Balancing Control and Flexibility in Public Budgeting

Beschreibung

Michael Di Francesco is an Associate Professor and Case Program Director at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, and the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia. He has held academic appointments at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne, and Victoria University of Wellington, and expert advisory roles at the NSW Treasury, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
This work explores how reshaping budget rules and how they are applied presents a preferred means of public sector budgeting, rather than simply implementing fewer rules. Through enhanced approaches to resource flexibility, government entities can ensure that public money is used appropriately while achieving the desired results. The authors identify public budgeting practices that inhibit responses to complex problems and examine how rule modification can lead to expanded budget flexibility. Through a nuanced understanding of the factors underlying conventional budget control, the authors use budget reforms in Australia to show the limits of rule modification and propose "rule variability" as a better means of recalibrating central control and situational flexibility. Here, policy makers and public management academics will find a source that surveys emerging ways of reconciling control and flexibility in the public sector.iv>
Focuses on a "blind spot" in budgeting literature, analyzing how the rigidity of budget processes in the public sector inhibit the collaboration and agility needed in responding to complex non-routine problems Illuminates contending understandings of the nature of budget control and offers practical recommendations to policy makers on how to reconfigure centralized budget control for greater flexibility Offers a number of genuinely novel contributions to analyzing public management structures and practices, such as a taxonomy of budget control properties that unpacks the mechanisms inhibiting flexibility as well as an application of responsive regulatory approaches to budget control

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Michael Di Francesco

Themen in »Balancing Control and Flexibility in Public Budgeting«

central finance agencies collaboration control devolution budget reform earned autonomy flexibility non-routine problems public budgeting public management responsive regulation rules sanctioned rule-breaking

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“The execution and management of budgets and public resources are among the most important but least understood aspects of public administration. This new assessment of public budgeting constitutes a path breaking framework to illuminate the trade-offs and consequences of various forms of budget flexibility for public accountability and efficiency. At a time of persistent austerity sweeping over fiscal systems throughout the world, such a framework is vital to help nations adjust to new rules and limits on budgetary resources imposed by publics, markets and multinational institutions.” (Professor Paul L. Posner, Director of the Centers on the Public Service, George Mason University, USA; Past President, American Society for Public Administration; author of The Politics of Unfunded Mandates)

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