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J. Richard Aronson and Eli Schwartz, eds., Management Policies in Local Government Finance, 3d ed. (Washington, DC: International City and County Management Association, 1987), 449 pp.; $39.95 hardbound.
Robert Berne and Richard Schramm, the Financial Analysis of Governments. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986), 431 pp.; $50.00 hardbound.
Charles K. Coe, Public Financial Management. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1989), 254 pp.; $31.00 hardbound.
C. William Garner, Accounting and Budgeting in Public and Nonprofit Organizations: A Manager's Guide (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991), 252 pp.; $31.95 hardbound.
Robert D. Lee, Jr., and Ronald W. Johnson, Public Budgeting Systems, 4th ed. (Rockville, MD." Aspen Publishers, Inc., 1989), 354 pp.; $39.00 hardbound.
Thomas D. Lynch, Public Budgeting in America, 3d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 372 pp.; $59.90 hardbound.
Jerome G. McKinney, Effective Financial Management in Public and Nonprofit Agencies: A Practical and Integrative Approach. (New York: Quorum Books, 1986), 378 pp.: $59.50 hardbound.
John L. Mikesell, Fiscal Administration, 3d ed. (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1991), 510 pp.: $43.95 hardbound.
John E. Petersen and Dennis Strachota, eds., Local Government Finance: Concepts and Practices. (Chicago: Government Finance Officers Association, 1991), 465 pp.: $55.95 hardbound, for non-members.
B.J. Reed and John W. Swain, Public Finance Administration (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 355 pp.; $47.00 hardbound.
Alan Walter Steiss, Financial Management in Public Organizations. (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1989), $33.95 hardbound.
Publishers of state and local government financial management textbooks have long relegated them to the background as "tools and techniques," much as publishers did with policy analysis textbooks some ten years ago. Yet, research and teaching in this area have massed to the point where rivalry has developed between three different views of financial management, mirroring some of the basic theoretical differences in public administration proper. Few outside the field of financial management have noticed it. Fewer still have grasped its consequences. My purpose in this review essay is to explore with a more general public administration audience the various forms the study of financial management has taken by looking at the ways textbook writers have catalogued research and presented it to Masters of Public Administration level students.
What is public financial management? Generally, these texts do nor explicitly dine it. The vagueness of the concept may explain why the larger...