The Politics Of Public Money

"The politics of public money examines the extent to which the Canadian federal budgetary process is shifting from one based on a bilateral relationship between departmental spenders and central guardians to one based on a more complex, multilateral relationship involving a variety of players."--P. [i].

Public money is one of the primary currencies of influence for politicians and public servants. It affects the standards by which they undertake the nation's business and it impacts on the standard of living of the nation's citizens. The Politics of Public Money examines the extent to which the Canadian federal budgetary process is shifting from one based on a bilateral relationship between departmental spenders and central guardians to one based on a more complex, multilateral relationship involving a variety of players. In this innovative study, David A. Good examines this shift in terms of a broader societal change from an 'old village,' conditioned by old norms of behaviour, to a 'new town,' which brings with it new ideas about how public money should be managed and spent. Organized into four parts, the book opens with 'The Changing Politics of Public Money,' which sets out a revised and expanded framework for analysing the politics and management of public money. Part 2, 'The Public Money Players,' looks at the motivations, interdependence, and independence of the four budget players. The third part, 'The Public Money Processes," deals with the central functions of budgeting - determining fiscal aggregates, making budget allocations, and ensuring effective financial management. Finally, 'New Prospects for Public Money,' looks ahead to the future and considers ways to strengthen the interaction among the players, and in so doing, improve the politics and management of public money. An insightful and incisive study of the changing budgetary process, The Politics of Public Money examines the promises and pitfalls of budgetary reform and sheds new light on the role insiders play in influencing government spending.

Public money is one of the primary currencies of influence for politicians and public servants. It affects the standards by which they undertake the nation’s business and impacts the standard of living of the nation’s citizens. David A. Good’s The Politics of Public Money examines the extent to which the Canadian federal budgetary process is shifting from one based on a bilateral relationship between departmental spenders and central guardians to one based on a more complex, multilateral relationship involving a variety of players. This new edition offers an up-to-date account of the Canadian system, including the creation of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the government’s response to the global financial crisis, Canada’s Economic Action Plan, strategic and operating reviews, the most recent attempts to reform the Estimates, and much more. An insightful and incisive study of the changing budgetary process, The Politics of Public Money examines the promises and pitfalls of budgetary reform and sheds new light on the role insiders play in influencing government spending.

" Public money is perhaps the quintessential currency of influence for politicians and public servants inside government. It shapes how they undertake the nations business and it impacts on the standards of living in the country. The Politics of Public Money examines the extent to which the influence of players in the budgetary process is shifting from a bilateral relationship between departmental spenders and central guardians to a more complex multilateral relationship involving spenders and central guardians, as well as priority setters and financial watchdogs. David Good analyzes this shift of influence in terms of a broader societal change from an old village, conditioned by old norms of behaviour, to a new town that brings with it new ideas about how much public money should be spent, where it should be spent, and how it should be managed. To better understand the changing situation, Good develops a new framework for analyzing the politics and management of public money. This framework is used to explore the interactions among budget players and, perhaps the most central of all, the relationship between Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. As an analysis of the changing budgetary process and an examination of the promises and pitfalls of budgetary reform, The Politics of Public Money sheds new light on the role of insiders in influencing our governments spending. "

Some of the nation's wealthiest philanthropies, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Broad Foundation have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in education reform. With vast wealth and a political agenda, these foundations have helped to reshape the reform landscape in urban education. In Follow the Money, Sarah Reckhow shows where and how foundation investment in education is occurring and presents in-depth analysis of the effects of these investments within the two largest urban districts in the United States: New York City and Los Angeles. In New York City, centralized political control and the use of private resources have enabled rapid implementation of reform proposals. Yet this potent combination of top-down authority and outside funding also poses serious questions about transparency, responsiveness, and democratic accountability in New York. Furthermore, the sustainability of reform policies is closely linked to the political fortunes of the current mayor and his chosen school leader. While the media has highlighted the efforts of drastic reformers and dominating leaders such as Joel Klein in New York City and Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., a slower, but possibly more transformative, set of reforms have been taking place in Los Angeles. These reforms were also funded and shaped by major foundations, but they work from the bottom up, through charter school operators managing networks of schools. This strategy has built grassroots political momentum and demand for reform in Los Angeles that is unmatched in New York City and other districts with mayoral control. Reckhow's study of Los Angeles's education system shows how democratically responsive urban school reform could occur-pairing foundation investment with broad grassroots involvement. Bringing a sharp analytical eye and a wealth of evidence to one of the most politicized issues of our day, Follow the Money will reshape our thinking about educational reform in America.

The Nine Years’ War with France was a period of great institutional innovation in public finance and of severe monetary turmoil for England. It saw the creation of the Bank of England; a sudden sharp fall in the external value of the pound; a massive undertaking to melt down and recoin most of the nation’s silver currency; a failed attempt to create a National Land Bank as a competitor to the Bank of England; and the ensuing outbreak of a sharp monetary and financial crisis. Histories of this period usually divide these events into two main topics, treated in isolation from one another: the recoinage debate and ensuing monetary crisis and a ‘battle of the banks’. The first is often interpreted as the pyrrhic victory of a creditor-dominated parliament over the nation’s debtors, one that led very predictably to the ensuing monetary crisis. The second has been construed as a contest between whig-merchant and tory-gentry visions of the proper place of banking in England’s future. This book binds the two strands into a single narrative, resulting in a very different interpretation of both. Parliamentary debate over the recoinage was superficial and misleading; beneath the surface, it was just another front for the battle of the banks. And the latter had little to do with competing philosophies of economic development; it was rather a pragmatic struggle for profit and power, involving interlocking contests between two groups of financiers and two sets of politicians within the royal administration. The monetary crisis of summer 1696 was not the result of poor planning by the Treasury; rather it was a continuation of the battle of the banks, fought on new ground but with the same ultimate intent – to establish dominance in the lucrative business of private lending to the crown.