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OECD's Recommendation of the Council on Budgetary Governance makes a substantial contribution to discussion of good budgetary practice by synthesising much common understanding while updating it to recognise some lessons from the experience of the Great Recession. Yet its implicit understanding of the purposes of budget processes has weaknesses both as policy and political analysis. The policy understanding overemphasises the importance of budget totals relative to budget details. The political understanding is as top-down as the policy view. Although budgets might be seen as contracts between citizens and the state, in a representative system they are better seen as treaties among citizens negotiated through politics. The Recommendation barely recognizes the existence of and challenges from political conflict.
JEL classification: H00, H60, H61
Keywords: Balance, fiscal policy, information, representation, top-down, United States
1. Introduction
A lot of research in the budgeting field, as in much of public administration, has been reformist or prescriptive.1 In some cases, analysis and prescription have, directly or less so, led to changes in practice. The progressive era work by the New York Bureau of Municipal Research defined and provided impetus for creation of municipal budget systems in the United States. The Bureau movement and President Taft's Commission on Economy and Efficiency helped develop the ideas that led to the President's Budget.2 More recently, Roy Meyers rightly reports that "reform advocacy, by the General Accounting Office in particular", contributed to passage of the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 and the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993.3 At a time of great concern about budgets present and future, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has now produced a new prescription, in the form of a Recommendation of the Council on Budgetary Governance (OECD, 2015) which identifies "ten principles of budgetary governance".4
The OECD's principles are likely to be influential around the world. They were generated under the direction of the Working Party of Senior Budget Officials, which since 1980 has brought together budget directors and other top officials involved in budgeting from virtually all OECD countries.5 The SBO group works closely with the OECD's Budgeting and Public Expenditures Division,6 and its membership ensures that any research and recommendations will be spread across the budget policy networks in virtually...