The Politics of Public Budgeting: Getting and Spending, Borrowing and Balancing, Edition 8

Irene S. Rubin

Sep 2016 · CQ Press

About this ebook

Public budgeting is inherently political. In The Politics of Public Budgeting, author Irene S. Rubin lays out the actors involved–interest groups, public officials, legislators, and the public–and shines a light on how these groups, who each have their own goals, are able to bargain and barter their way to a resolution. The new Eighth Edition examines the budgeting process over time and sets issues like the federal deficit and health care expenditures in political and comparative context. As in previous editions, the book also draws on examples from all levels of government and emphasizes the relationships among them. By carefully analyzing each strand of the decision-making process, Rubin shows the extraordinary cooperation involved in passing a budget and achieving accountability.

About the author

Irene S. Rubin is Professor Emeritus of Public Administration at Northern Illinois University. She is the author of Running in the Red: The Political Dynamics of Urban Fiscal Stress, Shrinking the Federal Government, Class Tax and Power: Municipal Budgeting in the United States, and Balancing the Federal Budget: Eating the Seed Corn or Trimming the Herds, all four of which rely extensively on qualitative interviews. She has written journal articles about citizen participation in local level government in Thailand, how universities adapt when their budgets are cut, and fights between legislative staffers and elected and appointed officials about unworkable policy proposals, all based on qualitative interviews. She is in the middle of an interviewing project about how local officials view and use contracts with the private sector and with other governmental units to provide public services.