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Advanced economies have a significantly longer history of using fiscal decentralization to tackle inequality, poverty and promote inclusive growth than those in developing Asia. However, in the recent years, developing Asia has explored the more active use of fiscal decentralization for inclusive purposes. India and China are no exception. As newly emerging economic powers on the global stage, China and India are interesting cases in the light of their remarkable record of economic growth in the recent years. But the cause of concern is that the poor in both these countries, especially in India, are not fully sharing the benefits of rapid economic growth. While in India, the poverty headcount ratio at $1.90 a day (2011 PPP$) stands at 25.01% and the GINI index at 35.7% in 2021, China’s poverty headcount ratio stands at 0.2% and the GINI index at 46.6% in 2021. Using the System GMM approach for data ranging from 2000 to 2022 the study finds that fiscal decentralization reduces poverty levels and the inequality in the distribution of income when size of the government spending is large.

In the spirit of ‘Europe of the Regions’, local authorities are responsible for responding to the main interests, needs and preferences of the country’s citizens. Regional and local administrative authorities provide citizens with the necessary public goods, which reflect the trend towards ‘glocalisation’ in public administration at the European level, more significantly in the states in which the political system recently became democratic. With this background, the effectiveness of local self-government depends not only on local authorities’ decision-making freedom but also on (financial) support for it through decentralisation, and the member states of the European Union (EU) employ different strategies to achieve the same goal, with varying degrees of success. Within this context, our chapter offers a comparative analysis of the administrative, financial and local self-government decentralisation in member states, which include the southern and eastern regions on the outer edges of the EU. The general goal of our study is to identify the main trends in the present administrations and their challenges, as well as best practices that can offer lessons to other member states which are reforming their administration through decentralisation. In addition to the identified challenges, solutions and best practices, our study reveals a tendency towards consolidation at the level of regional government not only in the terms of legal responsibility but also of administrative budgets, thus generating an assumption of improvement in the general quality of governance in the member states.

In recent years, there have been major changes in educational governance and the organization and management of primary and secondary education. This is particularly the case as indicated by debates and deliberations over notions of “good governance” and “public management,” accountability, transparency, effectiveness of public services, performance, and the generation of benchmarks and cross-national comparative data. Among these trends is the debate over educational decentralization, which in the past several decades has become a mode of governance strongly advocated by international policy organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural (UNESCO).

National governments took responsibility for expanding their economies and providing public services during the 1950s and 1960s for many reasons. In North America and Western Europe the strength of central government bureaucracies grew from their crucial roles in mobilizing resources during World War II and, afterward, they took on expanded responsibilities for economic and social reconstruction. Strong central management in industrialized nations offered convenient models for new governments in developing countries. In the post-colonial period, many newly independent governments in Africa and Asia saw local jurisdictions as colonial institutions or as strongholds of ethnic or religious minorities that could be sources of political opposition. Weakening their powers and concentrating resources and authority in the central government was a crucial instrument for nation building.

Introduction: Interest and action concerning fiscal accountability have surged around the world in recent years, especially among Sub-Saharan African countries, because decision-making in the region has traditionally been shrouded in secrecy, with the general public having almost no access to knowledge on the management of public funds. Limited fiscal transparency has led to government fiscal crises where citizens have begun to call for better governance and participation in public funds.

Purpose: This study examines the impact of e-governance on the overall fiscal performance in SSA, while the specific objectives include the effect of e-governance on the central government’s primary balance and public external debt stock.

Methodology: The study employs annual data across 43 SSA countries to analyse the study from 2000 to 2018 using the panel-corrected standard error (PCSE) method for estimating the models. Overall fiscal performance is generated through principal component analysis (PCA), which involves a linear combination of public external debt stock and central government primary balance.

Findings: The results reveal that there is clear evidence of the effectiveness of e-governance on the overall fiscal performance, even though this is not the same for the public external debt stock in SSA, despite the success recorded in the region’s ICT and telecommunication sectors in recent times. In addition, all other control variables impact fiscal performance except population growth.

We develop a multiperiod contest theory model to formulate the role of decentralization in coups decision and outcome. In our model the coup plotter chooses between carrying out a coup and subordination, the central government responds by fighting against the plotter, and the local government chooses whether to confront the military government after a successful coup. The model shows that more decentralized countries will experience longer military regime after a successful coup, but the relationship between decentralization and the risk of coups is nonmonotonic. We suggest that there may exist negative consequences of decentralization: Depending on the initial conditions, decentralization may increase the coup risks and jeopardize political stability.