This timely and important volume addresses the serious challenges faced by democracy in contemporary society. With contributions from some of the world's most prestigious scholars of public choice and political science, this comprehensive collection presents a complete overview of the threats...

Contrasting architectonics for a theory of public finance -- Property, state and public finance -- State and market : a two-forum societal architecture -- Political entrepreneurship within the ecology of enterprises -- The economic organization of political enterprises -- Revenue extraction :...

1. Public sector shock in Europe : between structural reforms and quantitative adjustment / Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead -- 2. Public sector adjustment and the threat to gender equality / Jill Rubery -- 3. Early application of fiscal austerity measures in the Baltic states / Jaan Masso and Kerly...

Contents: Foreword by Dariusz Wójcik -- Introduction. Theorizing semi-peripheral geographies of finance and banking / Christian Sellar, Silvia Grandi and Juvaria Jafri -- 1. Geofinance/banking between political and financial geographies / Christian Sellar, Silvia Grandi and Juvaria Jafri --...

Struggles over what a region receives, or should receive, from the budget of the central government are common to many countries. Discussions often focus on the measures of 'net fiscal flows' or 'fiscal balances' provided by the government or other actors. This unique book shows just how these...

This book analyzes political decentralization and fiscal federalism in Canada and Germany, both traditional federal countries, and in Spain, a unitarian country engaged in the last two decades in a process of decentralization. Three key issues required for a well designed financing system are...

This Handbook explores and explains new developments in the "second generation" theory of public finance, in which benevolent rulers and governments have been replaced by personally motivated politicians and the associated institutions. In other words, the normative approach has largely given...

State and Local Finances under Pressure explores the future of state and local government fiscal systems given the numerous pressures they face from economic, legal, technological, demographic and political forces. It explores how these multiple forces play out in terms of the changes state and...

In this broad and illuminating work, experts on public finance discuss innovations in state and local tax policy that have been implemented or considered over the course of the last three decades. The authors provide original work that analyzes whether state and local governments have 'gone...

The Reality of Budgetary Reform in OECD Nations investigates the impacts and consequences of budgetary reform through a comparative assessment of advanced Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) democracies that have undertaken budget reforms over the past two to three decades