IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v68y1974i03p1221-1228_10.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bases of Budgetary Incrementalism

Author

Listed:
  • Wanat, John

Abstract

This essay analyses the explanatory power of Davis, Dempster, and Wildavsky's theory of budgetary incrementalism. By means of sensitivity testing, it demonstrates that inferences to “gaming” or strategic explanations of budgetary incrementalism are not warranted on the basis of correlational analysis.To explain budgetary incrementalism more satisfactorily, recourse is made to concepts and variables explicit in the vocabulary of the budget process participants. When mandatory requests are distinguished from programmatic requests, the differential treatment of the two by Congress is observed to allow good explanation of budgetary relations. In particular, the inexorable but small mandatory request, which is almost automatically granted, is adequate by itself to explain why requests always increase and why one year's appropriation surpasses the previous one.

Suggested Citation

  • Wanat, John, 1974. "Bases of Budgetary Incrementalism," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(3), pages 1221-1228, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:68:y:1974:i:03:p:1221-1228_10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400102631/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wordliczek Lukasz, 2021. "Between incrementalism and punctuated equilibrium: the case of budget in Poland, 1995–2018," Central European Journal of Public Policy, Sciendo, vol. 15(2), pages 14-30, December.
    2. Charles W. Ostrom Jr., 1977. "Evaluating Alternative Foreign Policy Decision-Making Models," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 21(2), pages 235-266, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:68:y:1974:i:03:p:1221-1228_10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.