Scopus Journal Call for paper: Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management (Rethinking Local Government Financial Management and Accountability through Comparative Perspectives )

Despite the growing relevance of local governments in delivering public services and managing public resources, financial management and accountability at the local level remain predominantly framed within national legal and institutional contexts. Nevertheless, some relatively recent cross-national initiatives of local government financial management and accountability have emerged that warrant study. With this special issue, we aim to advance both theoretical and empirical understanding of local government financial management and accountability in a cross-national perspective.

Institutional initiatives such as the World Observatory on Subnational Government Finance and Investment (SNG-WOFI)—a joint initiative of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG)—have provided unprecedented access to harmonized, internationally comparable data on local public finance (OECD and UCLG, 2025). SNG-WOFI plays a crucial role in understanding the fiscal space, financing needs, and investment capacity of local governments globally. Similarly, UCLG’s second Global Report on Decentralization and Local Democracy (UCLG, 2010) has drawn attention to the limitations of current financing mechanisms for urban and local development, particularly in light of accelerating urbanization and the “urbanization of poverty” (p.5). While these observatories provide valuable insights into subnational public finances, they adopt a predominantly macroeconomic perspective, often overlooking the managerial, operational, and accountability dimensions at the level of individual local governments.

Some relatively recent cross-national initiatives have emerged to support local public financial management and accountability, with a stronger focus on the specific challenges and practices of individual local governments. Notably, the Cities for Sustainable Public Finances (CSPF) is a long-standing network of chief finance officers from major European cities that fosters knowledge exchange, financial data comparability, and improved financial governance (CSPF, 2025). Similarly, the Sustainable Local Public Finance project (SLPF), funded by the European Union, aims to embed sustainability into local budgeting by developing tools related to sustainable development goals, key performance indicators, training programs, and facilitating peer learning across European cities (SLPF, 2025).

Despite these initial efforts, the managerial dimension of local government finance—namely, how local governments structure, report, and utilize financial information to achieve broader policy objectives—remains largely underexplored from a comparative perspective. At the academic level, a few exceptions are worth noting. Earlier efforts, such as Caperchione and Mussari (2000), documented accounting reforms in diverse contexts, highlighting the challenges of achieving comparability in local government accounting. Given the significant variation in accounting systems across countries and the conceptual challenges of applying the notion of performance in a comparative context (Padovani and Scorsone, 2009), only in recent years has research begun to focus more consistently on the complex task of developing reliable and comparable financial information to assess the performance and financial condition of local governments (Padovani et al., 2018; Heichlinger et al., 2021).

A growing body of recent studies has leveraged comparable financial data to explore cross-country financial dynamics—such as the relationship between financial sustainability and sustainable development (Bisogno et al., 2024), the impact of transparency and certification on credit ratings and on debt issuance (Martell et al., 2025; Martell and Moldogaziev, 2025), and the role of fiscal autonomy in shaping financial sustainability (Iacuzzi et al., 2025). Geissler et al. (2021) also offer a comprehensive analysis of fiscal regulation across 21 European countries, combining theoretical perspectives with practical insights into the regulatory frameworks influencing local government financial management. Additional studies have taken a comparative approach to analyzing the financial vulnerability of local governments, aiming to develop frameworks that assess how local systems respond to fiscal stress and crisis conditions (Maher et al., 2025; Padovani et al., 2021, 2022, 2025; Park and Maher, 2020). Moreover, an academic network has recently emerged, focusing on exploring innovative methods to assess and compare the financial health of local governments across the world (LGFS-Across, 2025).

Why is comparative study of local government finance important?

Research in this field remains largely shaped by legal, administrative, and political frameworks rooted in national contexts, resulting in a limited body of comparative work. This absence of a broader comparative perspective constrains our ability to identify common patterns, understand shared challenges, and develop theories that hold across national borders. A comparative approach makes it possible to examine how different institutional settings, fiscal arrangements, and governance traditions shape local financial management. It also facilitates the identification of best practices and innovative solutions that can be adapted to diverse contexts, thereby strengthening the overall capacity of local governments to manage fiscal stress, enhance accountability, and deliver sustainable public services.

List of Topic Areas

With this special issue, we aim to advance both theoretical and empirical understanding of local government financial management and accountability in a cross-national perspective. We welcome contributions that critically explore the barriers and opportunities for comparative research and practice in this field, taking into account the diverse institutional, legal, and administrative local governments’ contexts across countries (Kuhlmann and Wollmann, 2019).

We seek to foster dialogue between academics, policymakers, practitioners, and international organizations to promote a more integrated, internationally informed approach to managing and assessing local public finance. The goal is to move beyond isolated case studies and foster learning from both successes and failures, enabling cities and regions worldwide to strengthen their financial governance.

We invite conceptual, empirical, and policy-oriented papers that explore (but are not limited to) the following themes:

Comparability of local government finances: How can local government financial data be made comparable across countries (or across states/provinces in federal systems), given the persistent diversity in accounting systems, budgetary practices, and financial reporting?
Financial sustainability and sustainable development: What are the trade-offs and synergies between short-term fiscal balance and long-term sustainable development goals implementation at the local level? How can strategic financial planning reconcile these objectives?
Digitalization and AI in local public finance: How is artificial intelligence being deployed (or can be deployed) to support budgeting, forecasting, accountability, and citizen engagement? What are the associated risks and governance implications?
International collaboration and policy learning: How can local governments engage in meaningful cross-national exchange to learn not only from best practices, but also from less successful experiences? What institutional mechanisms (e.g., networks, observatories, joint projects) are most effective?
Regulatory frameworks and autonomy: How do different models of fiscal regulation and decentralization, including insolvency procedures, affect the financial autonomy and decision-making of local governments? What can we learn from comparative regulatory regimes?
Fiscal rules and accountability: How do LGs manage and perform within the context of different fiscal rules? Do fiscal rules enhance or hamper local government accountability, and if so by what mechanisms?
Crisis and resilience: How have local governments managed financial stress during economic or geopolitical crises, and what comparative lessons emerge regarding resilience, adaptation, and innovation?
Local government and climate finance: How are local governments accounting for climate risk through the public finance system? Are they investing in green budgeting, aligning budgets with climate policy, or otherwise mitigating risk? Is there systematic alignment in evidence deriving from the global north and south?
From numbers to narratives: Understanding how financial reports shape managerial sensemaking in local governments.
Use of financial information in decision making: How do local governments use financial information in decision making, and to what end? What are the comparative insights into the managerial uses of financial reports in local governments?
The politics of financial framing: How do local governments narrate fiscal constraints across different institutional contexts?
Comparability as an essential characteristic in the fight against corruption: What is the relationship between LG managerial and accounting practices and corruption? What LG managerial and accounting practices contribute to reducing corruption?

Journal Information: Scopus Journal Q2, H-Index 28

Guest Editors

Emanuele Padovani, University of Bologna, Italy, Emanuele.Padovani@unibo.it

Christine Martell, University of Colorado Denver, United States, Christine.Martell@ucdenver.edu

Sungho Park, University of Alabama, United States, Sungho.Park@ua.edu

Eric Scorsone, Eric.Scorsone@virginia.edu, United States, Eric.Scorsone@virginia.edu

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