Allocation and Administration of Public Resources Flashcards

Flashcards based on lecture notes about the allocation and administration of public resources, covering budgeting, public financial management, procurement, performance assessment, government accountability, and policy-making pathways.

Budget

A representation of government activity in monetary terms. It reveals the real preferences of a government or politicians by emphasizing certain problems.

Stated Preferences

What people say they prefer, often biased or idealized.

Revealed Preferences

The real preferences, inferred from people’s actual behavior, often more accurate but context-dependent.

Allocation Question

The question of deciding who receives funding and how much, typically involving a discussion between parliament and the central government.

Budgeting

Ensures that every dollar serves a purpose, aligning financial resources with strategic goals.

New Public Management (NPM)

Aims to make governments more effective, efficient, and customer-oriented, emphasizing outcomes rather than the process.

Input

Funding and staff – the essential resources needed to initiate actions.

Output

Each activity produces an immediate result.

Outcome

These outputs change behavior or conditions to trigger changes that lead to a desirable impact.

Impact

The ultimate goal that benefits society, achieved through the outcome.

New Public Management (NPM) Features

Accountability via performance, decentralization, use of private-sector methods, and emphasis on outputs and outcomes.

Incrementalism

Emphasizes small, practical changes based on past policies and political feasibility, not abstract optimization.

Root Method

The rational-comprehensive method that assumes perfect information, unlimited cognitive capacity, and clear objectives.

Branch Model

Builds policy decisions by branching off from existing policies, making small changes and growing outward from the current situation.

Intertwined Evaluation and Empirical Analysis

Administrators choose among policies and values at the same time because values are context-dependent and marginal.

Relations Between Means and Ends

Administrators cannot define ends independently of the available means, so they choose means and ends simultaneously, adjusting goals as they evaluate policy options.

Test of “Good” Policy

A policy is considered good if it is preferable to the alternatives and there is agreement on the policy itself, even if the underlying reasons differ.

Non-Comprehensive Analysis

Embraces simplification, considering only policies that differ slightly from existing ones and selectively excluding some possible consequences and values.

Succession and Comparison

Policy-making is a continuous process of successive approximation, constantly revising, refining, and adapting policies.

Branch Method

Incremental analysis and selective exclusion simplify policy decisions.

Federal Policymaking

Traditional explanations fail to reflect the actual diversity and complexity of how policies are made.

Pluralist Pathway

A pathway dominated by organized interest groups engaging in bargaining and compromise, with incremental outcomes.

Partisan Pathway

A pathway characterized by budgeting primarily driven by the ideological goals and political strategies of dominant political parties.

Expert Pathway

A pathway involving policy professionals from bureaucracies, academia, and think tanks, where change is based on technically sound, research-driven ideas.

Symbolic Pathway

A pathway relying on simple, emotionally resonant ideas and values, promoted by policy entrepreneurs and the mass media.

4 Pathways Framework Today

Mobilization pathways have shifted from traditional pluralist budgeting.

Laffer Curve

Illustrates that there’s an optimal tax rate that maximizes government revenue.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

Sovereign governments that issue their own currency can never “run out” of money and that deficits aren’t inherently bad.

Explain the phrase muddling through

Small practical changes based on the previous policies and political feasibility not strict optimisation. Instead of changing the entire system the government encompass a small changes, incremental changes . Muddling through relies on learning instead of taking for granted idealistic assumption, also people within society have different values so making incremental changes can zapobiec jakimś potencjalnym konfliktom które mógłyby się pokazać przy dużych zmianach. In budgeting it’s also Important because budgets are political documents not just strict fiscal plans so muddling through occurs here through negotiation and aligning different objectives then just being purely rational .

What is meant by an “incremental bias” in the context of budgeting? Please explain your answer.

The ‘incremental bias’ refers to the phenomenon that only small changes occur from year to year. Last year’s budget therefore looks very similar to last year’s and next year’s. The discussion focuses only on these changes while the vast majority of expenditure is not being discussed.