Two deep economic crises have had a major impact on public finances in the first two decades of the 21st century. On the one hand, the 2008 financial crisis exercised an intense pressure on public accounts and led to an increase in public debt across federations, with a specific impact on subnational governments, that are usually responsible for providing public basic services and managing welfare policies, such as healthcare or education. On the other hand, with the consequences of the 2008 crisis still present, the COVID-19 pandemic hit governments’ financial sustainability for the second time.
Once the initial impact of the COVID-19 crisis has been overcome, the recovery of long-term fiscal sustainability and public debt management will be one of the main challenges facing governments in the coming years. In the systems of fiscal federalism, the post-crisis management of public finances and debt also affects subnational governments.
Call for papers:
Consequently, this special issue will focus on how both crises affected multilevel governance systems and the institutional dynamics of federal and decentralized countries, focusing on the impact on subnational finance. We invite authors to submit proposals on these topics (both quantitative and qualitative), from a case-study or comparative perspectives.
Possible questions to be addressed:
- How did financial and pandemic crises affect subnational public finances?
- Did subnational governments suffer the fiscal shock, or was it absorbed by federal/central governments?
- How will subnational funding systems look like beyond both crises? Is there a trend towards (de)increased transfer-dependency? Will grant-earmarking gain relevance?
- How has subnational debt evolved compared to the federal debt?
- Which are the pending challenges of fiscal rules? How can multilevel fiscal governance be improved in the future?
- Impact of fiscal and financial policies on fiscal federalism systems and on the autonomy of subnational governments.
- Trends towards decentralization and re-centralization: centrifugal and centripetal tensions in federations.
- Has institutional normality been recovered after the impact of COVID-19? How did subnational governments adapt to the new post-crisis context?
Special issue information
Timeline:
- Deadline for sending proposals: 31 December 2022.
- Maximum 500 words. Proposals should be submitted to Mikel Erkoreka: ituna@ehu.eus
- Deadline for acceptance of proposals: 15 January 2023.
- Deadline for submitting the final manuscript: 30 April 2023.
Journal:
The special issue will be published in the Manuel Giménez Abad Journal, edited by the Manuel Giménez Abad Foundation.
Special issue editors:
- Mikel Erkoreka (Ituna Center for Basque Economic Agreement and Fiscal Federalism Studies)
- Mireia Grau (Institut d’Estudis de l’Autogovern)
- Mario Kölling (Fundación Giménez Abad / UNED)
Instruction for authors:
- Manuscripts must be in English.
- Manuscripts should not exceed 12,000 words (including footnotes and references).
- Formal structure: Title, the author’s name and his/her professional data, the text should have a short summary and keywords in English. The article should have introduction and conclusion.
- For the internal thematic division, the following order shall be used: 1., 1.1., …
- We recommend using the fewest possible footnotes.
- We recommend using the font Times New Roman in size 12, with separation between lines of 1.5.
- Citations and references should be in APA format.