher degree of autonomy of subnational units usually have a wider bureaucratic apparatus of self-governments. In this context we answer whether the evaluation of Czech decentralization is relevant through an analysis of self-governmental staff and under which methodological preconditions. We worked with fragmented statistical unique and unpublished primary data about the self-governmental staff obtained from registers of the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Finance and the Czech Statistical Office.
Luis Ayala Cañón, Ana Herrero Alcalde, Jorge Martínez-Vázquez
This paper analyzes the determinants of welfare benefit levels within a highly fiscally decentralized context. More specifically, we analyze the role of mimicking as a driver of the institutional design of subnational government policies in the absence of federal co-ordination and financing. Empirically we focus on the welfare benefit programs of Spanish regional governments during the period 1996-2015. Our results strongly support the significant role played by mimicking: regional public agents observe what their peers are doing and act accordingly, and this takes place even in a context of low mobility of households. Moreover, we find evidence of vertical externalities: even in a completely decentralized framework, regions consider the benefits set by the central government as a benchmark when determining their own welfare benefit levels
Le Vietnam est un Etat-Parti administrativement centralisé. Fruit de l'Histoire du pays, cette centralisation administrative se conjugue pourtant malaisément avec l'urbanisation exponentielle des villes vietnamiennes. Moteurs de la croissance du pays et cœur de son attractivité économique depuis la politique du Đổi mới à la fin des années 80, les villes vietnamiennes connaissent pourtant d’importantes difficultés, liées au manque de décentralisation (administrative et financière) et au maintien d'une forte présence de l'Etat central. Cette décentralisation, inaboutie, est pourtant nécessaire pour, d'une part, gérer les phénomènes complexes découlant d'une urbanisation rapide et peu maitrisée (exode rural, gentrification, périurbanisation, extension des limites administratives des villes, gestion du foncier, accès aux services publics de base en milieu urbain, déplacements et transports, préservation des biens publics, qualité de l'air, logement, préservation de l'environnement, du patrimoine historique et culture, lutte contre les effets du changement climatique) et, d'autre part, le financement des infrastructures urbaines nécessaires au développement du pays et à son attractivité économique, pour lequel les besoins sont colossaux. Nous partons du principe que les collectivités locales, au Vietnam (en ce compris gouvernements locaux, sections locales du Parti communiste, sociétés publiques locales, opérateurs d’aménagement urbain publics) doivent constituer le support de la prise de décision, de l’action et du financement du développement urbain. Nous chercherons donc à répondre aux questions suivantes : Quel degré de décentralisation les collectivités locales vietnamiennes nécessitent-elles pour appréhender au mieux les phénomènes urbains ? Quel cadre juridique de gouvernance locale est nécessaire ? Quelle organisation administrative et quelle articulation entre échelons centraux et locaux en matière de développement urbain ?Notre étude cherchera à traduire juridiquement la place que les collectivités locales ont prise économiquement et socialement. Le but du présent travail de recherche est donc d’abord de démontrer en quoi les phénomènes urbains nécessitent des réponses avant tout locales puis d’analyser le cadre juridique qui entoure la prise de décision et le financement en matière de développement urbain. Ce travail s’inscrit donc dans une vision à la fois juridique et extra-juridique puisque des rapports incessants seront établis entre des phénomènes non juridiques (le développement urbain) et la réponse qui leur est apportée par le droit.
India is a federation whose roots can be found in the colonial period. Indian federal setup is clearly divided between centre, state and local government and likewise, the sources of revenue and responsibilities are also divided between them. The decentralization process in India is asymmetrical in the sense that decentralization of expenditure has been much more than the revenue decentralization as provided by the Constitution, thereby creating an imbalance in states’ income and spending. When this mismatch between the two is measured at different levels of government, we call it Vertical Fiscal Imbalance. In this paper, I have presented various definitions and measures of VFI given by several economists over the years and tried to measure the extent of VFI that exist in India since 1990-91 to 2014-15. We have used twenty five years data to make an analysis based on the data available in Finance Commission reports and Indian Public Finance Statistics. Our results show that the amount of revenue that has been decentralized over the period of study falls much short of the expenditure requirements that are expected to be met by the state governments. The situation is so intense that the state governments are left with no option other than relying on central transfers for financing their needs and that where the central government enjoys an upper hand and an authoritative power over the internal matters of the states. KEYWORDS: Expenditure, Decentralization, Indian federation, Revenue, Vertical Fiscal Imbalance.
The aim of this paper is to analyze how limits in revenue and spending autonomy of sub-sovereign governments influence their decisions. Revenue and spending autonomy indicators for Polish towns were established and used in analysis on school education expenditures during 2003–2016. The influence of limits on revenue autonomy on municipal spending has been extensively addressed in both theoretical and empirical literature. However, studies related to spending autonomy are rare. The analysis presented in this paper suggests that when limits exist in spending autonomy, more decentralized tasks are crowded out by regulated obligations. That is why the spending autonomy analysis is important to evaluate the equity between local units and the adequacy of local revenues to decentralized expenditures.The basic principle of local finance is that there should be an adequate relationship between the financial resources available to a local authority and the tasks it performs. However, in practice, the assessment of whether this has been achieved is very difficult. Often, only problems with the solvency of local governments indicate that we are dealing with a poorly constructed system of local finances. The expenditure autonomy indicator proposed in this article is a tool that provides a way to indicate problems with the adequacy of revenues before such anextreme situation occurs.
Fiscal decentralization aims to improve regional finance independency and reduce the fiscal dependency of central goverment. However, in practice, there are many areas that still rely on the assistance central finance for their regional development.This research aims to discuss the development of regional finance independency and analyze the influence of regional finance independency on poverty in Banten Province. This research uses descriptive method and panel data on 6 (six) regencies and cities in Banten Province at 2001-2011. The poverty model showed negative effect of regional finance independency on percentage of the poor and positive effect of balance fund’s ratio on percentage of the poor. Income inequality index and unemployment rate have positive effect on the percentage of the poor. Evalution for the allocation of the fund balance and development policy are needed to reduce inequality of income distribution.Keywords: local revenue, economic growth, povertyABSTRAK Desentralisasi fiskal bertujuan untuk meningkatkan kemandirian keuangan daerah dan mengurangi ketergantungan fiskal terhadap pemerintah pusat, namun pada pelaksanaannya masih banyak daerah yang bergantung pada bantuan dana pusat untuk pembangunan daerah. Penelitian membahas perkembangan kemandirian keuangan daerah dan pengaruhnya terhadap kemiskinan di Provinsi Banten. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskriptif dan data panel pada 6 (enam) kabupaten dan kota di Provinsi Banten tahun 2001-2011. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan kemandirian keuangan daerah berpengaruh positif terhadap peningkatan persentase penduduk miskin, sedangkan rasio Dana Perimbangan berpengaruh negatif terhadap persentase penduduk miskin, indeks ketimpangan pendapatan dan tingkat pengangguran terbuka berpengaruh positif terhadap persentase penduduk miskin.Implikasi kebijakan yang dirumuskan adalah perlunya dilakukan evaluasi kebijakan alokasi penggunaan Dana Perimbangan dan kebijakan pembangunan untuk mengurangi ketimpangan distribusi pendapatan.Kata Kunci: Pendapatan Asli Daerah, pertumbuhan ekonomi, kemiskinan
Xinhua Zhu, Yigang Wei, Yani Lai, Yan Li · 6 authors
“Land finance” refers to the key fiscal strategy in which local governments in China generate revenue through land grant premiums and land tax revenues. A burgeoning body of literature has focused on the driving factors of China’s land finance from different aspects including fiscal decentralization, revenue decentralization, competition among local governments, land marketization, infrastructure development, and economic development. However, little research has provided a comprehensive perspective integrating social, economic and institutional aspects to investigate the driving forces of these unique and profound issues in China. This study aims to investigate the driving factors and working mechanism of land finance. A theoretical and empirical model was proposed using soft budget constraint theory and least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The panel data of 35 Chinese major cities were assessed between 2006 and 2015. The empirical results contend the following: (1) the land transfer and fiscal systems provide the key impetus for land financing because the land transfer system forms a stable modality, and the fiscal system is an important incentive for land financing; (2) the effects of the economic development and political system are insignificant; and (3) the political and land systems significantly influence economic development. Our contributions focus on two aspects. Firstly, a comprehensive framework of factors germane to land finance is constructed. Secondly, a new research methodology for land use study is proposed. To the best of our knowledge, the current study is the first to employ the PLS-SEM method to delineate and verify the influence paths between multiple driving factors and land finance in different cities. Hence, research reliability can be improved.
When economy grows, and resident’s needs are diversifying, finance starts to become decentralization of power as a result. The offer of the public service by the centralized government is suitable to unify the citizen’s preference of the wide area, but what the local government where inhabitants are the nearest carries is desirable for the offer of the community service in a small range(Oates’s decentralization theorem). On the other hand, it becomes to cause the difference of various public services in each area in fiscal decentralization. Therefore, it is important how we measure progress of the financial decentralization in each area and the financial decentralization of power difference between each area. The purpose of this report analyzes economic and fiscal decentralization disparities in China from the measurement of the tile index based on the data of “the Chinese statistics summary (2000 through 2007)” before and after the western great development, at the same time it analyzes whether the relation between economy and financial decentralization is correlative, in other words, Oates’s decentralization theorem is concluded in Chinese economy. As a result of analysis, following three points were confirmed. 1. Expenditure decentralization disparities and difference of the district production per capita have positive correlation. Therefore, Oates’s decentralization theorem may be concluded. 2. However, when I consider population movement, Fiscal empowerment disparities and difference of the district production per capita have negative correlation. As a result, when I consider the side political, Oates’s decentralization theorem may not be concluded. 3. In the major cities of the coastal place such as Beijing and Shanghai, as for the growth rate of expenditure decentralization and the original expenditure decentralization, these coefficients of correlation were negative. Oates’s decentralization theorem is not concluded in these cities, and it is predicted that a factor except the finance strongly works for economic growth.The conclusion whether or not Oates’s decentralization theorem was concluded remains much more vague by the complicated political economic system in this way in China.
Abstract This research aims to examine the effect of fiscal decentralization on financial performance by adding government size as the mediator variable and audit opinion as the moderator variable of counties and cities in Lampung Province. Lampung Province is the center of economic mobility in South of Sumatera Island so it can impact well to regional autonomy implementation and has the best financial statements (an unqualified opinion) in Sumatra Island (47.5%). This research was conducted in 13 counties and 2 cities in 2010-2013 for the objective to see the regional autonomy implementation started in one decade. The examination of hypothesis used to Partial Least Square with the significant of decision-making <0.10. The results show that fiscal decentralization gives the positive and significant effect to financial performance but non-significant effect to government size; government size gives the positive and non-significant effect to finance performance; and fiscal decentralization gives the positive and non-significant effect to finance performance with the audit opinion as the moderator variable.
In a recent piece in Public Money & Management, I drew attention to the tacit balance between redistribution and incentives that continues to characterize local government finance in England (Sandf...
Urban public finance is a hidden force shaping cities and their development. This thesis draws attention to the powerful insights which can be gained from studying cities through a fiscal lens. It argues for an interdisciplinary and relational approach which infuses the fiscal study of cities with political and social interpretations of urban dynamics. Accounting for the city through two very different registers, this thesis draws from urban public finance and from critical scholarship on urban infrastructure. The conventional urban public finance literature is largely technical, produced by urban policy and fiscal experts. In contrast, social and political theorization on urban infrastructure provides a critical reading of the technicist approach and contributes to the refinement of key theoretical concepts within urban studies. There are many incommensurabilities between these two scholarly registers. They have different framings of politics, technical knowledge, and the priorities for change. However, there are several shared interests. They are both concerned with urban institutions, urban places, and the necessity for change. These shared interests provide the foundation for a revised approach to the fiscal study of cities. This synthetic approach is spelled out in a series of conceptual and methodological propositions. The first proposition is the device of the C/city, which distinguishes between an urban settlement (the small ccity) and its governing authorities (the big-C City). The C/city device foregrounds the importance of the city, the City, and the fiscal relationships which operate at the intersections between them. The second proposition frames urban public finance not just as a means of financing urban infrastructure but as an infrastructure itself. Drawing from the infrastructure scholarship, the concept of 'configurations’ is deployed creatively to trace fiscal histories, instruments, and relationships. The third proposition is the importance of grounding inquiry in particular places. To address this, the case study method is used. The case method allows for the use of a variety of types of data and analytical tools, grounded in contextualized experiences. The fourth proposition presents Kisumu, a secondary city in Kenya, as an exemplary case for exploring fiscal C/city configurations. Kisumu provides a useful case for wider generalization precisely because it is an ordinary (African) city. Not only is Kisumu on the margins of Western theorization, its unsensational nature also excludes it from dominant discourses on African cities. However, historically, administratively, and politically, Kisumu has many parallels with smaller urban centers in British East Africa and beyond. It provides a fascinating and widely relevant case of the differentiated nature of fiscal decentralization processes and dynamics. There is much which can be learned from Kisumu and its fiscal story. The bulk of this thesis is dedicated to unpacking the Kisumu case. First, there is a focus on the City. This includes tracing the historical development of Kisumu’s urban institutions and unpacking the ways in which the contemporary City shapes and is shaped by public finance. This is followed by a deeper exploration of particular city infrastructures and their fiscal configurations. The fiscal configurations related to property rates, the corporatized water utility company, and transport finance are traced and exposed. The Kisumu case provides a series of valuable insights. First, it demonstrates the potential and limitations of conventional fiscal analysis. The limitations posed by accounting are particularly important in the context of Kisumu, where the C/city has many misalignments. Second, it makes the case for reading public finance as an urban infrastructure. The process of tracing fiscal configurations illuminates the social, political, material and technical dimensions of public finance. Third, it draws attention to the de facto challenges and complexities related to decentralization (and in fact, the unique recentralization which Kenya has undergone). This includes how the sub-national urban state is constructed and deconstructed, over time and in complex ways. Fourth, it foregrounds the fiscal functionaries whose practices shape the everyday operations of the public finance system. These actors shape fiscal configurations. However, they are often hidden in conventional fiscal analyses. Fifth, it reads the practices of fiscal functionaries as a micro-politics of the state. The heterogeneity of the state and multidimensional nature of power are foregrounded. Finally, the case highlights the challenge of urban infrastructure finance in the context of a post-networked city. It shows the necessity of moving beyond common academic and policy tropes related to infrastructure and services. Collectively, these insights provide a compelling case for urban studies to more deeply engage with the fiscal C/city, in Africa and beyond.
The modern treasury system is the core component of the modern fiscal institution, but it draws little attention and is rarely discussed by domestic academics, until the now-present there still lacks of appropriate discourse. In practice, the functional imbalance of the current treasury system in China is very obvious. One prominent problem is the looseness and vulnerability of budget execution control, which has given rise to the ubiquitous phenomenon of public fund precipitation, frequent budgetary adjustment, tardy payment schedule, and cash rationing. Another problem is the high-level decentralization of government cash balance caused by indiscriminate special fiscal account setup，and the decentralization has greatly weakened the core functions of the national treasury. This paper will clarify two core propositions of institutional reform of the state treasury, including the whole-process budget execution control based on the expenditure cycle, and the government cash management based on the centralization of cash balances. It is expected to construct an appropriate framework of the assignment of power and responsibilities for the treasury system, and promote the deepen reform of the state treasury, building up the coordinating roles of the Ministry of Finance and the People’s Bank of China in the modern fiscal institution and supporting the modern treasury system functions.
Local government reform has been acknowledged to be one of the biggest successes of political transformation in Poland. Municipalities (gminy) gained strong powers and are now responsible for many public services of crucial importance to local communities. The districts (powiaty) and provinces (województwa) were also given important competences in the fields of public services and the responsibility for their development. Their autonomy is guarded by legal, institutional and financial guarantees and strong local leaders. The carefully designed institutional framework of local and regional government seemed to be permanent and durable, guaranteeing strong decentralization and providing local and provincial authorities with substantial decision-making powers and responsibilities for a vast majority of public services.Such a broad field for the functioning of the local government does not remain without interpretation problems. The consecutive central governments were finding common ground in their instrumental approach to local authorities' independence. It was convenient for the state to decentralize problems and challenges, while keeping control over finance and other resources, as well as looking for ways to increase supervisory powers over local government. Almost 30 years after the reintroduction of territorial self-government in Poland, it is expected to be well rooted in the constitutional system of Poland, but is it really so?