ABSTRACT
Bureaucratic centralization in the national and state budget processes expedite information processing and reduce organizational conflicts. The benefits from bureaucratic centralization are highly contingent on its surrounding political environments. The first study conducted by West, Lindquist, and Mosher-Howe evidences how important clarification of agency goals and facilitated communications across organizational divisions are for the success of bureaucratic reform efforts. West, Lindquist, and Mosher-Howe present an overall evaluation of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reform initiatives. In the last decade, performance-based budgeting has been adopted by various levels of governments. Beginning from FY 2004, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been implementing Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) for evaluating federal programs. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was originally expected to be a bipartisan, politically neutral information-processing agency. During 1950s, Social Security program budgets made sudden and rapid increases after long years of small, incremental changes. Natchez and Bupp's study is a very early example of such budget punctuations.
