State budgetary processes: The two faces of theory

Budget theory has two separate traditions-a precriptive one, related to the efforts to improve budgeting, and a more recent behavioral perspective. State budgetary practices have been influenced primarily by the prescriptive tradition. This article describes the two traditions and applies both to contemporary state budgetary processes. The authors show how the two traditions can be brought closer together so that the behavioral perspective may inform the prescriptive one. Budgetary ‘theory’ has evolved in two separate, though potentially overlapping, directions. One direction-the older one-is clearly prescriptive. Since budgeting is central to public management, both public administrators and scholars have been motivated by the desire to improve the bases of resource allocation. Understanding for its own sake-what we now commonly refer to as ‘theory building’-was secondary. Scholarly discourse eventually shifted away from the prescriptive dimension of budgeting. With hindsight, the reasons are straightforward. The critique of public administration that emerged in the late 1940’s was scathing in its attack on the unscientific nature of public administration discourse. The subsequent ‘behavioral revolution’ in political science in the 1950s influenced the style and substance of budgetary research. Curiously, the quest for ‘better’ budgeting, especially at the state level, has continued largely unaffected by the behavioral onslaught. The authors juxtapose the prescriptive and behavioral strains of budgeting against one another and show how the former is informed by the latter.