Balancing Control and Flexibility in Public Budgeting - A New Role for Rule Variability

This work explores how reshaping budget rules and how they are applied presents a preferred means of public sector budgeting, rather than simply implementing fewer rules. Through enhanced approaches to resource flexibility, government entities can ensure that public money is used appropriately while achieving the desired results.

 

The authors identify public budgeting practices that inhibit responses to complex problems and examine how rule modification can lead to expanded budget flexibility. Through a nuanced understanding of the factors underlying conventional budget control, the authors use budget reforms in Australia to show the limits of rule modification and propose 'rule variability' as a better means of recalibrating central control and situational flexibility.

 

Here, policy makers and public management academics will find a source that surveys emerging ways of reconciling control and flexibility in the public sector.

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Michael Di Francesco is a senior lecturer and Case Program Director at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, and Honorary Senior Fellow in Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia. He has held academic appointments at Sydney University and Victoria University of Wellington, and expert advisory roles at the NSW Treasury, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

John Alford is a professor at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government and the Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne, Australia. He is an international authority in the areas of public value and client-organization relationships. His most recent Palgrave publication is (with Janine O'Flynn) Rethinking Public Service Delivery (2012), winner of the 2013 Academy of Management (Public/Non-Profit Division) Best Book Award.