Understanding territorial inequalities in decentralised welfare systems: early childhood education and care system expansion in Croatia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3326/pse.47.1.4Keywords:
early childhood education and care, decentralisation, devolution, local welfare systems, territorial inequalities, fiscal decentralisationAbstract
The decentralised provision of social services raises concerns about availability of services in different geographical areas, particularly in low- and middleincome countries with weak governance and fiscal redistributive capacities. Yet the interconnection of different decentralisation regimes and territorial inequalities in the provision of social services remains underexplored. This article engages with one aspect of this puzzle, the implications of the fiscal conditions on exacerbating (or overcoming) territorial inequalities in services provision. Using the Croatian system of early childhood education and care (data for the 2005-2018 period) as an empirical lens, the article shows that in the absence of a well-established policy and fiscal framework sensitive to regional inequalities in administrative and fiscal capacities, decentralised systems can only institutionalise territorial inequalities in services provision. Next to the legal entitlement to a certain service, inter-territorial fiscal equalisation policies are crucial in overcoming fragmentation in social rights along territorial lines.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Ivana Dobrotić, Teo Matković
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Copyright Notice
Public Sector Economics (PSE) is a an Open Access Journal licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits use and redistribution (commercial and non-commercial), as long as the licensed work is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to PSE as original publisher.
Authors retain the copyright on the papers published in PSE but grant the right of first publication to the journal.
Papers published in PSE can be re-published only exceptionally and in unaltered form, e.g., as a chapter in a volume of an author’s collected papers, or as an unabridged translation for educational purposes. The author(s) must obtain written permission of the publisher and clearly indicate in a first page footnote the reference to the original publication in PSE.
Individual users may access, download, copy and display the papers published in PSE, provided that the authors’ intellectual and moral rights, reputation and integrity are not compromised. It is the obligation of the user to ensure that any reuse complies with the copyright policies of the owners.
If the content of papers published in the PSE is copied, downloaded or otherwise reused for non-commercial research and educational purposes, a link to the appropriate bibliographic citation (authors, title of the paper, PSE volume, year and page numbers) should be provided. Copyright notices and disclaimers must not be deleted.