public administration 2

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
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(February 10, 2012)
Public Administration
The Chief Tension in Public Budgeting and its relationship with public accountability and public acceptability
Irene Rubin makes a contention that the main tension existing in public budgeting is between public acceptability and public accountability. She contents that despite the fact that business is normally seen as a model for governmental improvements in accounting and budgeting, the reality is that officials of the government and academics normally function in concert. They invented, imported and altered the idea of public budgeting in America. The government is normally encouraged, sometimes pushed by various business groups. On the contrary, it generally resists imitating practices of businesses. These are the practices which are not perfect at that time. The whole story of the beginning of budgeting in America has been vehemently distorted in order to make the different owners of businesses look good. The extend to which business was described wrongly as the beginning of improved public practices suggests current common efforts to ensure good practices to businesses and bad activities to the government. According to Rubin, it is very vital to consider at the beginning that public officials’ response towards criticism concerning increased expenditures coupled with inadequate financial control was to improve their own management. Rubin stresses the point to assume pride during various accomplishments in the public sector. Additionally, people should be able to correct their own mistakes. Stakeholders should also cease from making an assumption that the public sector requires business practices. She puts a lot of emphasis on the significance of historical context in changing budgeting, in America. Emphasis on the budget depends on the circumstances and time within which the budget is prepared.
According to Stilman, public budgeting shares the features of all budgeting. It comes up with choices between expenditures which it has to balance. It also contains a decision making process. On the contrary, public budgeting contains some additional characteristics strange to it. This includes environmental openness, different actors who participate in budgeting and the budget document as a means of establishing public accountability. It also includes the many constraints found in public budgeting. Additionally, it is not only political but also technical. Politics assumes some special meaning within the umbrella of the budgetary process of decision making. Budgetary decision making is supposed to be flexible, interruptible and adaptable. This leads to a structure of five strands of decision making, which are partial...