Topping Off and Bottoming Out: Setting Budget Priorities Through Executive Power.
This article examines the role of the institutional power of executives in public budgeting; specifically, how executives change spending on particular budget items. Leveraging extant theories of the policy process concerning preference expression, attention, and institutions, we argue that executiv...
| Published in: | Policy Studies Journal Vol. 48; no. 2; pp. 342 - 367 |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article |
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Wiley-Blackwell
May2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=143305262&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 143305262 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 0190292X PSJ jtl: Policy Studies Journal issn: 0190292X maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: May2020 vid: 48 iid: 2 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell artinfo: ui: 143305262 10.1111/psj.12247 ppf: 342 ppct: 25 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 2.1MB tig: atl: Topping Off and Bottoming Out: Setting Budget Priorities Through Executive Power. aug: au: Breunig, Christian Koski, Chris su: Budget Government spending policy Executive power U.S. states United States governors sug: subj: Budget Government spending policy Public Finance Activities Executive Offices Executive power U.S. states United States governors keyword: American states budgets punctuated equilibrium American states budgets punctuated equilibrium ab: This article examines the role of the institutional power of executives in public budgeting; specifically, how executives change spending on particular budget items. Leveraging extant theories of the policy process concerning preference expression, attention, and institutions, we argue that executives deepen large cuts and boost large increases in budgetary change. The strictures of the budgetary process force trade‐offs for executives in preference expression such that increases to preferred categories typically require decreases in other categories. Literatures in public policy and political representation suggest that all executives would like to express fiscal preferences, thereby contributing to categorical budget oscillations; however, not all executives are created equal. We employ quantile regression to examine whether the institutional strength of governors determine cuts, stasis, and expansion in spending across all budget functions in the American states between 1985 and 2009. Our model includes a host of political and economic variables found in the literature of fiscal policymaking, such as partisanship and divided government. The desire to change policy may be widely shared across executives, but we find that the ability to "top off" categorical increases and bottom out categorical decreases is a function of an executive's capacity to call attention to preferred categories via agenda‐setting power and to secure those changes via veto power. The findings show strong governors are well positioned to influence public policy through the budgetary process. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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