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Does Incrementalism Stem from Political Consensus or from Institutional Gridlock?

Abstract: Theory--Wildavsky (1992) indicated that consensual politics lead to incremental budget results and that dissensual politics result in large and rapid budget changes. Yet it is also possible that dissensual politics could result in policy gridlock with budgets changing very little.

Hypotheses--By associating increased dissensus with divided governments and by measuring the long-term trend in budget volatility, we can test (1) whether the trend is toward more or less incremental budgeting, (2) whether divided government increases or decreases budget volatility, and thus infer (3) whether incremental budget results stem from political consensus or institutional gridlock.

Methods--We use OLS regression to study the intersextile ranges of annual percentage changes in budget authority for the domestic subfunctions of the Budget of the United States Government from Fiscal Year 1947 through 1995. A model including the exponential decay of this robust measure of budget variability and a dummy variable for years of divided government is estimated. We then add two additional measures of dissensus: percentage of bills vetoed by the president, and the polarization of the congressional parties (based on the divergence in their respective ADA scores). A variety of alternative hypotheses are also tested.

Results: Variability in relative changes in national government spending is trending downward, and divided government increases budget volatility. Neither additional measure is independently related to volatility. We infer that volatility thus indicates dissensus and that budgeting was more volatile and probably less consensual in the past than in the supposedly rancorous present.

Home Papers Policy Agendas Project Other Projects Books Position Papers		Papers Does Incrementalism Stem from Political Consensus or from Institutional Gridlock? Abstract: Theory--Wildavsky (1992) indicated that consensual politics lead to incremental budget results and that dissensual politics result in large and rapid budget changes. Yet it is also possible that dissensual politics could result in policy gridlock with budgets changing very little. Hypotheses--By associating increased dissensus with divided governments and by measuring the long-term trend in budget volatility, we can test (1) whether the trend is toward more or less incremental budgeting, (2) whether divided government increases or decreases budget volatility, and thus infer (3) whether incremental budget results stem from political consensus or institutional gridlock. Methods--We use OLS regression to study the intersextile ranges of annual percentage changes in budget authority for the domestic subfunctions of the Budget of the United States Government from Fiscal Year 1947 through 1995. A model including the exponential decay of this robust measure of budget variability and a dummy variable for years of divided government is estimated. We then add two additional measures of dissensus: percentage of bills vetoed by the president, and the polarization of the congressional parties (based on the divergence in their respective ADA scores). A variety of alternative hypotheses are also tested. Results: Variability in relative changes in national government spending is trending downward, and divided government increases budget volatility. Neither additional measure is independently related to volatility. We infer that volatility thus indicates dissensus and that budgeting was more volatile and probably less consensual in the past than in the supposedly rancorous present.

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