Administrative Reforms and Local Entity Budgetary Practices: The Implications of Self-Governance

The most dominant fiscal federalism theoretical-empirical-practice standpoint is that administrative reforms, self-governance and budgetary practices are very closely related. Notably, self-governance, mediates the administrative reforms-budgetary practices triangulation in Sub-Sahara African-based local governments. Employing budgetary-practices theory, this study explored related data from Uganda’s north-western and north-eastern regions’ 35 districts, 9 municipalities, and 500 sub-counties. The East African nation has for long been a fiscal-federalism-proficiency empirical focus. Structural equation modeling results revealed that while two administrative reforms constructs; political control and fiscal monopoly, predict budgetary practices, its other attribute; administrative dominance, does not. Moreover, self-governance plays no mediation role in the administrative reforms-budgetary practices linkages. Contributions to theory, research and practice are discussed and future research direction proposed