The recent public and academic debate in Europe about the extent to which fiscal austerity can successfully reduce deficits and public debt, while not inhibiting economic growth, has primarily taken place at the level of national governments. In contrast, differences in the implementation of EU debt and deficit rules at the local level and their social and political consequences within member states have received much less attention. In this paper, we use the case of Italy to reveal the potential impact of EU fiscal austerity at the local level. To achieve this goal, the resource dependence theory is helpful both to understand intergovernmental relations and to explain much of the local impact of fiscal austerity. Our analysis shows that balancing the budget at the central level cannot neglect how a balanced budget affects local governments' financial management. In Italy, this process has led to a severe reduction in public investments at the local level and to a lack of political accountability. In terms of policy implications, this paper suggests that the EU's policy makers should consider local issues within the domestic settings more seriously and that they should not neglect critical situations
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been increasingly under pressure to enhance accountability towards their stakeholders and to disclose relevant, updated, and reliable information about their performance in terms of teaching/education, research, and other activities, often labeled "'third mission."'.Based on an exploratory qualitative research, build through the analysis of literature, of national legislation, and of the information disclosed in different institutional websites, the purpose of this chapter is to offer a general overview of the present accountability requirements and of the instruments or resolutions, rule-driven but also voluntary, adopted in three European countries used as country-case studies --the Netherlands, Portugal, and Italy -. In addition, this contribution aims at proposing a general assessment of the degree of transparency and accountability of public-funded HEIs.
2Findings indicate that there is a quite a strong emphasis on accountability towards public or private funders/sponsors and to actual and future students and their families. It has also been realized that the weakest area in terms of transparency of HEIs' performance is that of transfer and consulting activities, contrasting to the attention paid to the disclosure of teaching and education performance information. Overall, HEIs in the three countries seem to be transparent but especially towards expert stakeholders who know exactly what to look for and where, since performance information is often scattered and available on wide documents, making the access and usability of information relatively low.The current research aims at contributing to the literature on transparency and accountability, particularly on performance information disclosure in the specific environment of public-funded higher education institutions, from an international comparative perspective, while offering to managers and policymakers some hints on how to assess their current transparency practices, as well as some suggestions about possible future amendments and improvements. Clearly, additional investigation is needed to further validate some findings and introduce other transparency dimensions and national contexts.
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