Politics is often centered on making distributive decisions concerning the allocation of scarce resources. One most obvious example of this is the federal appropriation process. Because it is Congress which, subject to Presidential veto, determines the final budget, students of politics are interested in the manner in which Congress decides on federal appropriations. / Many theories attempt to explain the federal appropriations process. Three are examined here: incrementalism, program support/economy optimization, and bargaining. Each quite adequately explains some aspect of the process. Yet each suffers from shortcomings, preventing it from offering a comprehensive view. / At times each of the three theories correctly predicts Congressional appropriations behavior. What this study does is specify the conditions under which each of the three theories is likely to prevail thereby developing an integrative theory of the budgetary process. / Once the conditions are specified, the integrative theory is tested. The new theory is used to make predictions for 37 federal agency House Appropriations Committee recommendation trend lines, for the years 1957-1974. Theoretical predictions are compared to actual trends and the theory is evaluated. / The initial theory explains about 54 percent of the cases correctly. Once revised slightly, the theory predicts about 94 percent of the cases correctly. Thus the revised theory provides a substantially correct explanation of the federal appropriations process. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-07, Section: A, page: 3254. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74201 |
| Contributors | BROUTHERS, LANCE ELIOT., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 105 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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