New Directions in Budget Theory

Edited by Irene S. Rubin

Subjects: Public Administration
Series: SUNY series in Public Administration
Paperback : 9780887066252, 207 pages, April 1988
Hardcover : 9780887066245, 207 pages, April 1988

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Irene S. Rubin

1. From Microbudgeting to Macrobudgeting: Evolution in Theory and Practice
Lance T. LeLoup

2. Shaping Things to Come: Super-Budgeters as Heroes (and Heroines) in the Late-Twentieth Century
Naomi Caiden

3. An Inquiry into the Possibilities of a Budgetary Theory
Allen Schick

4. The Assignment and Institutionalization of Functions at OMB: Lessons from Two Cases in Work-Force Management
Peter M. Benda and Charles H. Levine

5. Rights-Based Budgeting
Jeffrey D. Straussman

6. The Authorization Process: Implications for Budget Theory
Irene S. Rubin

7. Community Power and Municipal Budgets
Charles Brecher and Raymond D. Horton

8. What Budgeting Cannot Do: Lessons of Reagan's and Other Years
Joseph White

Contributors

Index

Description

This collection is the first book-length work in many years to provide new theoretical direction to budget theory. Written by several of the most respected people in budgeting, including Allen Schick, Naomi Caiden, and Lance LeLoup, it explores such current topics as the scope of budgeting, the degree and source of variation in budgeting, and changes in budgeting process over time.

New Directions will help to build a framework that is less confining than incrementalism, and will stimulate and guide future research. Some of the essays deal with the implications of looking at budgeting from a multi-year perspective, and the importance of allocating sources other than money (such as personnel ceilings); others pose questions about what a budget theory should look like, and how many budget theories are needed.

Irene S. Rubin is co-author of Politics of Retrenchment and Community Organizing and Development, and she is author of Running in the Red (also published by SUNY Press) and Shrinking the Federal Government. She is currently working on a book about the politics of budgeting.