P17- Discourses of fiscal decentralisation and tightened budgetary discipline : How to make Democratic Accountability and Fiscal Adjustments Compatible?
PANEL Organizers
• Uhoda Maxime (maxime.uhoda@ulg.ac.be), Université de Liège (Belgium)
• Leroy Marc (marc.leroy@univ-reims.fr), Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne (France)
SUMMARY
Political scientists are like any other publics; they have been interpreting national policy-makers discourses on fiscal adjustments as a way to impose a given economic ideology as naturally keeping up with the times, times of austerity and fading economic growth. Simultaneously, some politicians, notably in federal countries (but also in centralised countries), have been explaining to their citizens that fiscal decentralisation could be the natural path of public finance optimisation. Henceforth, how do policy-makers make discourses of budgetary discipline and fiscal decentralisation compatible? Therefore, this panel proposes to explore: (a) How discourses of public policy in certain Members States of the European Union fit into a context of reinforcement of the European economic and budgetary governance in order to call for more or less fiscal decentralisation within national borders? (b) How the institutional organisation (more or less decentralised) of a State could or could not contribute to successful fiscal adjustments? The originality of the panel may arise from two main elements: firstly from the approach of the interpretation of discourses on decentralisation, that of the political scientist; secondly, from the nature of the policy analysis turned towards peculiar policies, budgetary policies. Then, the aim of this panel would be to attract political scientists or sociologist working on the reciprocal influence of budgetary austerity on phenomena of fiscal decentralisation in federal (or more centralised) countries. Because in representative democracies, communication techniques play a key-role in politics (Manin, 1995), we would rather favour papers using interpretive analyses of the political discourses (but also other kind of discourses such as from experts, official or controlling institutions) and/or public policy analyses possibly by the way of the approach of the ?argumentative turn? (Fischer and Forrester, 1993).
KEY WORDS
Policy Analysis, Argumentative Turn, Budgetary Discipline, Fiscal Federalism, Decentralisation, Fiscal Compact, Fiscal Adjustment
ROOM
Sciences Po Lille B2.13
SESSION 1 : 8/07/2015 : 13:15-14h45
Chair: Leroy Marc (marc.leroy@univ-reims.fr), Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne (France)
Discussant: Uhoda Maxime (maxime.uhoda@ulg.ac.be), Université de Liège (Belgium)
• Redemocratizing Democracy, or Affirmative Governmentality? New York's Recent Experiences with Participatory Budgeting
Celina Su (celinasu@gmail.com), City University of New-York - CUNY (USA)
• The involvement of citizens in political decision making and public accounting process as a way to strengthen the economic and social resilience of local government: the Italian case
Salvatore Villani (salvatore.villani@unina.it) and Luigi Ferrara (luigi.ferrara@unina.it), University of Naples Federico II (Italy)
• European Economic Governance under centrifugal federalism: Implementing ESA standards in Belgium
Damien Piron (damien.piron@ulg.ac.be), Université de Liège (Belgium)
• Interpreting the Philippine Budget Process: A Critical Approach to Policy Review and Formulation
Manuel De Vera (mdevera@aim.edu) and Maria Veronica Caparas (mcaparas@aim.edu), Asian Institute of Management (Philippines)
