Integration, decentralization, taxation, and revenue sharing : Good governance, sustainable fiscal policy and poverty reduction as peace-keeping strategies

VII. Summary: Good Governance, Budgeting and Fiscal 
Planning 
The paper has tried to shed some light on the problems of centralization and decen-
tralization within an economic union and federal member states. Integration and de-
centralization are not opposite policy strategies but both meaningful if the single pub-
lic goods and services supplies are analyzed in more detail. Both strategies doubt-
lessly have advantages, which can be realized if the manifold possibilities are com-
bined in an efficient approach of good governance.
Best practice approaches in inter- or supra-national integration, fiscal federalism and 
taxation do exist and have to be successfully implemented. Obviously such a modern 
fiscal policy has to be accompanied by an appropriate monetary policy, which in an 
economic union has to be carried out by an independent central bank as one of the 
necessary countervailing powers in a democratic setting. A modern fiscal policy 
strategy efficiently controls budget deficits, which naturally have to be limited to fi-
nance reliable public investments. Such strategy has to be safeguarded through 
modern methods of budgeting and fiscal planning. Modern public management with a 
clear code of conduct for the government officials ensures corruption free administra-
tion. The organization of private-public-partnership (PPP) is often another powerful 
strategy to use the efficiency advantages of the private sector. A partially efficient 
privatization of public enterprises has also to be taken into consideration if the public 
supply can then be organized in a more efficient way. The discussions have shown 
that the way to good governance is really not an easy one but a way, which is worth 
to be gone because it will lead to peaceful developments and a reduction of local, 
regional and individual poverty. 

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