Taking stock: the role of the institutional context for local government financial resilience

Financial resilience describes the ability of local governments to anticipate, absorb and react to shocks affecting their finances and service delivery. Resilience is the result of interactions in-between environmental conditions (institutional, economic and social context) local governments operate in as well as internal capacities (i.e. anticipatory and coping capacities). This chapter looks on mechanisms of how the institutional context influences local government’s ability to anticipate, absorb and react to financial shocks. Drawing upon empirical research on governmental financial resilience, the authors take stock of lessons learned from case studies in eleven countries as well as a large-scale quantitative survey of local governments in three major European economies (Germany, Italy and the UK) following the global financial crisis. The concise overview adds to the understanding of how rules, regulations and (austerity) policies of upper-governmental levels influence different dimensions of local government financial resilience and why the latter may play out very differently within a given country. The findings support a more general understanding of how local governments face shocks and crises and thus may offer initial clues on local government financial resilience in the global COVID-19 pandemic.