Government Budgeting And Financial Management In Practice

The right turn in U. S. politics has increased conflict over both ends and means in government budgeting and financial management. Overlapping and competing views of the way the world works drive finance officials’ practice. Taking a new look at public financial management that acknowledges the multiple, competing realities, Government Budgeting and Financial Management in Practice: Logics to Make Sense of Ambiguity examines transaction cost economics and other small government, managed-by-the-market techniques as the latest reincarnation of public budgeting and financial management orthodoxy. Gerald J. Miller reviews new research on the continuing validity of the political dimension of government finance decisions and the multiple, intensely argued constructions of reality the finance official must make sense of. Miller discusses major advances in interpretive approaches to budgeting and finance and how they dominate writing in the broader field of public administration. He also examines the effects of the explosion of information systems, new budget techniques, nonconventional ways of spending, and new technologies. The book uses a question as the motivating force to understand some facets of today’s government budgeting, finance, and financial management: where do the critical assumptions come from to drive financial management? Miller takes the history of reform, developments in the field and the logics finance officials say they use as sources for these assumptions and examines what they reveal about constructions of the government finance world. Exploring new avenues of financial management thinking, the book discusses ambiguity and interpretations that move the unclear preferences, ends, and goals toward consensus. The author identifies an alternative approach to research that explains important facets of financial management. This approach is drawn directly from practice, events and problems in public organizations and from the creedal bent of many political actors in competition.

The government budget should be the financial mirror of society's choices. Yet most people view budgeting as the epitome of eye-glazing subjects, rarely explained in a way that is understandable to the non-specialist and too often presented without adequate consideration of a country’s governance and institutional capacity. Government Budgeting and Expenditure Management fills a gap in the literature to redress these failings and does so in comparative international perspective. This book provides a comprehensive but pithy and easy-to-understand treatment of public financial management, taking into account a variety of special issues including budgeting in post-conflict situations, at subnational government levels, for military/security expenditures, and in countries with large extractive revenues. Distilling the lessons of budgeting reform in countries at different levels of income and administrative capacity, each chapter gradually progresses from the basic principles to the more technical aspects and then on to implementation issues, using concrete examples and illustrations from around the globe. Government Budgeting and Expenditure Management is ideally suited as the primary text for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in government budgeting or public financial management, or as a supplementary text for courses in public finance, public economics, economic development, public administration or comparative politics. With its attention to practical implementation aspects, the book will also be of direct interest to practitioners, policy-makers, and government employee training organizations.

The U.S. Department of Defense accounts for over half of federal government discretionary spending and over 3% of GDP. Half of all federal employees work for the Department. The annual budget for the military not only provides for those salaries, it covers the baseline and wartime operating expenses of the force, and hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in new capabilities and technologies. Given the materiality of the defense function and amount of resources it consumes, the processes for budgeting for defense and managing the funds is important to understand. This text provides a fully integrated view of defense budgeting. It takes the position that defense budgeting is a specific instance of public budgeting, and public budgeting is a specific instance of public policy. In order to fully understand how the nation budgets for defense, it first lays a theoretical and conceptual foundation for public policy and public budgeting. That is followed by an assessment of the political and policy context for defense, including the overarching federal budget process and role of Congress in setting defense policy. Only then does the text explore the specifics of defense budgeting: how, by whom, and why the budget is crafted. Beyond the topic of budgeting – formulating, requesting, and legitimating the request for funds – the book tackles financial management topics. Included are discussions of federal appropriations law, funds management, accounting requirements, intragovernmental business transactions, and contemporary topics of defense policy such as funding overseas contingency operations in an era of deficit control legislation. This book is an appropriate reference for both students and practitioners of defense budgeting and financial management. It would also be appropriate in a general public budgeting course. Most public budgeting texts focus on state and municipal governments and there are few that address the federal system. This book fills that gap and provides a specific example of federal budgeting.

This lecture notes provides an overview of budgeting and financial management in the public and non-profit sectors. Fundamental concepts and practices of budgeting, financial management and public finance are introduced, with special emphasis on state and local government budgeting and financial management in the United States. The objectives of courses in Public Budgeting and this title are to teach the basic concepts and nomenclature of public finance, to develop an understanding of budget processes as well as the sources and uses of public revenues, and to make relatively simple, but useful computations in an intelligent way. Key course learning outcomes include the abilities to: There are no indispensable pre-requisites by the reader, and it has been designed for students from a wide variety of backgrounds and undergraduate majors. Although this works well as an introductory text to a broader public administration curriculum, it also can make sense for students to take after some more basic courses in economics, policy analysis, and public organizations. Issues of tax incidence and the effect of taxes on economic efficiency can be covered in greater depth.

This book, written by A. Premchand, offers a comprehensive review of fiscal policies and their implications for budgeting and expenditure controls. It provides an in-depth discussion of techniques, procedures, and processes of budgeting with illustrative material drawn from the experiences of industrial and developing countries.