Getting management accounting off the ground: post-colonial neoliberalism in healthcare budgets

Taking Sven Modell’s (2014, pp. 83–103) “societal relevance of management accounting” agenda forward, and based on a cost accounting initiative in a Sri Lankan hospital, this paper examines how management accounting is implicated in societal relevance. It reports on a postcolonial neoliberal state’s use of cost-saving experiments and the resultant emancipation of the individuals involved. It runs a bottom-up analysis, from micro events in the hospital to policymaking at the level of the Provincial Council. This analysis suggests that cost accounting acts as a mediating instrument: it begins to loosen the old Keynesian postcolonial bureaucratic budget confinements, creates a social space for individuals to consider cost-saving experiments, and addresses wider policy concerns about hospital resource management. The story is illuminated by Gilles Deleuze’s and Zigmund Bauman’s ideas on post-panoptic societies: old confinements are being problematized and new flexible, “liquid” spaces created, in which individuals are emancipated in terms of their ability to influence resource management within and beyond the organizational constituency

From skepticism to mutual support: towards a structural change in the relations between participatory budgeting and the information and communication technologies?

Until three years ago, ICT Technologies represented a main “subordinate clause” within the “grammar” of Participatory Budgeting (PB), the tool made famous by the experience of Porto Alegre and today expanded to more than 1400 cities across the planet. In fact, PB – born to enhance deliberation and exchanges among citizens and local institutions – has long looked at ICTS as a sort of “pollution factor” which could be useful to foster transparency and to support the spreading of information but could also lead to a lowering in quality of public discussion, turning its “instantaneity” into “immediatism,” and its “time-saving accessibility” into “reductionism” and laziness in facing the complexity of public decision-making through citizens’ participation. At the same time, ICTs often regarded Participatory Budgeting as a tool that was too-complex and too-charged with ideology to cooperate with. But in the last three years, the barriers which prevented ICTs and Participatory Budgeting to establish a constructive dialogue started to shrink thanks to several experiences which demonstrated that technologies can help overcome some “cognitive injustices” if not just used as a means to “make simpler” the organization of participatory processes and to bring “larger numbers” of intervenients to the process. In fact, ICTs could be valorized as a space adding “diversity” to the processes and increasing outreach capacity. Paradoxically, the experiences helping to overcome the mutual skepticism between ICTs and PB did not come from the centre of the Global North, but were implemented in peripheral or semiperipheral countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Brazil, Dominican Republic and Portugal in Europe), sometimes in cities where the “digital divide” is still high (at least in terms of Internet connections) and a significant part of the population lives in informal settlements and/or areas with low indicators of “connection.” Somehow, these experiences were able to demystify the “scary monolithicism” of ICTs, showing that some instruments (like mobile phones, and especially the use of SMS text messaging) could grant a higher degree of connectivity, diffusion and accountability, while other dimensions (which could risk jeopardizing social inclusion) could be minimized through creativity. The paper tries to depict a possible panorama of collaboration for the near future, starting from descriptions of some of the above mentioned “turning-point” experiences – both in the Global North as well as in the Global South

Interbudgetary Distribution of Taxes in Russia: Concentration of Power or Management Decentralization

For the whole social development of Russia as a democratic federal state, federal relations are basic. In this regard, it is particularly important to strike a balance between centripetal and centrifugal forces. The analysis of budget indicators presented in the article revealed the growing process of centralization, which enabled to conclude the low efficiency of the modern mechanism of tax allocation and its non-compliance to the principles of fiscal federalism. The growing budget crisis of the regions and the long-felt need of the structural reforming of Russian tax system require speedy implementation of internal reserves. Among these provisions, Russian scientists including the Institute of Socio-Economic Development of Territories of the Russian Academy of Sciences see the urgent need of the structural reform of the tax system in the Russian Federation. The results of the scientific search for answers to the questions of how and what it is expedient to amend, supplement, and delete in the Russian tax system are presented. In order to create incentives for the territorial authorities to increase the income, the algorithm of the distribution of tax revenue between the federal and regional budgets is developed on the basis of the estimations of the ratio of the volume of tax revenues collected in the region and received by the federal budget. Experimental calculations on the example of 83 entities of the Russian Federation have identified the existing provisions of tax revenue growth in 36 entities that could increase revenues by 2–12 %. The authors have proposed a set of key measures for optimizing the tax incentive policies, involving the development of selective and differential principles of tax incentives, the introduction of compensatory forms of the loss of income as a result of bene fits. The main measures to enhance the collection of regional and local property taxes are systematized

Bringing Foundations and Governments Closer - Evidence from Mexico

The recommendations formulated in the study provide the basis for close and effective cooperation between Mexican foundations and government agencies, including the Mexican Agency for International Development Co-operation, Agencia Mexicana de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AMEXCID). The study expands the spectrum of key development partners for a co-operation agency of the South. Similarly, it has been recognised that not only governments, but all actors, including foundations, must co-operate and assume their respective responsibilities in order to achieve the SDGs

Making Public Finance Public: Subnational Budget Watch in Croatia, Macedonia, and Ukraine

This paper deals with issues of budgetary oversight and accountability in the field of secondary education. Based on the case of Ukraine, the paper analyzes the state of general budgetary oversight on the local level and goes into detail concerning fiscal accountability of educational units. It is argued that the most striking feature of Ukrainian budgetary oversight on the local level is the dominant role of the state bodies involved and a very minor role attributed to the customers of educational services. In order to change this unjustified bias, a series of policies is proposed, aimed at decentralization of the educational sector, its institutionalization, and raising the level of self-governance of the school units.Ukraine, education, budgetary accountability

Gender responsive budgeting and fiscal decentralisation in India: A preliminary appraisal.

Fiscal decentralisation ; Gender

Adaptation of domestic state governance to international governance models

The purpose of the article is to provide the evolving international trends of modern management models and authorial vision of model of state governance system in Ukraine, its subsystems, in particular, the system of provision of administrative services that is appropriate for the contemporary times. Methodology. On the basis of scientific and theoretical approaches to the definitions of terms “state governance” and “public governance”, there was an explanation of considerable difference between them and, taking into consideration, the mentality of Ukrainian society and peculiar weak side in self-organization, the authors offered to form authorial model of governance on the basis of historically traditional for Ukraine model of state governance and to add some elements of management concepts that proved their significance, efficiency and priority in practice. Results. The authors emphasized the following two prevailing modern management models in the international practice: “new state management” and “good governance”. The first concept offered for consideration served as a basis for the semantic content of state activity that reflects more the state of administrative reformation. Practical meaning. A practical introduction of management to the domestic model of governance creates the range of contradictions that do not allow implementing herein concept. Pursuant to authors, the second one allows in considerable measure to reform state governance, considering historically developed peculiarities of this model. Moreover, the involvement of concept herein into introduction of informational and communicational technologies in the process of governance eliminates the necessity of power decentralization, it allows to form real net structure and, at the same, to keep vertical power structure, to involve citizens for formation and taking of management decisions, to form electronic communicational channel of feedback, to provide citizens with electronic administrative services. All indicated advantages of the concept certify about the necessity to reform state governance exactly in this field. Meaning/ Distinction. This article raises a question about the significance of formation and sequence of state policy in Ukraine aimed at creating an information-oriented society, space, as well as informational and technological infrastructure