ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the main relationships between private power and state power. It describes the centralizing tendencies that are at work in both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. The chapter examines the relationship between the executive branch and the legislative branch. It reviews the politics of budgeting at the state and local levels. Beginning in 1961, program budgeting was introduced in the Department of Defense in the more elaborate program-performance-budgeting system (PPBS). The state administration organizes production as the result of a series of political decisions. These political decisions are made within a definite framework of social relationships and as a consequence of social, economic, and political conflict. Monopoly capital must work within the political framework of the federal system. The political-economic perspective of regional capitalists normally reaches beyond the local level and often to the national level, which reinforces special-interest structures within the federal government.
