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5.0 out of 5 stars
Real-time Budgeting View, December 19, 2002
Those of you who read Aaron Wildavsky's (1979) "Politics of the Budgetary Process" know the big debate over public budgeting between those who believe public budgeting process is politically incremental and, therefore, who focus mainly on the individual actors and their strategies, and those who propose a more comprehensive and global outlook that focus on dynamics in the larger environment, which subsequently affect and shape how individual actors behave and respond to episodes.
Rather than approaching public budgeting from the narrow perspective of incremental view of public budgeting, which sees budgeting as negotiations among a group of routine actors, bureaucrats, budget officials, chief executives, and legislators, who meet each year and bargain to resolution, in "The Politics of Public Budgeting" Rubin (2000) develops what she calls "real-time budgeting" perspective, which refers to the continual adjustment of decisions in each stream to decisions and information coming from other streams and from the environment. Streams include:
The Revenue Cluster: Revenue decisions include technical estimates of how much income will be available for the following year, assuming no change in the tax structures, and policy decisions about changes in the level or type of taxation. Will taxes be raised or lowered? Will tax breaks be granted, and if so, to whom, for what purpose. Which tax sources will be emphasized, which de-emphasized, with what effect on regions and economic classes, or on age groups?
The Budget Process Cluster: The process cluster concerns how to make budget decisions. Who should participate in the budget deliberations? How influential should interest groups be? How much power should the legislature have? How should the work be divided, and when should particular decisions be made?
The Expenditure Cluster: The expenditure cluster involves some technical estimates of likely expenditures such as for grants that are dependent on formulas and benefit programs whose costs depend on the level of unemployment. Policy relevant expenditure questions involve which programs will be funded at what level, who will benefit from public programs and who will not, and similar questions.
The Balance Cluster: The Balance cluster concerns the basic budgetary question of whether the budget has to be balanced each year with each year's revenues, or whether borrowing is allowed to balance the budget, and if so, how much, for how long, and for what purposes.
Budget Implementation Cluster: Budget implementation cluster concerns the basic budgetary questions of how close actual expenditures should be to the ones planned in the budget, how one can justify variation from the budget plan, and the budget can be remade after it is approved during the budget year.
According to Rubin (2000), "budget outcomes are not solely the result of budget actors negotiating with one another in a free-for-all; outcomes depend on the environment, and on the budget process as well as individual strategies". "Individual strategies have to be framed in a broader context than simply perceived self-interest" (p. 33). What happens in the clusters consequentially is affected by the global environment of public budgeting and the perceptions and strategies of individual budget actors are adjusted accordingly. The clusters model of Rubin (2000) reminisces the "policy environments framework" (developed by Nakamura and Smallwood [1980]) that views public policy process as a simultaneously interaction among individual actors, elements of importance and arenas of power in three policy environments (policy formation, policy implementation and policy evaluation environments) with each environment having influence on the other ones with the help of communication linkages that let each actor in one environment the opportunity to send message to the others in the other environments. In Rubin's real-time budgeting view, each cluster is imbued with different questions and each cluster attracts a different characteristic set of actors and generates its typical pattern of politics (p. 27) and what happens in each cluster is influenced by the episodes in the larger policy environment.
Based on the real-time view of public budgeting, Rubin (2000) organizes her book into nine major chapters, with each chapter explaining the clusters in detail and supporting arguments with didactic short case studies. In general, the book provides the reader with a dynamic and rich description of budgeting process in public sector.
Having reviewed public budgeting process, Rubin (2000) recommends that a balance of power should be established and maintained between the executive and the legislature, so one can catch the other at bad practice-a recommendation running contrary to the argument that to solve federal budget deficit problem either the executive or the legislature has to be empowered.
Overall, Rubin's book is a well-written, clear, and descriptive account of public budgeting process, and, so entertaining and engaging that create a sense in the reader that s/he should read more about the subject to better comprehend the complexity and dynamism of public budgeting. I recommend "The Politics of Public Budgeting" as a powerful text to those who are interested in the subject. Also recommended are "Politics of the Budgetary Process" by Aaron Wildavsky (1979), "Public Budgeting Systems" by Robert D. Lee and Ronald W. Johnson (1998), "Public Budgeting in America" by Thomas D. Lynch (1995), and "The Federal Budget: Politics, Policy, Process" by Allen Schick (2000).
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