Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T10:22:42.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Explaining Presidential Priorities: The Competing Aspiration Levels Model of Macrobudgetary Decision Making

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Gregory W. Fischer  and
Mark S. Kamlet
Gregory W. Fischer
Affiliation:
Carnegie-Mellon University
Mark S. Kamlet
Affiliation:
Carnegie-Mellon University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article develops a new statistical model of trade-offs among defense, nondefense, and fiscal policy concerns as they are reflected in the presidential budgetary process. The Competing Aspiration Levels Model (CALM) builds on Crecine's (1971) “Great Identity” argument. Unlike most previous attempts to model presidential budgeting, CALM explicitly represents the interdependence of decisions about defense, nondefense, and total federal expenditures. CALM models this interdependence as the result of the interaction of minimal aspirations for defense and nondefense expenditures with a maximum acceptable level of expenditures from a fiscal policy standpoint. Statistical analyses of presidential budgets for the fiscal years from 1955 through 1980 provide strong support for the CALM formulation. Substantively, the results indicate that fiscal constraints on total expenditures have progressively weakened, that the maximum acceptable expenditure level has generally exceeded the minimal expenditure aspiration level, and that when a potential “fiscal surplus” has existed, the nondefense sector has been more successful in capturing a share of this surplus than the defense sector. In keeping with traditional incrementalist arguments, the results indicate that previous year expenditure levels provide a relatively secure “budgetary base” for both the defense and nondefense sectors. Both sectors tend to receive their minimal aspiration levels plus a share of whatever fiscal surplus exists. The analysis also indicates that the executive branch has not been as strong a direct force for budgetary growth as Congress.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 78 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 356 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Buchanan, J. M., & Wagner, R. E.Democracy in deficit: The political legacy of Lord Keynes. New York: Academic Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Crecine, J. P.Defense budgeting. In Cooper, W. W., Byrne, R. F., Charnes, A., Davis, O. A., & Gilford, D. (Eds.), Studies in budgeting. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1971, pp. 210–261.Google Scholar
Crecine, J. P.The shape of the defense budget: internal DOD resource allocation. In Appendices: Commission on the organization of the government for the conduct of foreign policy (Vol. 4). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975.Google Scholar
Crecine, J. P., & Fischer, G. W.On resource allocation in the U.S. Department of Defense. In Cotter, C. P. (Ed.), Political Science Annual, 1973, 4, 181–236.Google Scholar
Cyert, R. M., & March, J. G.A behavioral theory of the firm. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963.Google Scholar
Davis, O. A., Dempster, M. A. H., & Wildavsky, A.A theory of the budgetary process. American Political Science Review, 1966, 60, 529–547.Google Scholar
Davis, O. A., Dempster, M. A. H., & Wildavsky, A.On the process of budgeting II: an empirical study of congressional appropriations. In Cooper, W. W., Byrne, R. F., Charnes, A., Davis, O. A., & Gilford, D. (Eds.), Studies in budgeting. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1971.Google Scholar
Domke, W. K., Eichenberg, R. C., & Kelleher, C. M.The illusion of choice: defense and welfare in advanced industrial democracies, 1948-1978. American Political Science Review, 1983, 77, 19–35.Google Scholar
Enthoven, A., & Smith, W. K.How much is enough? New York: Harper-Colophon Books, 1971.Google Scholar
Fischer, G. W., & Crecine, J. P.Defense budgets, fiscal policy, domestic spending and arms races. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. Washington, D.C., 08 1979.Google Scholar
Fischer, G. W., & Crecine, J. P.Defense spending, nondefense spending, and the need for fiscal restraint: two models of the presidential budgetary process. Arms Control, 1981, 2, 65–106.Google Scholar
Frank, R., & Kamlet, M. Total expenditures, resource intensity, and quantity of public good provision: the case of public mental hospitals. Unpublished, 1983.Google Scholar
Huntington, S. P.The common defense: strategic programs in national defense. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A.Prospect theory: an analysis of decisions under risk. Econometrica, 1979, 47, 63–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamlet, M. S., & Mowery, D. C.The budgetary base in federal resource allocation. The American Journal of Political Science, 1980, 4, 804–821.Google Scholar
Larkey, P. D.Evaluating public programs: the impact of general revenue sharing on municipal government. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Manns, D., & March, J. G.Financial adversity, internal competition, and curriculum change in a university. Administrative Science Quarterly, 1978, 23, 541–552.Google Scholar
March, J. G., & Simon, H. A.Organizations. New York: Wiley, 1958.Google Scholar
McGuire, T. W., Farley, J. U., Lucas, R. E., & Ring, L. W.Estimation and inference for linear models in which subsets of the dependent variable are constrained. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 1968, 63, 1201–1213.Google Scholar
McNamara, R. S.The essence of security: reflections in office. New York: Harper and Row, 1968.Google Scholar
Mowery, D. C., Kamlet, M. S., & Crecine, J. P.Presidential management of budgetary and fiscal policymaking. Political Science Quarterly, 1980, 95, 395–425.Google Scholar
Ostrom, C. W. Jr.A reactive linkage model of the U.S. defense expenditure policymaking process. American Political Science Review, 1978, 72, 941–957.Google Scholar
Richardson, L.Arms and insecurity. Pittsburgh: Boxwood Press, 1960.Google Scholar
Russett, B.Defense expenditures and national wellbeing. American Political Science Review, 1982, 76, 767–777.Google Scholar
Schick, A.Congress and money. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, 1980.Google Scholar
Simon, H.A behavioral model of rational choice. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1955, 69, 99–118.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A.On the concept of organizational goal. Administrative Science Quarterly, 1964, 9, 1–22.Google Scholar
Stolp, C.Local dollars vs. federal dollars in municipal expenditure allocation. Ph.D. dissertation, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1982.Google Scholar
Stromberg, J.The internal mechanisms of the defense budgetary process: fiscal 1953-1968. Santa Monica: The RAND Corporation, RM 6243-PR, 1970.Google Scholar
Wildavsky, A.The politics of the budgetary process. Boston: Little-Brown, 1964.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.