INSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL FACTORS OF FISCAL CONSOLIDATION

The fi nancial crisis in several European countries has turned into a full blown sovereign debt crisis. The current trends of public debt burdens per capita could be averted, but not by relying primarily on economic growth, for which the outlook is bleak in the near term. The best approach to solving the crisis is not through growth, but through a serious – and undoubtedly painful – process of fi scal consolidation to reduce government defi cits and debts accumulation. A " er the short consideration of the recent fi scal and debt positions of six South-Eastern European (SEE) countries, placing an emphasis on the Republic of Serbia, the paper analyzes which institutional and political factors can lend credibility to consolidation eff orts and underpin the commitment to fi nancial sustainability