Incrementalism in the United States federal budgetary process: An interest group perspective

This dissertation examines a central aspect of the United States Federal budget. An extensive literature tries to ascertain whether or not the budgetary process is incremental. I develop a theory that incorporates both incremental and nonincremental outcomes. It is based on decision-makers' choice of budget strategy through a utility comparison of two modes of budgeting--single- and multi-period budgeting. Single-period budgeting is where the legislator promises to allocate benefits (or program budgets) only for a year. Multi-period budgeting is where he promises a permanent stream of program benefits.;The basic (short-run) model of budget determination shows that the legislator will more likely choose multi-period budgeting, the larger are the inflation rate, the real rate of revenue growth and the total revenues of the previous year, and the smaller are the discount rate and the total budget of the previous year. These hypotheses are tested and are supported by the data. The model also predicts that the legislator will be more willing to adopt multi period budgeting as his winning margin grows. The model also supports Wagner's Law of an expanding public sector.;The extended (short-run) model shows that shirking legislators will not choose multi-period budgeting as often as nonshirking legislators. The long-term model of budget determination shows that legislator credibility affects his choice of budget strategy. It also shows that legislators who expect to remain in office for a very short period will choose single-period budgeting. As their expected tenure increases, they will choose multi-period budgeting. As it increases even more, they will switch back to single-period budgeting. This analysis sheds light on the issue of imposing term limits on congressmen.;In addition to testing the results of the interest group theory of budget determination, the empirical section improves on the existing literature on incrementalism, by providing a better statistical measure of incremental behavior in the budgetary process. It also points to the shortcomings of the existing measures, and hence that necessity of developing a new method to test the theory.