THE HISTORY OF BUDGETING IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

The History of Budgeting in Public Administration

The History of Budgeting in Public Administration

Introduction

More than any other time in recent history, public administration is concerned with the negotiation of agreements with nongovernmental providers and managing the interrelationship of the three sectors. The reinventing government initiative is a policy change tbat is in concert with the budget limitation movement. The initiative will have important and longlasting effects on federal administration. Federal programs will continue to be delegated to the state and local level, and to the private sector. The process of managing personnel, resources, and money has changed from a rule-based orientation to an outcome-based orientation.

The budget is one of the most significant policy documents of any administration, and BCPs are one of the principal decision vehicles used in the development of the budget. Yet, the current process used for assembling the Governor's Budget proposal is not automatic or technical, nor was it always used. It was developed in this century and built into the Constitution to achieve certain social objectives and institutional relationships. California's intention in adopting the specific budget process which it did reflects directly on the issue of whether or not BCPs should be considered confidential documents. (Rosenbloom, 1993)

California has adopted and specified in its Constitution an executive budget process, which was proposed by Progressive Era reformers in the early part of this century. This movement was widespread and had well articulated objectives; and it included such advocates as Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, and the noted historian, Charles Beard. It received extensive attention from political scientists, and entire issues of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science were devoted to this subject. The movement reacted against what has been described as the "bureaucratic feudalism" of legislatures during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, to the dominance of political machines at the local level, to waste and inefficiency, to the lack of leadership and accountability, to government structures that hid more than they revealed to the public, to the dominance of special interests, to the lack of goals and the ability to implement them, and, mostly, to the inability of government to respond to the immense need for new and expanded services in a rapidly changing society characterized by industrialization, urbanization, technological advancements, the development of a national and international economy, population growth, and large scale immigration.

Discussion

Governments have collected taxes and utilized the resulting proceeds to support armies and civil administration even before the advent of money (Webber and Wildavsky, 1986). However, the roots of contemporary budgetary practices can be traced to the development of the English Constitution. The Glorious Revolution of 1689 established the supremacy of Parliament over the monarchy. Thereafter, at least in principal, the King, and later the Prime Minister, could request certain taxes or various expenditures, but only Parliament could authorize them. Change, though, occurred quite slowly, with marked disparities between principal and practice. Parliamentary authority extended to what it felt essential to, and what ...