Ethnic Federalism and Fiscal Accountability: A Critical Review of Gender-Sensitive Planning in Sub-National Entities

It is both a constitutional and policy mandate in majority decentralized-developed-developing countries that sub-national entities periodically account for their fiscal resources. However, theory-literature-practice triangulation holds that sustainably attaining acceptable accountability standards is quite rare. This problem dominates various Sub-Saharan local governments. While it is not precisely clear what explains the complication, literature attributes it to either ethnic federalism or gender-sensitive planning. In this research, Eastern Ugandanbased 15 districts, 90 municipalities and 500 sub-counties fiscal accountability activities were investigated. Much as the East African nation is acclaimed a fiscal federalism authority, its eastern region localities accountability capacities remain questionable. Regression-structural equation modeling statistical results indicate that regional development and service delivery; key ethnic federalism attributes, predict fiscal accountability. The other factor, ethnic coherence does not. Moreover, as initially projected, gender-sensitive planning mediates the ethnic federalism-fiscal accountability relationship. Findings discussion, theory-literature-practice implications, and proposed future research direction follow.