Power to the People?: The Initiative Process and Fiscal Discipline in City Governments

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedict Salazar Jimenez
2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (5) ◽  
pp. 1280-1311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedict S. Jimenez

Does giving citizens the power to decide budget policies improve fiscal discipline in the local public sector? This study examines the effects of local initiatives on city budgetary solvency or the ability of city governments to generate revenues to meet their service and financial obligations in a fiscal year. Budgetary imbalance in the public sector has been blamed on self-interested bureaucrats and elected officials who desire budgets that are higher than that preferred by the median voter. The initiative gives citizens the power to directly decide budget issues. Research shows that voters are more fiscally conservative than government officials, which suggests that fiscal discipline will improve if citizens exercise greater control over budgeting. Using data from audited financial reports for midsized and large cities from 2006 to 2012, the empirical analysis indicates that initiative cities have weaker budgetary solvency compared with noninitiative cities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-396
Author(s):  
Zulfajri Zulfajri ◽  
H. Jalil ◽  
Iskandar A. Gani

Penelitian ini bertujuan membahas mekanisme pemilihan kepala daerah di Indonesia, dengan melakukan perbandingan sistem pemilihan kepala daerah di sejumlah negara, antara lain: Amerika Serikat, Belanda, dan India. Mekanisme ini sebagaimana dalam Pasal 18 ayat (4) UUD NRI 1945 yang menyebutkan bahwa gubernur, bupati, wali kota masing-masing sebagai kepala pemerintahan provinsi, kabupaten dan kota, dipilih secara demokratis. Frasa dipilih secara demokratis selalu ditafsirkan bahwa pemilihan kepala daerah harus dilakukan secara langsung oleh rakyat. Penelitian ini menggunakan penelitian yuridis normatif dengan menggunakan pendekatan perundang-undangan dan pendekatan perbandingan. Penelitian menemukan bahwa potret pemilihan kepala daerah saat ini menunjukkan bahwa pemerintah belum mampu menciptakan kesejahteraan rakyat, bahkan menyebabkan semakin rusaknya moral para pejabat negara dan rakyatnya. Regional Election in Indonesia and the Comparison in United States, Netherlands, and India This research aims to discuss the mechanism of regional election in Indonesia by compairing it with others country, which are United State, the Netherland, and India. This mechanism as in Article 18 paragraph (4) of the Indonesian Constitution 1945 (UUD 1945) which state that the governors, regents and mayors as heads of provincial, district and city governments, are democratically elected. The phrase democratically is always interpreted that the regional election must be carried out directly by the people. This study applies normative juridical research by using a statutory approach and a comparative approach. The study found that the current portrait of regional elections shows that the government has not been able to create people's welfare, even causing moral damage to state officials and people.


2002 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. T. Akindele ◽  
O. R. Olaopa ◽  
A. Sat. Obiyan

The most severe problem facing public institutions in Nigeria is the fiscal one, particularly in local government. This problem has been provoked by a number of factors, including ‘over dependence’ on statutory allocations from both the state and federal governments, deliberate tax evasion by the local citizenry, creation of nonviable local government areas, differences in the status of local governments in terms of the rural–urban dimension, and inadequate revenue and restricted fiscal jurisdiction. This article examines these factors and their attendant problems, implications and effects within the context of the fiscal federalism established by the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. For financially healthy local governments to exist, responsibilities and functions must be allocated in accordance with their taxing power and ability to generate funds internally. The constitutional provision that recognizes local governments’ power in this regard must give them full freedom to operate and this must be well guaranteed and adequately protected. These measures, coupled with a review of the revenue-sharing formula, the granting of fiscal autonomy and fiscal discipline as well as making local government responsive, responsible and accountable to the people will set local governments free from the fiscal stress promoted and strengthened by the 1999 constitution.


Dissent ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-9
Author(s):  
Lillian B. Rubin

Author(s):  
Shishir Kumar Gujrati

A developing economy has to spent more to increase the level of disposable income in the hands of its citizens. It has to undertake various projects which can provide long term benefits to the people and can raise their standard of living. Such projects involves huge amount of investment which are met through borrowings. Reckless borrowings results in unproductive interest expenditure, thereby depriving the nation with most of its income. In order to fix the responsibility with the government and to prevent it from unnecessary borrowings for unproductive purposes, the FRBM Act was enacted in 2003. However, due to the international financial crisis from 2007, the implementation of this act was postponed and later on suspended in 2009. The current paper attempts to highlight the features and the recommendations of this act.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-337
Author(s):  
La ode Dedihasriadi

Article 33 paragraph (3) of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia implies that the natural resources which belong to the State are used for the prosperity of the people of Indonesia. Thus, in carrying out the mandate of the Constitution to create justice for the community and national economic development of employment including foreign workers, the government should provide a good mechanism and supervision so that there will be no gap between the mandate of the constitution and the acceleration of economic development involving foreign workers. Labor inspection done by a separate working unit in the agency whose scope of duties and responsibilities is in the field of employment is in the central government, provincial government, and district/ city government. This study used a normative-empirical approach, where the researcher examined the law and its implementation regarding the roles of district/ city governments in the supervision of foreign workers. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent of the roles of district/ city governments in overseeing foreign workers in their regions. The results of the study showed that the roles of district/ city governments in carrying out the supervision of foreign workers in Indonesia were not regulated by laws of No. 23 of 2014 concerning regional government, PP No. 20 of 2018 concerning the use of foreign workers, and Minister of Manpower Regulation No.10 of 2018 concerning procedures for the use of foreign workers. Thus, its implementation made it difficult for district/ city governments to oversee the presence of foreign workers in their areas.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fidelia Rahayu Kencanasari

The number of MSMEs that are starting to grow very much in Indonesia, assisted by the sophistication of technology that is increasingly developing makes MSMEs very able to get the public market. The convenience that is obtained through online shopping is more felt by the people of Indonesia, making swords now starting to compete to collaborate with various existing platforms to keep getting customers and customers don't run to other stores. Digitalization has proven to be able to support the economic recovery program due to Covid-19, making the central, provincial, district and city governments including BUMN and BUMR carry out development and empowerment efforts for MSMEs in Indonesia.


1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
IWAN MORGAN

The drive to enact a constitutional amendment requiring balanced federal budgets has been a defining issue of American politics in the final decade of the twentieth century. Supporters of this measure deemed it the only way to break the cycle of huge deficits that inflated the national debt to almost unmanageable proportions in recent years. In 1995, 1996 and 1997 only the Senate's narrow failure to deliver the requisite two-thirds majority – latterly by a single vote – prevented Congress proposing an amendment for ratification by the states. Nevertheless the balanced-budget amendment campaign is not a product of the deficit-conscious 1990s. It originated in the 1970s as a movement by the states to impose fiscal discipline on the federal government. Between 1975 and 1979 thirty states petitioned Congress for a convention to write a balanced-budget amendment. The convention method of constitutional reform had lain unused since the Founding Fathers devised it as an alternative to congressional initiative, but the support of only four more states would have provided the two-thirds majority needed for its implementation. The states' campaign stalled at this juncture in the face of opposition from the Carter administration and congressional Democrats. By then, however, it had done much to popularize the balanced-budget amendment and make it part of the nation's political agenda.This article seeks to analyze the development of the balanced-budget amendment constitutional convention campaign and to assess its historical significance. Aside from its relevance to today's fiscal politics, the movement merits attention as an important episode in the history of the 1970s, an era when economic problems at home and defeat abroad underlined the limits of America's prosperity and power. In this troubled time, popular confidence in the nation's political leaders underwent marked decline. The Watergate scandal, failure in Vietnam and economic stagflation created doubts about their trustworthiness and competence to deal with America's problems. The budget revolt by the states was a manifestation of this anti-Washington mood. In style as well as substance, the campaign challenged conventional politics: it manifested distrust in elected leaders to manage public finances without constitutional restraint and sought to bypass establishment control of the orthodox forms of politics through adoption of an untested process of constitutional change. In many respects the drive for a balanced-budget amendment convention was an expression of the same populist impulse that was the mainspring of Jimmy Carter's campaign for president in 1976. The former Georgia governor's status as a political outsider untainted by previous connection with Washington had been his greatest electoral asset, but in office this man-of-the-people aligned himself with the nation's political establishment against the convention campaign. Analysis of Carter's response to this movement casts light on the ambiguity and complexity of his presidential politics.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Skladany
Keyword(s):  

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