Foundations
Lindblom's "The Science of Muddling Through" (1959) argued that decision makers make small, successive changes rather than comprehensively comparing all options. Wildavsky applied this to US federal budgeting in The Politics of the Budgetary Process (1964).
Key concepts
- Base: existing programmes at last year's level are largely taken for granted.
- Fair share: agencies expect a similar proportion of any increase or cut.
- Roles: agencies act as advocates, while budget offices and appropriations committees act as guardians, each anticipating the other.
Davis, Dempster and Wildavsky (1966) showed that agency requests and appropriations were well predicted by simple linear functions of the previous year.
Versus rational budgeting
PPBS allocates by systematic programme analysis, and zero-based budgeting asks every programme to justify itself from zero. Wildavsky argued such reforms founder on information costs and political conflict.
Critiques
Incrementalism struggles to explain cutback periods and large shifts, its definition of "small" is vague, and it can entrench existing interests. Jones and Baumgartner's punctuated equilibrium theory describes long stability broken by sharp change.
References
- Wildavsky, A. (1964). The Politics of the Budgetary Process. Little, Brown.
- Lindblom, C. E. (1959). The science of "muddling through". Public Administration Review, 19(2), 79-88.
- Davis, O. A., Dempster, M. A. H., & Wildavsky, A. (1966). A theory of the budgetary process. American Political Science Review, 60(3), 529-547.
- Schick, A. (1966). The road to PPB: The stages of budget reform. Public Administration Review, 26(4), 243-258.