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The purpose of this study is to examine the implications of inter-governmental relations on procurement compliance in local government.

A total of 68 in-depth interviews with local government officials and councillors in four different local government authorities, members of parliament in the local authorities accounts committee and a committee clerk were carried out in addition to documentary review.

Evidences from in-depth interviews and documentary analysis point to central government as one of key reasons for procurement non-compliance. The nature of inter-governmental relations enables the central government to issue encroaching directives on local government procurement plans or take handicapping actions on the financial ability of the local governments to execute procurement plans.

The study adds inter-governmental relations on strategies for improving procurement compliance in African local government systems.

Despite increasing research on procurement compliance, the complexity of regulatory non-compliance in local government procurement has not been adequately analysed. The current study uses an inter-governmental relations perspective to contribute knowledge on procurement compliance in local government systems of the Third World, sub-Saharan Africa in particular.

Co‐operation between governments on scientific and technical information is normally at three levels: the development of national policies, the creation or improvement of systems and services, and the establishment and acceptance of standards for systems and services. Regional organizations such as the European Economic Community and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance can be interested in all three; the Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development is primarily interested in the first; specialist organizations such as the European Space Agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Food and Agricultural Organization are mainly interested in the second, though they can contribute to the third; Unesco is primarily concerned with the first and third and in technical assistance. In promoting co‐operation each organization seeks to benefit its members, who are of limited number in the regional organizations and in OECD but are world wide in the UN agencies and therefore composed mainly of developing countries.

Economic integration in the 21st century is driven largely by market signals, rather than by inter-governmental trading arrangements. It also means much more than “free trade.” Integration needs to consider all of the ways economies are connected in international markets, including trade in goods, services ideas and information, along with essential and complementary international movements of people and capital.

Except for a small number of sensitive products, especially in agriculture, most goods and services face no, or very low, formal trade barriers. Reducing border protection of the remaining sensitive products will certainly require negotiations, but they are no longer the most strategic obstacles to economic integration.

These days, the problems of most concern of those engaged in international commerce are logistics, communications, coping with security concerns and with different regulations in other economies. The effective constraint to designing and implementing cooperative arrangements to reduce such costs or risks of international commerce is the capacity to do so, rather than political resistance. Inter-governmental negotiations are not always necessary to deal with these practical issues.

Therefore, it should be possible to have a logical division of effort between APEC and the WTO in the Asia Pacific with the WTO dealing with those issues that do need to be negotiated; and APEC dealing with the many other issues where negotiations are not needed. In the longer term, an efficient division of labour could also emerge between the G20 and the WTO.

The chapter explores factors that help define ‘socially responsible value chains’, in which firms create and deliver goods and services that provide social and economic value, but minimize negative externalities, operate in environmentally and socially sustainable ways, and address the concerns of all stakeholders. We use the case method to capture nuances of complex value-chain relationships extending into the unfamiliar territory of emerging markets. We chose three cases, involving Apple, Nike and Nestle, which have become landmarks in corporate responsibility policy and practice. We identify fundamental questions pertaining to social responsibility that arise when firms’ value chains extend across countries and deep into the bottom of the pyramid, and discuss how information gaps, institutional environment and socio-political actors affect outcomes. The chapter provides value by defining the role of governments, inter-governmental organizations, NGOs and managers in creating socially responsible value chains, and laying out specific recommendations.

Official publications at the British Library Lending Division include the published and ‘semi‐published’ documents of national and inter‐governmental departments, agencies and fringe bodies, together with local government publications. The maintenance of such a collection presents special problems and the Division has a special section to deal with these. The general principles for selection depend upon the categories being acquired. British official publications published by HMSO are received on a subscription basis. Those not published by HMSO are either selected individually, or acquired under depository arrangements with the issuing Department. British local government publications are being acquired through a firm specializing in local government documentation. Foreign official publications are either acquired on demand, or obtained through back up libraries such as the Official Publications Library of the British Library Reference Division or via international interlibrary loan. There are special arrangements to acquire the output of particular inter‐governmental organizations such as OECD, FAO, Unesco, IAEA and the Division has been a main depository library for all EC publications since 1973. Thousands of official reports from the United States are acquired through agencies such as NTIS and ERIC. Recording and shelving of official publications vary according to the type of publication eg serial, monograph, microfiche etc. Some of the material acquired is indexed in the Division's publication British Reports, Translations and Theses and selected input is forwarded for inclusion in SIGLE (System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe).

The purpose of this study is to compare the production efficiencies and frontiers differences of oil-producing countries (OPCs) in four inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) in the international petroleum industry with the aim of providing such countries understanding of group characteristics that help maximize their supply interests.

The empirical analysis is based on 14 years of panel data covering the period from 2000 to 2013. In all 46 unique countries who are members of four IGOs relevant to the international petroleum industry are examined on individual and group bases. The authors use both metafrontier analysis and global frontier difference in examining the group average and group frontiers, respectively.

Groups with high inter and intra-group collaborations which ensure exchange of information, organizational learning and innovation tend to do better than groups with even higher hydro-carbon endowment. Additionally, hydro-carbon resource endowment may not be the solution to group inefficiency without higher endowment in human capital, economic stability, technology and infrastructure.

Choice of inter-governmental organizational membership should be based on the level of inter- and intra-group collaborations, human capital endowment among others and not mere historic links or even resource endowment.

This is among the few studies to compare and rank IGOs. Specifically, it is among the first studies to analyze the petroleum production efficiencies of IGOs involved in the international petroleum industry. This study assesses the performance differences among OPCs with the aim of identifying for OPCs the characteristics of inter-governmental groups that are beneficial to efficiency in upstream petroleum activities.

The purpose of this paper is to find the relationship between local direct elections and the change in social spending, controlling for GDP per capita, revenues and wide-range socio-welfare indicators at the regional level.

This research uses a model of time-series cross-sectional panel data set for 33 provinces in Indonesia from 2001 to 2012.

The main finding of this research is that the political budget cycle does exist in Indonesia. Incumbents responded to the direct elections more sensitively rather than to other variables in the model. The most important variables that are significant in the model are not only direct election but also inter-governmental grants. Interestingly, the local economy (as measured by GDP per capita) does not clearly exhibit a meaningful impact.

Although the importance of decentralisation in Indonesia is actually at the regency level, obtaining the data is really challenging. Therefore the exercise on this paper is currently limited only for the provincial level.

This finding conveys the message that there is large room for improvement in inter-governmental transfer formulation, more importantly to the regions where they still entail significant budget support from central government. In addition, transfers during specific periods such as elections need to be modified to avoid the misappropriation of local budget and to mitigate the adverse impact of PBC. The formulation of inter-governmental transfers is pivotal in reducing over-dependence to the central government funding and to ensure the effectiveness of budget devolved at the local level.

To the author’s understanding, the paper is the first to discuss the presence of the political budget cycle on social protection programs in Indonesia. The expected contribution of the current work is twofold: Firstly, the author used a recent data set hosted by the World Bank (INDO-DAPOER). Secondly, the findings are relevant to the discussion within the sphere of development studies and political science.

Drawing on network and fiscal federalism theories, we investigated central government patronage and donor aid as antecedents of budget performance in local government (LG). A mixed methods design with data collected from 18 LGs, two ministries, and four donor agencies in Uganda was employed. Results revealed that both central government patronage and donor aid predict budget performance. Moreover, autonomy does not mediate the interactions as initially hypothesized. Implications for theory and practice are discussed and future research direction is provided.

The touted benefits of inter-governmental contracting are cost savings and simplicity when compared to shared service agreements. Some managers and public officials resist contracting given the assumption that there may be a drop-off in service quality. However, inter-governmental contracting introduces market forces which theoretically would improve performance while keeping costs per unit of output low (Boyne, 1998). This paperexamines municipal police contracting in the State of New Jersey, the purpose of which is to determine if there are statistically significant differences in non-violent crime rates among municipalities that maintain their own police force versus those that contract with neighboring municipalities for police services. Contracting costs are also explored. While summary statistics indicate lower non-violent crime rates among municipalities that maintain their own police force compared to those that contract for police services, multiple regression results indicate that contracting does not predict higher non-violent crime rates at the .05 level. Therefore, contracting for police services should be explored as an alternative municipal policing model.