Local Government accountability in European Continental and Anglo-Saxon countries:an international comparison

In a democratic system accountability relationships involve citizens and elected officials on one side, elected officials and executives on the other. These kind of relationships are developed by means of three “accountability codes” which use different accounting tools and whose evolution has been influenced by public management reform The paper aims at analysing, through a comparative approach, the reform effects on the local government accountability codes of some European continental countries – Italy, France and Germany –, and Anglo-Saxon ones – United States and United Kingdom. Moreover, the study enquires the hypothesis of a direct correlation between the accountability codes, and the institutional features – the legal system and the administrative culture. The institutional features are here considered as the key elements of Lüder’s and Pollit – Bouckaert’s models used to explain the development and the evolution of the accountability codes. At last, as there could be a distinction between changes required by regulations and their actual implementations, after having compared the countries at the accounting rule level, the research considers the available literature on the Italian local government accounting practices.