ABSTRACT
The state budget is the yearly – and, in some countries, multi-year – work plan of the government. Discussing the budget as if it were merely an aggregation of numbers would be like talking about Newton, the tree, and the apple without mentioning gravity. The “gravity” that shapes the dynamics of the budgeting process in a democratic state is the struggle for resources. Budgeting is fundamentally a political process – making decisions about social values and political priorities from among the various options, with an emphasis on the dimension of time (Wildavsky, 1979).
