Expansion and Protection in the Budgetary Process
本文回顾了预算理论的发展，从Key的经典问题到Wildavsky的渐进主义，强调预算主要是政治过程而非经济过程，政府在其中分配社会资源。
In 1940, V.O. Key asked the classic question of budgeting: On what basis shall it be decided to allocate X dollars to activity A instead of activity B?1 Budgeting theory since then has struggled to develop an answer. For a generation, the most persuasive solution was Aaron Wildavsky's formulation of incrementalism.2 Even Wildavsky's work has evolved away from the theory,3 but the central thrust of Wildavsky's argument endures: that budgeting is primarily a political, not an economic, process in which government allocates some of society's resources. His work, furthermore, has shaped the fundamental agenda for both his critics and competitors. Budgetary outcomes have been studied as the product of the political process. As Wildavsky puts it in The New Politics of the Budgetary Process, It is more reasonable to suppose that general political processes shape budgeting than that budgeting determines political alignments.4