Effects of Administrators' Aspirations,Political Principals' Priorities,and Interest Groups' Influence on State Agency Budget Requests

This article addresses a long‐standing question in public budgeting: What factors influence bureau/agency budget request decisions? Empirical results confirm the complexity of variables that explain different levels of budget requests by over 1,000 state administrative agencies. The expected significant influence of administrator (agency head) aspirations was clearly present. But other important sources enter into the decision of agencies to satisfy rather than maximize. These include the strategic roles, activities, and priorities of governors, legislatures, and interest groups. These political principals' influence operates to constrain, discipline, or even augment agency budget requests.     

PLANNING AND CONTROLLING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE IN THE UK, PART II: THE EFFECTS AND EFFECTIVENESS OF THE SURVEY

Part I of this article [spring 19921 examined and explained the processes by which the Treasury plans and controls public expenditure through the Public Expenditure Survey. This second part analyses the survey's effects and effectiveness. Throughout we assess the survey by the extent to which the principal functions of planning, allocating, controlling and evaluating public expenditure are articulated and performed. We use four sets of criteria. Firstly, the survey is assessed as a means of regulating the interdependent relationships of the principal participants. Secondly, as a system for making decisions about public expenditure, the survey is judged by the extent to which it has enabled governments to achieve their broad spending objectives. Thirdly, the survey is assessed b the extent to which it provides directly for the participation of ministers collectively in tie process of decision-making, and how they decide the relative priority of both the total of public expenditure and its composition. And fourthly, its effects are measured by analysing the outputs of the system - the allocation of spending to departments and agencies. In the concluding section we address directly the question of whose interests are best served by the survey.     

CONTRACTING IN THEORY AND IN PRACTICE: SOME EVIDENCE FROM THE NHS

The contract is the main mechanism for governing transactions within public sector'quasi markets'. This article explores the nature of the contracting process in the light of new empirical data from a qualitative study of the development of contracting for hiv / aids services within the National Health Service. These data are compared with four possible models of the contracting process emerging from the academic literature, classical, relational, regulated and pseudo contracting.
The White Paper on the nhs reforms uses a classical concept of contracting, in which purchasers are represented as making well informed and unrestricted choices between competing options. This bore little relation to the process observed within the four purchasing organizations studied. Instead, elements of all the models were observed, with the dominance of any one model varying with different situations, times and localities. Competition was only patchily evident, with purchasers more commonly encouraging co-operative relationships between providers to preserve stability. Attempts to utilize the contract process to mould and reconfigure services were often hampered by restrictions imposed by regulations and slow implementation of new mechanisms. Contracting was also adversely affected by rapid organizational change and lack of adequate information. It is concluded that contracting in the nhs is an evolving process and has yet to achieve its full potential as a management mechanism.     

PERCEPTUAL DETERRENCE AMONG ACTIVE RESIDENTIAL BURGLARS: A RESEARCH NOTE*

The research reported here is based on a comparison of active residential burglars and a matched control group regarding their willingness to commit a burglary at varying levels of certainty of arrest, severity of penalty, and anticipated reward. Initial analyses revealed that few controls were willing to offend regardless of risk, penalty, or reward and that offenders were not influenced by penalty on its own. Consequently, responses of the offenders only were further analyzed in relation to the impact of risk, penalty, and reward. The results of a logit analysis indicated that both risk of being caught and prospect of increased gain had a significant influence on the offenders' decision making.