Through direct democracy, California voters pass local and state initiative measures, assuming the role of the legislature and many times mandating how government should act or spend funds. But are voters really getting what they want through the initiative process? Initiatives known as...

Since the early 1990s, California has experienced a recurring budget crisis. This article examines the combined budgets of state and local government and the institutions for creating these budgets to ascertain the source of the problem. The state collects more taxes and fees as a percent of...

Abstract We provide an empirical study analysing the distribution of EU funds among 2478 Polish municipalities in the period 2007–2011. EU funds are found to be concentrated in smaller municipalities and economically weak sub-regions, and do not increase in the municipalities’ fiscal...

The Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are similar in many respects, not least with regards to the basic administrative set-up: a non-federal task-related division between state, counties and municipalities. In all three countries, counties and municipalities raise a large...

Purpose – This paper aims to reconcile conflicting findings in the literature regarding the extent of consumption smoothing of sub-federal governments. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses a panel of US state and local government data from 1973 to 2000 to find the extent of...

Purpose – This paper aims to focus on corruption and misconduct evidenced from local government investigation reports in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Design/methodology/approach – A corruption and misconduct taxonomy was developed and the audit committee’s role was empirically...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the coexistence of cash accounting and accrual accounting systems through an investigation of the roles they fulfill in Greek municipalities. Design/methodology/approach – The survey results are based on the answers of the financial...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the extent to which the perceived usefulness of financial information for internal decision making is affected by the internal control to which that information is subjected. Design/methodology/approach The research is positivist and quantitative,...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the process of accounting change in Indonesian local government. It sets to explore how various reform drivers with different interests and preferences compete and cooperate in the process of governmental accounting reform policy formulation...

Purpose – This paper seeks to examine the impacts of the new public management (NPM)‐oriented management accounting on political control at the Malawian local government level. The objective is to investigate the extent to which NPM‐based management accounting practices have increased...