engleski

Political stubbornness and online local budget transparency in Croatia

Online local budget transparency (OLBT) has been recognized as an important feature of good governance. Accordingly, in this paper, OLBT is measured for the 128 cities and a sample of 100 municipalities in Croatia using the number of key local documents published on local government websites. Using a fixed effect Poisson panel model over the 2013-2017 period, it is shown that, along with residents’ income per capita, political ideology and the winning margin determine the level of OLBT. This paper contributes to the growing body of budget transparency literature by establishing the importance of political factors in this former socialist, fiscally centralized, EU member state and reveals the curious stubbornness of citizens who consistently vote for nontransparent politicians. A suboptimal equilibrium of local government units with low levels of OLBT is created. Incumbent conclude that OLBT is not a high priority since (s)he believes that his constituency will not hold nontransparency against him and voters who are stubborn in their voting patterns refuse to change the incumbent created this situation

budget transparency ; local government ; Croatia ; political economy ; panel data

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