Exploring Explanations of State Agency Budgets: Institutional Budget Actors or Exogenous Environment?

Abstract

Budgetary incrementalism argues that three institutional actors—agencies, executive budget offices, and legislative committees—dominate budget outcomes. The complexity and interdependency of public programs expands this expectation to include the influence of exogenous budget factors. Findings from a survey of state agency heads reveal that budget environments do influence state agency budget outcomes. However, the institutional budgetary participants, especially governors and legislatures, envisioned in classical incrementalism retain their principal and primary influence on state agency budgets. A significant departure from classical incrementalism is that agencies are not as influential as previously depicted.

The Tortoise or the Hare? Incrementalism, Punctuations, and Their Consequences

“…Similar results have been found at the subnational level, from specific functions in a state (Robinson, 2004) to local government budgeting (John, 2006; Jordan, 2003) to pooled state budgets (Breunig & Koski, 2006; Ryu, 2009). Comparative studies in public budgeting took the study of punctuated equilibrium theory and budget policymaking a step further by attempting to identify how variations in institutions can produce differences in the extent to which budgets are punctuated (Breunig, 2006; Breunig & Koski, 2009; Breunig, Koski, & Mortensen, 2010; Ryu, Bowling, Cho, & Wright, 2007, 2008). It is on this comparative work that we hope to take the discussion of public budgeting to the next step by examining outcomes.…”

Gubernatorial Policy Priorities and State Fiscal Outcomes

“…Instead, their results suggest that, on average, governors slightly increased their influence vis‐à‐vis legislatures from the 1980s through the 1990s. Ryu and others (2008) relied on survey data from 1998 and provided similar findings pointing toward gubernatorial dominance in the budgeting process. Another survey of legislative and executive budget analysts in Western states in 2000‐01 also found governors, not legislatures, to be the main beneficiaries of any influence shifts (Goodman 2007).…”

Do Institutions Matter?

“…Wildavsky and Caiden (2003) stated the ''largest single determining factor of this year's budget is last year's'' (46). Although some are critical of incremental budgeting theory (Rubin 1993), others (Robinson, Caver, Meier, and O'Toole 2007;Ryu, Bowling, Cho, and Wright 2008) reported continued support for it when considering shorter-term fiscal behavior. Additionally, this variable accounts for the residual influence of variables excluded because they were not available in the data used for this study (Achen 2000;Keele and Kelly 2006;Tsay 2005).…”