Public Budgeting: Policy, Process and Politics (ASPA Classics (Paperback))

Some of the best writings on public budgeting and finance can be found in the journals that ASPA publishes or sponsors. For this volume editor Irene Rubin has brought together the best of these articles - emerging classics that address the most important theoretical and practical problems underlying public budgeting.The anthology is organized topically rather than historically, with an effort to delineate the issues needed to understand some of the more recent controversies in the field. Rubin's introductory essay and section openers frame the key issues and provide historical context for each article. The collection begins with descriptions of what public budgeting is, where it comes from, and what it is for. It moves on to the relationship between budget processes and outcomes, constraints on budgeting, the legal context in which it operates, and adaptations to those constraints such as contracting out.The book concludes with a discussion of the ethics and norms that underlie budgeting in a democracy. Throughout the anthology, the emphasis is on areas of disagreement and debate, so students can get involved and explore different viewpoints.

Irene S. Rubin received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 1977. She taught at the University of Maryland College Park from 1979 to 1981, and at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, from 1981 to 2004, when she retired from teaching. She has spent her professional career studying the fiscal problems of federal, state, and local governments. Among her books are Running in the Red: The Political Dynamics of Urban Fiscal Stress; Class Tax and Power: Municipal Budgeting in the United States; Balancing the Federal Budget: Eating the Seed Corn or Trimming the Herds; and The Politics of Public Budgeting.