A Sequential Model of Congressional Appropriations

Bibliographic Data

ID6231371
AuthorsGerald Auten, Barry Bozeman (0000-0002-8084-3379), Robert Cline, Robert J Cline
Year1984
Volume28
Issue3
Pages503
Publication date1984-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2110902
OpenAlexW2317713167
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited7

While the incrementalist and externalist models of budgeting are sometimes viewed as competing interpretations, they are not mutually exclusive. This research tests a model incorporating both topdown and bottom-up features of federal budgeting. The sequential model has several features not commonly found in the empirical budgeting literature, including: (1) treatment of the sequential processes of budgeting, (2) use of a budget constraint which incorporates top-down budget influences and recognizes the interdependence of agency budgets, (3) linkage of appropriations to revenues and the budget deficit, and (4) application of the linear expenditure system. The sequential model is tested by a set of simultaneous equations which account for a substantial portion of the variance in appropriations at each level of analysis. An empirical comparison with a incrementalist model indicates that a model including a budget constraint and external economic and political variables provides a superior explanation of federal budgeting. The pioneering study on incrementalism in federal budgeting by Davis, Dempster, and Wildavsky (1966) concluded that budgetary outcomes can be characterized by a set of decision that are linear and temporally stable. Incrementalist theory emphasizes the importance of marginal adjustments in the previous year's budgetary base. Negotiation strategies of the key participants in the budgeting process (congressional subcommittees, OMB, political constituencies, and the agencies) and the overall stability of budgetary outcomes are also important aspects of the incrementalist view. Despite periodic attacks, the incrementalist view and the simple linear decision rules suggested by Davis, Dempster, and Wildavsky have become the standard by which other interpretations of budgetary processes are measured. In a later study Davis, Dempster, and Wildavsky (1974) pursued some of the shift points and anomalies of budgetary behavior by including a number of political, economic, and social variables in their original incrementalist models. They concluded that the process that generates agency requests is highly internalized and generally little influenced by the outside world. They found that in some cases (14 of 53 agencies), congressional appropriations were significantly affected by at least one environmental variable but that for the most part agencies live in worlds of their own. In this and other empirical studies of budgeting, however, environmental influences generally have been included on an ad hoc basis rather than being incorporated systematically into a theoretical framework

Agency (philosophy · Economics · Incrementalism · Linkage (software · Negotiation · Operations research · Political science · Politics · Revenue · Set (abstract data type · Sociology · Variance (accounting · Accounting · Computer Science · Finance · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth · Law · Local Government Finance and Decentralization · Mathematics · Public Policy and Administration Research

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