Decisive Decision Making in the Executive Budget Process: Analyzing the Political and Economic Propensities of Central Budget Bureau Analysts

Thurmaier, Kurt

doi:10.2307/976769

Cited by 32 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…[3] Some empirical evidence seems to support this explanation. [4] For example, Thurmaier's study of budget analysts concludes that technical and economic calculations are necessary but not sufficient to make reasonable budget recommendations. A political context is also needed.…”

Section: When Do Legislators Use Economic Values In Funding Decisions?mentioning

confidence: 98%

Convincing Legislators with Performance Measures

Wang

2008

International Journal of Public Administration

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This study uses an analysis of public managers' own words to increase legislative use of performance measures in budgeting. Using data from a survey designed from a content analysis of local administrators' descriptions of effective approaches, it shows that high quality budget analysis, political consideration, and effective communication can increase the chances for effective performance-based legislative funding. The findings can help managers effectively prepare and present their performancebased budget requests. The findings also speak to budgetary decision-making theory.

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Section: When Do Legislators Use Economic Values In Funding Decisions?mentioning

confidence: 98%

Convincing Legislators with Performance Measures

Wang

2008

International Journal of Public Administration

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“…There are few states in which the legislature is given significant power over the budget formulation. Yet scholars of budget politics agree that the executive branch tends to dominate state budgeting at the expense of the legislative branch (Rubin ; Thurmaier ). In fact, the executive budget movement of the twentieth century mostly aimed at strengthening the powers of governors (Clynch and Lauth ).…”

Section: Budgeting In the Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Governors can also modify departmental requests after an initial review of their budget offices. Evidence shows that governors trust state budget offices and adopt 95 percent of their funding recommendations (Thurmaier ).…”

Section: Budgeting In the Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Agency Autonomy Foster Public Participation?

Neshkova

2014

Public Administration Review

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Allocation of public resources is an area in which considerations of both economic efficiency and democratic legitimacy are likely to be present. Public administrators are often blamed for being too devoted to the norms of bureaucratic ethos, such as efficiency, effectiveness, and top‐down control, and less so to the norms of democratic ethos, such as inclusiveness and bottom‐up decision making. This article examines whether managers in agencies with greater budget autonomy are more likely to include the public when allocating resources. Because participation offers an opportunity for agencies to enhance the legitimacy of their decisions, it is expected that the value of citizen input will increase with the degree of agency autonomy. Using data on the practices of citizen participation in budgeting in two state departments—transportation and environment—this study finds that agencies with a higher degree of autonomy tend to be more open to public comment than agencies with more centralized budget processes.

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“…The three models of budgeting focused on here are the garbage can theory, incrementalism, and various versions of rational approaches. 4 Be mindful that these are not the only theories of budgetary decision-making, but they are frequently referred to in the state budget literature (Thurmaier and Willoughby, 2001). The garbage can theory and budgetary incrementalism are tested in their Functional State Expenditures Per Capita, 1960Capita, -1996 in Current Dollars purest forms to be as scientific as possible.…”

Section: Macrobudgeting Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other studies focus on the actors and their strategies, called microbudgeting (Thurmaier, 1995;and Thurmaier and Willoughby, 2001). In this study, we extend the work on macrobudgeting by testing rival theories of decision-making rather than focusing on one theory.…”

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confidence: 97%

Testing Rival Theories of Budgetary Decision–making in the US States

Reddick¹

2003

Financ Acc Manag

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INTRODUCTIONThis article examines the impact of three rival decision-making theories on disaggregated US state budgetary output data. This study tests the impact of the different theoretical explanations on expenditure levels. The three budget models tested are the garbage can theory, incrementalism, and rational approaches. The garbage can theory of budgeting argues that decisions are determined by the random mix of problems, solutions, participants, and choice opportunities in the decision-making process. Incrementalism focuses on expenditure decisions based on marginality and regularity from previous spending outputs. Finally, rational approaches to budgeting advocate that decision-makers think prospectively by systematically weighing policy options. The rational approaches we focus on here are program budgeting, Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB), and biennial budgeting (representing more strategic long-term decision-making in comparison to annual budgeting). These theories are tested on resource allocations, the winners and losers in the budget game. The history of their existence is traced by an examination of budget process outputs over time and across the fifty states.The literature on budgetary theories has the tendency to concentrate on one theory to the exclusion of others. For example, the recent trend is to examine performance based budgeting at various levels of government. 1 This is insufficient since state budgetary decision-makers obviously use more than one method (Botner, 1985). This is demonstrated in Table 1, with survey evidence compiled by these authors from the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) from 1989 to 1996. This survey evidence indicates that most states use some combination of incrementalism and rational methods such as program and zero based budgeting. 2 Therefore, to downplay incrementalism when we speak about budget approaches seems entirely inadequate.A recent study has examined quantitatively the impact of incrementalism on sub national budget outputs (Boyne et al., 2000). There is also an extensive body of

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Decisive Decision Making in the Executive Budget Process: Analyzing the Political and Economic Propensities of Central Budget Bureau Analysts

Cited by 32 publications

References 25 publications

Convincing Legislators with Performance Measures

Convincing Legislators with Performance Measures

Does Agency Autonomy Foster Public Participation?

Testing Rival Theories of Budgetary Decision–making in the US States

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