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Decentralised administrative arrangements and the active function of local government organisations are essential to tackle crisis effectively. Using Bangladesh as a case study, this paper examines the central and local government administrative arrangements during COVID-19 pandemic.

This study applies qualitative content analysis and interviews to explore the local government’s role in Bangladesh’s COVID-19 management by interviews of 18 participants including government officials, experts, non-government organisations (NGOs) representatives, and the general public. This paper also analysed academic papers, policy documents and other publicly available documents, including newspaper reports.

The Constitution of Bangladesh intensified the active participation of local government in each administrative unit through decentralised administrative management. This paper however reveals that the administrative arrangement during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh was primarily a centrally led system. The local government was not sufficiently involved, nor had it integrated into the planning and coordination process. This indicated the absence of active decentralised administration.

This study fills the research gap of the administrative pattern and local relations in COVID-19 management by exploring the local government’s role during the catastrophic situation and highlights the importance of decentralised administrative actions in managing the crisis.

Inflation and federal monetary efforts to control it with interest rate hikes have very real and overwhelmingly negative consequences on US local governments following the onset of COVID-19. This study explores the post-pandemic inflationary environment of US local governments; examines the impacts of inflation and high interest rates on local government revenue, operating costs, capital costs, and debt service; reviews local government inflation management strategies, including the use of intergovernmental revenue; and assesses ongoing threats to local government financial health and financial resilience.

This study uses trend and literature analysis to comment on current issues local governments face.

The study finds that the growth of property values and resulting stability of property tax revenue has been important to local government revenues; that local governments bear very real burdens as operating and capital costs increase; and that the combination of high inflation and interest rates affects local government debt issuance by negatively affecting credit quality and interest costs, leading to municipal market contraction. Local governments have benefitted tremendously from intergovernmental revenue, but would be ill-advised to rely on it.

Vulnerabilities owing from revenue mismatch with the economy; inadequate affordable housing, inequality, and social issues; a changing workforce and tight labor market; climate change; and federal fiscal contraction—all of which are exacerbated by high inflation and interest rates—require local governments to act strategically, boldly and collaboratively to achieve fiscal health and financial resilience, and to realize positive returns of investments in people and capital.

This work is unique in addressing the post-pandemic impact of inflation and interest rates on local governments.

The purpose of the study is to investigate strategies for enhancing pollution oversight by local governments while reducing government-enterprise collusion (GEC) levels. Additionally, the factors influencing pollution control efforts at incineration plants are explored. Potential approaches to improving them and for effectively reducing waste incineration pollution are suggested.

The authors examined the most effective methods for mitigating incineration-related pollution and preventing collusion and developed a differential game model involving interactions between local governments and incineration plants. The findings of this work have significant policy implications for central governments worldwide seeking to regulate waste incineration practices.

The results indicate that, first, elevating environmental assessment standards can incentivize local governments to improve their oversight efforts. Second, collusion between incineration plants and local governments can be deterred by transferring benefits from the plants to the local government, while increased supervision by the central government and the enforcement of penalties for collusion can also mitigate collusion. Third, both central and local governments can bolster their supervisory and penalty mechanisms for instances of excessive pollution, encouraging incineration plants to invest more in pollution control. Finally, when the central government finds it challenging to detect excessive incineration-related pollution, enhancing rewards and penalties at the local government level can be a viable alternative.

This study stands out by considering the dynamic nature of pollutants. A differential game model is constructed which captures the evolving dynamics between local governments and incineration plants, offering insights regarding the prevention of collusion from a dynamic perspective. The findings may provide a valuable reference for governments as they develop and enforce regulations while motivating incineration plants to actively engage in reducing waste-incineration pollution.

The Chinese data setting allows researchers to explore the influence of local versus national (central) government ownership on companies. This study aims to examine the influence of government ownership (local versus national) and auditor choice (choosing larger or smaller firms) on audit pricing in China.

This study executed three panel data regressions to examine the two hypotheses using 19,626 observations from 2009 to 2017 in the Chinese data setting. This study also uses the Sobel test to investigate the moderating effect of auditor choice.

This study first examines whether choosing a large audit firm positively influences audit pricing and whether listed state-owned enterprises (SOEs) charge less audit fees to audit firms after controlling for various variables. However, the interaction influence of government ownership and audit firm size on audit pricing is positive, suggesting that a large audit firm charges a client company more, even if the client is an SOE. More importantly, when we divide SOEs into national- and local-SOEs, the results of the influence of auditor choice, government ownership and the interaction of government ownership on audit pricing are consistent (plus, minus, plus), and audit firms charge local-SOEs less than national-SOEs. Furthermore, from the additional analysis, this study finds that the strong auditor type has a moderate effect on the case of local-SOEs on audit pricing and local-SOEs choose smaller auditors.

Research on the differences between local and national government ownership is limited. This study adds empirical results from this perspective. In particular, the findings suggest a further audit pricing research direction to consider the influence of client companies’ ownership types and auditor choice, especially in countries with planned economies.

From the perspective of local government tax administration, the impact of geographic dispersion on the corporate tax burden is investigated in this paper.

Using unbalanced panel data with a sample of listed companies from 2003 to 2020 in China, this paper focuses on the effect of geographic dispersion on corporate tax burden and the mechanisms.

It is found that corporate tax burden is positively related to geographic dispersion. It is also found that geographic dispersion affects the corporate tax burden by increasing the effort of local government tax administration. In addition, the relation between geographic dispersion and corporate tax burden is more pronounced for local SOEs prior to the implementation of Golden Tax Project III and in cases where local governments face stronger financial pressure to obtain revenue.

This study has important implications for the promotion of the coordinated development of the regional economy, as well as the legalization, modernization and informatization of tax administration.

This study aimed to examine the adoption of consortium blockchain technology to ensure interoperability for the transparency of budgetary control in Ghanaian local government.

This study is based on the design science research (DSR) observational technique for developing a consortium blockchain budgetary control system for Ghana's local government.

The study resulted in the design of a consortium blockchain monitoring and evaluation system to set up a mechanism to monitor various budget projects, processes and transactions for Ghana's local government. The findings also proved Ghana is ideally positioned to gain an advantage from designed artefacts such as ours, given its digital financial service (DFS) policy. In addition, the evaluation of the designed artefact proves there will be a positive impact on budgetary processes by addressing transparency concerns; however, the success of this concern depends on how the local government organisation embraces the artefact.

The study sheds light on budget monitoring and evaluation tied to peer-to-peer (P2P) participation in the public sector via an advanced administrative digitalised networking and communication algorithm (A Distributed Ledger Technology - blockchain). The difference between the designed artefact and the traditional M&E system is argued. The study is limited by the paradoxes and inefficiencies of the integration of blockchain into the Ghanaian local government but, at the same time, presents a high level of certainty and possibility.

The proposed artefact has presented relevance because it is a new solution to existing concerns like trust, transparency, accountability and compliance, thereby improving local government budget administration.

The study has offered unique and new methods, guidelines and designs for tracking various budget projects and processes beyond the conventional technology-driven approach via DSR, exhibiting a unique solution for solving budget transparency, trust, accountability, compliance and data accessibility concerns.

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.

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on the usefulness of institutional theory to critical studies. It pursues this topic by exploring some of the possibilities for allocating local authority funds more fairly for poor residents. This paper aims to shed light on the institution of budgeting in a democratically elected local government under austerity.

This paper uses world culture theory, the study of the devolution of cultural authority to individuals and organisations through which they turn into agentic actors. Based on a field study of Newcastle City Council’s (NCC’s) budget-related practices, the paper uses the notion of actorhood to explore the use of fairness in austerity budgets.

This paper documents how new concerns with fairness gave rise to new local authority practices and gave NCC characteristics of actorhood. This paper also shows why it might make sense for a local authority that is managing austerity budget cuts and cutting back on services to make more detailed performance information public, rather than attempting to hide service deterioration, as some prior literature suggests. This paper delineates the limits to actorhood, in this study’s case, principally the inability to overcome structural constraints of legal state power.

The paper is suggestive of ways in which local government can fight inequality in opposition to central government austerity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first qualitative accounting study of actorhood. It coins the phrase fairness assemblage to denote a combination of various accounting technologies, organisational elements and local government practices.

The study investigates the influence of financial transparency on citizens' trust and revenue paying behaviour of citizens of local governments in sub-Saharan Africa. It relies on the theories of stewardship and public choice in explaining the relationship between financial transparency, trust and willingness to pay.

The study applied a Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) to survey data of 404 respondents selected from four Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies of Ghana to test the hypotheses of the study.

It establishes the fact that financial transparency positively influences trust of citizens in local government and their willingness to pay taxes and levies. The study also found that both financial transparency and trust are low in the local governments of Ghana.

The study emphasises the importance of financial transparency in improving trust and willingness to pay. Thus, local governments are encouraged to seek innovative ways to enhance the quality and access to financial information by the citizens.

While prior studies focus on the measurement and determinant of financial transparency, this study links financial transparency to revenue mobilisation in the local government of sub-Saharan Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the mediating role of local government delivery system (here after delivery system) in the relationship between local governance (hereafter, governance) and financial distress of local governments in Uganda.

This study is correlational and cross-sectional. It uses a questionnaire survey on a sample of 109 local governments (districts) of Uganda. The data are analysed using SPSS, partial least squares structural equation modelling and Jose’s MedGraph.

Results indicate that government delivery system mediates the relationship between governance and financial distress. Delivery system in terms of capacity development and community participation causes positive variances in local government’s financial distress. Also, governance in terms of political clientelism significantly contributes to financial distress more than oversight mechanisms and audit quality. The study finds that delivery system causes more variance in financial distress than governance.

This study applies the new public management and network governance theory and tests the efficacy of delivery system and governance on financial distress in one-go and succeeded in explaining financial distress of local government using Uganda as the setting; the authors join previous scholars that root for multi-theoretical approaches. Also, this study’s design has allowed for the consideration of more than simply the main effects of governance and delivery systems by exploring the mediating role of delivery systems in the link between governance and financial distress. As such, the authors may now have a more accurate and detailed description of the relationships between governance, delivery system and local government financial distress.