"Promoting Integration Through Budgetary Reallocation"

Pitsvada, Bernard T. (1991) "Promoting Integration Through Budgetary Reallocation". In: UNSPECIFIED, Fairfax, Virginia. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

[From the Introduction]. The budget and the process of budgetary decision-making have served a variety of functions in democratic nation-states over the years. While various authors have provided extensive lists of purposes for national budgets, there are three basic functions of public finance around which there is relatively common agreement. On one side, the budget distributes the resources of a society among various programs, activities, agencies or projects that the political system of each country has decided are legitimate goals for that society. In this sense the budget indicates what each society wants its government to do. This also has the effect of deciding what will be the allocation between the public and private sectors since by definition what is not public is private. On the other side, the budget indicates what amount of resources will be used to finance the approved programs, activities, agencies or projects and how those resources will be raised. The source of the required resources will ordinarily be some combination of a variety of taxes and borrowing, if taxes do not equate to spending. The two sides of the budget therefore equal each other or as Wildavsky says the budget has translated financial resources to human purposes.' To the extent that budgetary outcomes coincide with budgetary expectations, there is budgetary control. The control aspect of budgeting in societies with limited governments is the start point and end point of budgetary activity.

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