The quest for users’ needs in public sector budgeting and reporting

Politicians as the representatives of citizens play a major role in the user groups of public sector accounting information. This role is also considered in this special issue with four empirical analyses of politicians as users in the focus. Thereby, three articles address the central government level and one the local government level. Hence, this special issue is also a response to a call of van Helden (2016) to study if and how politicians use accounting information and which strategies or support they seek in doing so.