This title seeks to open new areas of inquiry into the art and skill of public sector budgeting. It sees it as an institutional process, decision making tool, and, when well done, a reflection of managerial efficiency.

This incomparable Fourth Edition of a standard reference/text has been thoroughly updated and enlarged -- offering comprehensive coverage of the field in a single source and incorporating entirely new as well as time-tested material.

Budgeting and budgetary institutions play a critical role in resource allocation, government accountability, and improved fiscal and social outcomes. This volume distills lessons from practices in designing better fiscal institutions, citizen friendly budgets, and open and transparent processes of budget preparation and execution. It also highlights newer concepts of performance budgeting, accrual accounting, activity based costing, and the use of information and communication technology in budgeting. These tools of analysis are supplemented by a review of budgeting in post-conflict countries and two country case studies on the reform of budgeting systems.

This book provides a comparative analysis of performance budgeting and financing implementation, and examines failures and successes across both developed and developing countries. Beginning with a review of theoretical research on performance budgeting and financing, the book synthesises the numerous studies on the subject. The book describes the situation in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Netherlands and Italy, as well as in seven developing countries - Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Russia and South Africa, at the national, and at the local level. Each chapter provides historical and descriptive details of successful or failed experiments in performance budgeting and performance financing.

Public Budgeting in Search for an Identity: State of the Art and Future Challenges provides a state-of-the-art reflection on current trends in international public budgeting, representing an important pillar in the accumulation of knowledge on public sector budgeting processes, contents, evolutions and critical issues. Budgeting is central in public sector organizations. It performs a complex variety of functions, being the arena where multiple actors, cultures and professional identities interact, making it an extremely fascinating field and topic of investigation. There is a significant need and scope for exploring budgeting processes in the public sector today, as a consequence of the managerial waves of reforms that have taken place over the last few decades and the implementation of austerity programmes – as well as in light of current trends, including emerging challenges related to community care and wellbeing, rising inequality, people flows, climate change, pandemics, and the persistence of democratic deficits. The chapters in this volume address critical issues on this broad topic, offering new perspectives on current evolutions in public budgeting, including, among others, participatory budgeting, performance budgeting, the budgetary slack resources and the need to ensure balance between budget control and flexibility. These contributions show that public budgeting can, and must remain, the subject of enduring interest in our studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Public Management Review.

This analysis of budgetary systems and policies across the world examines how politics, culture, and economics influence public finance.

This publication gives an introduction to both historical and contemporary theoretical foundations of public budgeting. Coverage includes trends in budget reform such as the line-item veto and biennial budgeting; public management developments from vouchers and activity-based costing to the Government Performance Results Act (U.S.); and fiscal assessments of the states and federal government (U.S.).