ABSTRACT
A national budget is the outcome of extensive decision-making processes comprising the preferences of multiple political actors. During this process, each actor attempts to inject her preferences into the final package of appropriations; however, competing demands can be met only to a limited extent. Budget negotiations are therefore often intense and the subject of heightened political attention. At the center of these negotiations is the trade-off among different budget categories. Some areas of the national budget in any given fiscal year might experience little change while others suffer dramatic cuts or undergo massive expansions. Taking a conservative example, the median change for the Danish budget appropriations from 1985 to 1986 across all government programs was a modest 1.4 per cent. However, this on average incremental increase included a more than 20 per cent cut for the Energy and Environment resort, several small changes, as well as a 13 per cent increase in the budgets of the Foreign Affairs and Justice ministry. The occurrence of these large-scale shifts within annual budgets I define as budget punctuations. Neither the public’s focus on entitlements and deficits nor the prevalent theory’s emphasis on incrementalism captures this phenomenon.
