Speaking Notes

January 12, 2010

PADM 5301

Dr. Neubauer

WHERE WE ARE

First class meeting

Syllabus, calendar and usual first class meeting things

I need to prepare "magic numbers" for FTP account in Arizona

SOME HIGHLIGHTS FROM CHAPTER1 OF OUR TEXTBOOK

My meeting with Dr. Frank Gibson at University of Georgia in about 1973. In his view the essential question in public budgeting is now to allocate resources among unlike things.

BUDGETING IS A SPECIALIZED KIND OF DECISION MAKING INVOLVING BOTH AGENCIES AND POLITICAL ACTORS.

How should decisions be made when . . .

values are subjective

money is being allocated among DIFFERENT KINDS OF needs

different people have different value systems

Another large question -- what percent of the money should flow through governments via taxation each year? WHAT SHOULD BE LEFT UNDONE SO AS TO AVOID PULLING THE MONEY OUT OF THE ECONOMY?

If public budgeting was RATIONAL it could be reduced to a science. It is not rational and therefore it gets reduced to POLITICS with rational connotations.

I put a video on the course home page.

• truly public budgeting event in UK

This can be approached as ACCOUNTING or in a POLITICAL SCIENCE kind of way.

Both approaches are valid and important.

Because Public Administration is often housed with or within a Political Science department, this is usually taught as if a Political Science course.

Things I like about this textbook:

references to complex systems

references to information management

IS PUBLIC BUDGETING DIFFERENT FROM JUST ORDINARY "BUDGETING?"

• externalities
• coerced spending
• non exclusionary goods and services
• moral implications
• need for transparency in a democratic society

THERE IS A NICE SUMMARY OF THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC BUDGETING IN THE UNITED STATES IN YOUR TEXTBOOK IN CHAPTER 1.

• The purpose of and need for budgeting.
• The role of the executive branch.
• The role of the legislative branch.
• The need for elected officials to be able to hold employed "bureaucrats" accountable.

ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO FOCUS A BUDGETING SYSTEM

1. CONTROL -- line item budget

2. EFFICIENCY

3 PROGRAM OUTCOMES -- performance budgets

There are five "stages" listed on page 15 of the 7th edition of our textbook. Budget reform efforts "want" to more toward the improvement and evaluation of program outcomes. But whatever we "bolt on" to old fashioned line-item budgeting, the line item budget is likely to survive in parallel to the new approach.

BUDGETING SYSTEMS

• "Everything" is a complex system (social or otherwise).
• The nodes in the system are likely to be individuals (acting within roles) and institutions.
• They have values, norms, expectations, powers, knowledge, and constituencies.
• Wildavsky and others described (at length) the political of budgetary processes and the "dances" of the actors.
• In terms of complex adaptive systems, the "dances" are called "attractors."
• An attractor is a relatively stable pattern of interactivity likely to be evident at multiple scales.
• There is something called "theory of mind" in Psychology. It basically refers to one's ability to anticipate the thoughts/feelings of another person and to act so as to anticipate the reactions of the other.
• Budgeting is all about knowing one's steps in the larger dance.

APPROACHES TO DECISION MAKING

1. Rational Comprehensive Model of Decision Making

• one right answer
• quantify everything and somehow calculate the single best (right) decision

(Herbert Simon challenged this. He wrote that we have "bounded rationality" and that trying to be rational (comprehensive) was itself irrational for several reasons. He advised "satisficing.")

If public budgeting were to be done in a rational comprehensive way, POLITICAL CONFLICT would become to high and the computations required would be overwhelming. (Reference zero-based budgeting.)

2. Incrementalism -- Charles Lindblom and his article on the Science Muddling Through. It makes more sense to more forward in a series of small changes, especially in a politically charged atmosphere.

3. Mixed scanning or "limited rationality" -- what makes more sense is muddling through punctuated by moments of big changes. (Similar to Kuhn's sense of the progress of science.)

In addition to "bounded rationality," be mindful of constraints of our political systems to deal with high levels of political conflict. This might be called "bounded volatility."

Incremental budgeting help hold down the level of political conflict.

If it were necessary to re-justify everything every year, the "administrative state" would lack stability and the level of political conflict would be much too high.

The problem with "muddling through" is the inherent nature of the administrative state to grow and grow and grow, for lack of periodic major review. It may be good to write SUNSET provisions into new programs to insure that they don't survive only because of the incremental nature of budgetary processes.

Another problem with incrementalism is that it may simply be impossible to get from there the there in incremental steps. (Or it may take so very long to do so as to be impractical.) (The ant on the rim of a glass may think it is traveling a long way.)