ABSTRACT
Public budgeting is concerned with the allocation of financial resources. As such, it is technical but heavily loaded with politics. Of this technicalpolitical bi-partite structure, politics has often drawn more academic attention because it is very complicated, and thus more interesting and holding more explanatory power of the budgeting process. Aaron Wildavsky’s work is a good example among the vast amount of literature on the politics of the budgetary process. Any study of the technical side has to refer to the political side also because one simply ‘‘ . . . cannot take politics
out of budgeting’’ (Donohue, 1982, 62). Nonetheless, the technical side is also fascinating and sophisticated, deserving due examination. This chapter focuses on one aspect in the technical side — the relationship between budgeting and planning. As Allen Schick put it, the format of budgeting is ‘‘more a product of bureaucratic than of political influences’’ (1971, 195).
