The first decade of the Congressional Budget Act: Legislative imitation and adaptation in budgeting

Kamlet, Mark S.; Mowery, David C.

doi:10.1007/bf00135917

Cited by 22 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The conventional wisdom is that the act resulted not in more fiscal discipline, but less (Fisher 1985;Mowery 1992 [1985]), and this view agreed with the opinions of the participants in the budget process at the time (Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991, 77-91;cf. Schick 1995;.…”

Section: The Budget Wars: 1976 the End Of The Epoch Of Large Increasmentioning

confidence: 50%

Policy Punctuations: U.S. Budget Authority, 1947-1995

Jones¹,

Baumgartner²,

True³

1998

The Journal of Politics

171

135

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.235.Baumgartner and Jones (1993) described a process of punctuated equilibrium in their study of policymaking in the United States since World War II. Evidence was drawn from a series of particular issue-areas, but the model has implications for all areas of policymaking. In this paper, we explore the validity of this approach with a new dataset that tabulates congressional budget authority at the Office of Management and Budget subfunction level across all areas of the federal budget for the entire postwar period.We find that government spending is characterized by much greater change than is typically portrayed in the literature, even if there is great stability for most categories most of the time. In addition, overall patterns of spending have been affected by two large-scale punctuations. These punctuations divide national spending into three epochs. one of postwar adjustment, lasting until FY 1956; one of robust growth, lasting from 1956 through 1974, and one of restrained growth, beginning in FY 1976. We test the epoch hypothesis against three plausible rival hypotheses: changes in the robustness of the postwar economy; partisan divisions; and public opinion. The epoch hypothesis survives all of these rivals whether modeled individually or together. This paper provides empirical evidence that punctuations occur, not just in some programs or subsystems, but also throughout government. The General ApproachPolicymaking within subsystems in the United States is dominated by a process alternating between periods of relative gridlock and periods of dramatic change (Baumgartner and Jones 1993). Such punctuated equilibria seem characteristic of many complex systems. They are evident in the evolution of species (Eldredge 1985), in economics, when new technologies disrupt prevailing patterns of doing business (Thurow 1996), and in computer simulations of iterated games (Lindgren 1992). These punctuations interspersed with periods of stasis may have both exogenous and endogenous causes. Complex interactions among Policy Punctuations 3 tively divide the postwar period into three epochs, which seem to correspond to widely shared, but dramatically different, conceptions of the proper role of government during these three periods.We test our finding of two large-scale punctuations against three plausible rival hypotheses. The first is that the epochs are in fact simply reflective of changes in the robustness of the postwar economy. In good times, more is spent; in lean times, less. Second, we study the hypothesis that spending eras reflect partisan divisions. When Democrats control both the executive and legislative branches, they increase the size of gove...

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Section: The Budget Wars: 1976 the End Of The Epoch Of Large Increasmentioning

confidence: 50%

Policy Punctuations: U.S. Budget Authority, 1947-1995

Jones¹,

Baumgartner²,

True³

1998

The Journal of Politics

171

135

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This lack of impact is consistent with the conclusions of other works that have argued that the Congressional Budget Act has had a modest impact at best on congressional budgetary outcomes. Kamlet and Mowery (1985a) review this literature.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influences on Executive and Congressional Budgetary Priorities, 1955–1981

Kamlet

Mowery

1987

Am Polit Sci Rev

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A reduced form equation system is used to analyze the influence of economic, political, and institutional influences on the budgetary priorities of the executive branch and Congress during fiscal 1955–81. Three related issues are considered: the extent to which political and macroeconomic factors affect priorities; the degree of interdependence among the components of the federal budget and between spending and revenues; and differences between the executive branch and Congress with respect to these issues. Both types of interdependence are present within both executive branch and congressional budgeting, although this interdependence is stronger within the executive branch. The influence of economic conditions on budgetary outcomes is strong but varies considerably across spending categories. There is no evidence of apolitical business cycle. Political variables exert a modest influence on the budgetary outcomes examined; differences between Democratic and Republican budgetary policies, as well as differences in the budgetary priorities of different presidential administrations, are small by comparison with the differences between executive and congressional policies.

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“… 6 Some argue that the regression equations should include other explanatory variables that represent economic, political, and social environments; see, for instance, Jackson (1972), DDW (1974), Moreland (1975), Ripley et al (1975), Bozeman (1977), Kamlet and Mowrey (1985), and Kamlet, Mowrey, and Su (1988). Several other authors suggest modifying the dependent variable, detrending the data, or using alternative budgetary measures; see, for instance, Natchez and Bupp (1973), Gist (1974), Wanat (1974), Ripley and Franklin (1975), Ripley et al (1975).…”

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confidence: 99%

A New Approach for Testing Budgetary Incrementalism

Dezhbakhsh¹,

Tohamy²,

Aranson³

2003

The Journal of Politics

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We present evidence suggesting that the widely used regression method for testing budgetary incrementalism (Davis, Dempster, and Wildavsky, 1966a, 1966b, 1971 is not suited for U.S. budgetary data that appear to be nonstationary. The method, moreover, cannot detect a nonincremental period following (or preceding) an incremental period. We offer an alternative method that is valid even in nonstationary cases. Our method exploits both the crosssectional and time-series characteristics of the budgetary data to identify statistically the occurrence of incremental decisions (counts) and to estimate incremental cycles for various agencies. More important, the method lends itself to explanatory hypotheses testing. We formulate a set of hypotheses about how various political and economic factors may affect incremental budgeting. We test these hypotheses using the estimated counts in a Poisson regression context. Our results suggest that the Democrats' control over the political process, a switch in the party controlling the White House or Congress, and presidential election year promises (and political vulnerabilities) all cause departures from incremental budgeting. The public pressure resulting from a persistently large deficit has a similar effect. This work may contribute to our understanding of legislative choice.

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The first decade of the Congressional Budget Act: Legislative imitation and adaptation in budgeting

Cited by 22 publications

References 14 publications

Policy Punctuations: U.S. Budget Authority, 1947-1995

Policy Punctuations: U.S. Budget Authority, 1947-1995

Influences on Executive and Congressional Budgetary Priorities, 1955–1981

A New Approach for Testing Budgetary Incrementalism

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