The Effect of South Africa’s Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations Policies on Accountability in Provincial Governments – An Empirical Case Study

ABSTRACT

This article explores the effect of South Africa’s intergovernmental fiscal relations policies on the accountability of provincial governments. Existing theory points out that if a country’s policies do not make provision for sufficient own-revenue sources like provincial taxes and levies for provincial governments, citizens may hold the national government, to whom they pay their taxes, accountable. Based on a case study in the Northern Cape Provincial Government, this article suggests that provincial governments in South Africa are unable to collect enough own-revenue, making them dependent on transfers from national government to deliver goods and services to their citizens. The results confirm the theoretical perspective that accountability is undermined, as it is not always possible for taxpayers to directly link the governing unit responsible for the service to its funding. This is relevant because provincial governments are responsible for important services, and they spend taxpayers’ money collected mainly by national government to deliver these services.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCiD

C. J. Hendriks http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6012-4369

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of the Free State.