Extension of deadlines for applications: November 25,2002

The NISPAcee invites interested scholars and practitioners to join the group and research on the issues of building fiscal capacity of local governments. In a post-modern society, people are more and more perceived as customers and public services are to be run in their interest and the providers are held accountable. In order to make the local government units accountable it is necessary to link their work to some indicators and focus on the results and the perceptions of the public. But, it has been noted that local governments in fact want to be dependent on the central government, so that the money is provided from the centre, but the local delivery is almost entirely ensured through the work of locally selected firms. In order to make local government more transparent and responsive to criticism, a new topic is to be devised.

The Group once again is focusing on the burning policy issues and assumes to produce works that clearly have policy relevance and can be used by policy-makers. Although the topic is clearly primarily a public finance one, the Group would welcome new members who could expand its pool of comparative knowledge. In other words, different methodological approaches will be encouraged, as long as they are not completely against the endorsed research protocol.

A detailed research protocol is available now in html (for .doc see below). Interesting prospective members should contact the Group Co-ordinator, Dr.Zeljko Sevic, in the University of Greenwich Business School at Z.Sevic@gre.ac.uk or NISPAcee Project Manager Ms. Elena Zakova at zakova@nispa.org.