ABSTRACT
Critiques of incrementalism have also been directed at both its descriptive and prescriptive features. The degree of incrementalism found in budgets appears to be a function of the level of aggregation at which the researcher looks: the larger the program or organization, the more incremental the outcomes appear. There is a great deal of variation in the levels of program appropriations, as some are initiated and others are terminated.31 Critics also point out that the incrementalist approach may be adequate to explain or describe changes in the majority of programs for the majority of years but provides no mechanism for explaining changes in those percentage increases across time, nor for explaining differences in the percentage increases allotted each year to different agencies. Indeed, in their later work, Davis, Dempster and Wildavsky pointed to the importance of events that upset the stability of incremental decision-making systems.32
