The book will be titled “Municipalities in Financial Distress: An Environmental, Social and Governance Critique”, and it will be published by the end of 2024

The book is co-authored by Dr Eugenio Vaccari, Prof Laura N Coordes (Arizona State University), Prof Yseult Marique (University of Essex) and Prof Geo Quinot (Universiteit Stellenbosch)

Dr Eugenio Vaccari (Senior Lecturer in Law, Royal Holloway, University of London), Prof Laura N Coordes (Professor of Law, Arizona State University), Prof Yseult Marique (Professor of Law, University of Essex) and Prof Geo Quinot (Professor of Law, Universiteit Stellenbosch) are pleased to announce that they just signed a contract with Edward Elgar Publishing for the delivery of a book titled “Municipalities in Financial Distress: An Environmental, Social and Governance Critique”.

The treatment of local public entities or municipalities in distress is a largely unexplored area of law. The rules regulating these processes are often unaffected by the influence of legal principles developed in areas such as bankruptcy and restructuring law. Yet the insolvency of a municipality has a huge impact on local, regional and national stakeholders.

As municipalities cannot be liquidated, their crises present unique opportunities to address triggering factors and lay the foundations for their long-term “renaissance”. However, the regulatory approaches of the jurisdictions considered in this book (South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States) fall short in promoting long-term solutions to address the causes of municipal distress.

Building on previous comparative studies conducted by the same co-authors and funded by INSOL International, this book adopts a legal-realist perspective to investigate the extent to which environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations play a role in shaping the content of the restructuring plans and strategies to turn around local public entities in distress. Both an academic and a professional audience, including from non-legal sectors such as banking, accountancy, political science and policy studies, will appreciate this law-in-context analysis of the treatment of municipalities in distress.

The book will be delivered to the publisher by end of June 2024, and it is going to be available for purchase in 2025. It fits within the “Living Sustainably” research catalyst and the broader College research strategy. Whenever councils experience financial distress, they invariably cut the services they provide. This affects our society, the economy, and the resilience of our communities. These procedures raise issues of social justice and equality of treatment of all the affected parties. Better, more equitable and fairer solutions should ensure that sophisticated claimants do not unduly restrict the rights of non-adjusting stakeholders, such as vulnerable citizens.