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This book provides a fresh look at the process by which governments hold themselves accountable to their citizens for performance. Unlike the plethora of other books in the field, it examines all aspects of the Performance Management and Budgeting issue, not only from the federal, state, and local perspectives, but also internationally in both developing and developed countries.Covering both conceptual and theoretical frameworks in performance management and budget, the book analyzes the effectiveness of different approaches. Featuring insights from a group of distinguished contributors, it ti

AbstractOnset of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic produced a fiscal shock of almost unprecedented scale and suddenness. Procedurally, the exigencies of responding to such crises make a mockery of the apparatus of normal budgeting. Standard near‐term constraints and targets for fiscal choice lose utility as guides for budgeters; extraordinary procedures are invoked. Assessing the initial fiscal response reveals the extraordinary role the federal government plays during such a period as ultimate guarantor of the economy and social order. The federal government has constitutional responsibility and, under duress, is the only set of institutions with the capacity to play this role. Federal responses to ordinary emergencies generally assess their contribution to relief and recovery. In an extraordinary emergency such as the pandemic, responses may be assessed for their contributions to two additional policy objectives: readiness and resilience. An event of this magnitude also offers an opportunity to reconsider the aims of fiscal policies and whether the terms for measuring and judging policy outcomes are appropriate for such a period. The standard budget baseline lacks a component for the average multiyear cost of the federal government's exercise of its role as societal guarantor. The standard metric for judging fiscal policy—public debt as a percent of gross domestic product—is problematic as a fiscal policy target. An alternative would capture changes in public sector net worth, highlighting the net fiscal and economic benefit or cost of any policy to borrow in order to invest in long‐term policy objectives.

To develop a federal budget process that delivers better fiscal outcomes for the nation consistently over an extended period would require new information and analysis, applying these to decisions through properly designed procedures, and strengthening the institutions that support wise fiscal choices. Changes in each of these process components intended to contribute to good fiscal outcomes are described, and obstacles to their adoption and use are noted. Such reforms could yield budgets that deploy public resources today to carry out strategies promising to increase the nation's ability to survive inevitable social and fiscal shocks and to take advantage of expected and unexpected opportunities for its citizens to thrive, grow, and fulfill their dreams.

The U.S. savings and loan debacle is, or should be, of great interest to political scientists. Any public policy failure as costly as this one deserves study for that reason alone. Analysis of its origins and development may reveal why it has been so intractable. Such analysis also may illuminate a broader class of regulatory policy problems that the political process tends to manage poorly.Most writing about the savings and loan crisis has focused on its proximate causes. The deeper political roots of the thrift debacle have not been identified. As someone who has tracked the development of the thrift crisis and analyzed deposit insurance issues since 1986, I am convinced that the problems have a deeper structure, rooted in the organization of the U.S. political/regulatory system and its interaction with private markets. More specifically, the potential for this disaster was inherent in the original 1930s' design of deposit insurance and its associated regulatory policies. At this level of analysis, the challenge to policymakers posed by the thrift disaster can be appreciated and its similarities or differences with other regulatory problems examined.

Partial contents: Corrective mechanisms; Deregulation; Response to the present crisis; Market reforms: discouraging excessive risk taking.