Description: While governments prefer to alter budgets to fit their ideological stances, the domestic and international contexts can facilitate or constrain behavior. The Politics of Budgets demonstrates when governments do and do not make preferred budgetary changes. It argues for an interconnected view of budgets and explores both the reallocation of expenditures across policy areas and the interplay among budgetary components. While previous scholars have investigated how politics and economics shape a single budgetary category, or collective categories, this methodologically rich study analyzes data for thirty-three countries across thirty-five years to provide a more comprehensive theoretical approach: a 'holistic' framework about the competition and contexts around the budgetary process and an of examination of how and when these factors affect the budgetary decision-making processes.
Brief description: Christine S. Lipsmeyer is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas A & M University. Her research interests merge many areas of political science, including comparative political economy, public policy, governing institutions, and political behavior.
Review Quotes: 'an indispensable source of inspiration for new research agendas. ... Highly recommended.' J. E. Herbel, Choice