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This study analyses to what extent politicians use public sector entities' financial statements along with the politicians' perceptions of the usefulness of such statements in the politicians' decision-making. The authors analyze financial statements' use and usefulness when the statements are prepared on a modified accrual basis and in the setting where there is the intention of full accrual accounting adoption. In addition, this study provides information about the use of the individual components of financial statements and investigates the reasons why the statements may not be used.

This study was conducted using a questionnaire. The authors surveyed politicians that are members of Croatian public sector bodies. To conduct this research, the politicians were contacted by telephone over the period from February to April 2022.

The findings of this study are of potential interest to researchers, regulators and policy makers. The findings show that most politicians use financial statements, but the politicians' perception of the statements' usefulness when the statements are prepared on a modified accrual accounting basis is greater than the politicians' actual use of the statements. The findings also show that in the process of making decisions, politicians use the selected financial statements that contain information of interest to the politicians; that the politicians tend to gravitate to the use of reports on revenue, expenses, receipts and expenditure prepared on modified accrual bases which are closer to budgetary reporting; that the politicians use the information that supports the politicians' sphere of responsibility as enforced by legislation.

This study provides insights into the use and usefulness of financial statements in public sector setting where modified accrual accounting is used to prepare the statements and reports. This study provides additional evidence on the significance of legal setting to the financial reporting in public sector.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise our understanding of public value accounting (PVA) by studying the use and usefulness of performance measurements (PM) as a management tool. The authors do this from a perspective in which they address the complexity of various (sometimes conflicting) assessments of performance measurement and management (PMM) by different stakeholders.

An interpretative case study using qualitative methods. The paper is based on 30 interviews conducted in 2018 and 2019 with respondents working with PMM at different levels, such as politicians, officials and health-care professionals. The study context was Region Stockholm (RS) in Sweden and its health-care division.

PMs become an instrumental tool for PMM, which led to output being promoted above outcome. The authors show that there is a conceptual shortcoming in the discussion of PVA, as the effort needed to achieve outcome-based information might exceed the ability of an organisation to deliver it. The authors address the importance of studying the interaction among different stakeholders, including politicians, the public and media, in research on PVA, as well as possible power relationships among stakeholders.

The authors contribute to the growing research on PVA and its call for more empirical research by offering a more nuanced interpretation of PVA activities. The authors do this by studying PMM and the nature of these activities in a public sector organisation from a multiple-stakeholder perspective.

Although politicians' use of performance information affects political decisions and, through them, the well-being of society, there is a lack of studies exploring what contextual factors are associated with annual active performance information use among politicians. Furthermore, past studies on this subject have been cross-sectional rather than longitudinal.

In this qualitative case study, triangulation of observations and 10 semi-structured interviews were used to ensure the robustness of findings. The study was conducted in a Finnish municipality known as Kangasala.

A dialogue culture, constructive political climate, trusted information sources and high-quality information attained via accessible information channels explained the high information use in primarily unfavorable conditions to such use. The authors’ findings contradict many prior interview and survey studies that did not recognize the simultaneous contributions of the information provider, channel and quality, along with organizational and environmental factors to high performance information use. The results contradict to some extent the findings from other countries as these studies have explained high levels of use with unique combinations of drivers, whereas we identify common attributes of these combinations and talk about their meaning in the success of Kangasala's public financial management. However, the findings of this case study cannot be generalized.

This study describes a case organization that created a supportive environment for politicians' frequent performance information use that contributed to improvements. Past studies provide little knowledge about establishing sustained high levels of information use among politicians, so the case offers ideas and inspiration for improving this use.

This paper analyses the degree of political decentralisation and its relation to the local councils in Tanzania. It explores the institutional and political set-up of the local councils originating from the degree of political decentralisation and how it influences the tension between the bureaucrats and local politicians.

Qualitative approach by a comparative case study is adopted to investigate the phenomenon in two local governments in Tanzania. The data were collected through interviews with 37 senior local government officials and eight focus group discussions with 48 administrators and councillors.

The findings indicate that the two local governments are subjected to a similar political system guided by similar rules and guidelines from the central government bureaucracy for implementing the party manifesto and central government priorities. Thus, the local politicians have little room for negotiation in adopting local agenda to reflect the preferences of the local community. Any attempt to challenge this status quo creates political tensions between bureaucrats and the administrators.

The findings provide invaluable insights to different stakeholders such as political scientists, government officials, and policymakers with interests in research or practice of political decentralization and political-administrative relation.

The study aims to explain the communicative basis of conflicts in which actors stand in opposition in defining a negotiated situation and to deepen knowledge of environmental conflict development, in particular on how frames are (re)shaped through discursive choices in interaction.

This study adopts an interactional approach to framing and 1) identifies the frames shaped and reshaped in four environmental debates and 2) analyzes how framing activities affect the course of the debates.

This study contributes to understanding 1) the interactive nature of conflicts; 2) how the reception and interpretation of issue framing depends on the surrounding identity and characterization framing and 3) how framing activities, like identity work, emotional alignment and reframing, can affect the course of environmental debates toward polarizing or bridging.

On a methodological level, this study contributes to communication research by applying methodologies for investigating framing processes on a micro-level. This study investigates interactional framing, considering the perspectives of frame strategists engaging in issue arenas. The study provides an in-depth discourse analysis of the debates but lacks an overview on the entire issue arena regarding this conflict.

Skilled actors span boundaries by articulating issue frames that accommodate opponents' concerns and values while demonstrating the added value of the new frame, adjusting identity work in favor of relations with opponents. Furthermore, calibrating emotional intensity offers opportunities to mobilize support.

This research investigates which communicative competences are essential to act adequately in environmental conflicts, given their intractable nature, and suggests opportunities for cocreation by making discursive choices. This approach helps to uncover the micro-processes that escalate and de-escalate a conflict.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance understanding of the conceptualisation and operationalisation of public value in practice by applying Moore's (1995) strategic triangle as an analytical framework to study strategic management and management control practices in relation to public value.

The paper uses an interpretative longitudinal case study approach including qualitative methods of document studies and interviews between 2017 and 2019.

In the strategic triangle, the three nodes of authorising environment, public value creation and operational capacity are interdependent, and alignment is a necessity for a strategy to be successful. But this alignment is vulnerable. The findings suggest three propositions: (1) strategic alignment is vulnerable to management control practices having a strong focus on performance measurements, (2) strategic alignment is vulnerable to standardised management control practices and (3) strategic alignment is vulnerable to politically driven management control practices.

With the strategic triangle as a base, this paper tries to understand what kind of management control practices enable and/or constrain public value, as there has been a call for this kind of research. In this way it adds to earlier research on public value, to the growing interest in the strategic triangle as an analytical framework in analysing empirical material and to the request for more empirical studies on the subject. The strategic triangle also embraces political factors, government agendas and political leadership for which there has also been a call for more research.

Research was conducted to investigate whether, and how, political accountability might stabilise when agents are faced with profound changes in external structures such as competition laws and austerity policies.

We performed a field study from 2007 to 2015 in a regional hub in Finland and worked with data from document analysis, interviews and meeting observations. We have used embedded research design, where we apply methodological bracketing as well as composite sequence analysis for field research.

Accountability declined when irresistible external structures were the dominant influence on the unreflective actions of agents-in-focus. With time, however, the agents started acting critically by drawing on structures that could facilitate strategic actions to stabilise political accountability.

The field research and interpretation of the data were limited to the organisation analysed; however, the theoretical arguments allow for analytical generalisations.

The research demonstrates how public officials and political decision-makers can eventually adopt a strategic approach when faced with irresistible change in external structures.

The research demonstrates how public officials and political decision-makers can eventually adopt a strategic approach when faced with irresistible changes in external structures.

The study locates political accountability in the context of strong structuration theory and discusses how it is redefined by external structures.

The goal of the research was to check whether the sender communicating in an ambiguous manner can gain the benefits in three aspects: perception of his or her image, evoking agreement with issue stand and intention to support him or her in the election. Impact of ambiguous messages was compared with the impact of messages consistent or inconsistent with participants' opinions.

Two experiments were conducted. Participants were randomly divided into three groups and each of them was presented with (1) a message supporting or (2) opposing given proposition or (3) an ambiguous message not revealing the ultimate opinion of the sender. Participants' initial views on the issues were measured. In experiment 1 an expert message concerned the building of the nuclear power plant was presented. In experiment 2 it was a politician's message about introducing the guaranteed number of parliamentary seats for women.

The results suggest that a strategy of argumentative ambiguity applied by senders may be beneficial if the point is to avoid recipients' objections. However, the consequences of ambiguity for the evaluation of sender's credibility and voters' intentions can be seen to be negative.

This research was looking for the reconcile of the contradictory results of previous research, which may have their source in the various operationalization of ambiguity. It was focused at an argumentative ambiguity (i.e. presenting different points of view without declaring support for any of the options).

The involvement of politicians in the introduction and use of financial management techniques in the public sector deserves more attention. This paper analyses the influence of members of Parliament (MPs) on the development of financial management regulations for Dutch central government executive agencies.

This paper uses desk research and analyses formal evaluation reports, as well as minutes of meetings of Parliament to analyse the influence of MPs on the changes in financial management regulations.

MPs' influence on the change of prescriptions seems to have been small. The authors observe that modifications were most often already formulated in general evaluation reports by the Ministry of Finance, in advance of parliamentary debates. The analysis also reveals that the criteria to be met by the executive agencies became more detailed in the initial years of the agency model and became more global in recent years.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on the influence of politicians on financial management regulations.

The paper shows that the influence of MPs on the prescriptions is quite small in daily practice and therefore, their role in the legislative process, as far as financial management techniques are concerned, is limited.

The results show that politicians are both in charge of, as well as subject to NPM-inspired financial management regulations, whereas their influence on the rules is small. The authors advise to further analyse this, as well as to explore how their role can be enlarged.

The interplay between politicians and financial management techniques in general, and the influence of MPs on the legislative process in specific, is an underresearched area. This paper aims to contribute to this literature and shows that the influence of MPs on the development of financial management regulations is limited. Several changes were made in these prescriptions in a period of more than 25 years, whereas discussions in the Parliament hardly played a role in these modifications.

The present article deals with the topic of migrants’ exclusion from welfare benefits in European host countries from the angle of the research on the so-called “welfare chauvinism” (Andersen and Bjørklund 1990, p. 212). More specifically, it explores the political justifications behind welfare chauvinism in the policy debate surrounding some recent chauvinist-oriented social policies. Drawing on that, the article develops a theoretical argument to generate expectations about how politicians use different types of justifications. The fundamental proposition is that the chauvinistic arguments used are shaped by the different types of social programs, i.e. either universal or means-tested programs.

Qualitative content analysis of several selected parliamentary debates in the period 2017–2019 in Austria is carried out. In order to improve the efficiency of the research, the author relies on MAXQDA, an advanced piece of software for qualitative data analysis, to code the qualitative data and analyze them. The author prefers this to other similar programs as it is considered a valid and reliable tool within the academic research world.

The article points out that programs design works as an explanatory factor to highlight variations of welfare chauvinist arguments.

It develops for the first time a theoretical argument explaining the presence and variation of welfare chauvinist arguments based on social programs design.