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U.S. federal budget dynamics, as a major attribute of the legislative and bureaucratic decision-making processes, increasingly calls into question the scholarly focus on incrementalism. What constitutes a "small" change is largely unspecified in previous research that has also been unable to assess incrementalism across multiple levels of aggregation. Using a unique budgetary database, this article analyzes whether budgetary changes are in fact "small" at different levels of aggregation. Surprisingly, a low proportion of changes are small by any logical standard. During most years, more than one-fifth of budgetary changes are greater than 50 percent, and nearly half are more than 10 percent. The level of aggregation is also important for assessing whether political variables influence incrementalism. A salient finding: change in party control reflects greater influence within micro-level budget decisions, while divided government manifests more impact on aggregate-level budget decisions.
This article examines the annual federal budget process, testing the extent to which it is accurately characterized as an incremental decision-making process, which is important to understand for at least two reasons. First, on the policy side, an incremental budget is characterized by stability, which has implications for policy implementation (Hou 2006). There is a potential trade-off between stability and the responsiveness of government policy that may be evident in the level of incrementalism. Second, whether the budget is incremental may be informative about the decision-making process. For example, Wildavsky (1992) links incrementalism to consensus and large changes to dissensus.
But in answering the question of whedier the budget is characterized by incrementalism, there are two definitional problems. First, models of the budget are uninformative about the exact definition of the small changes expected under incrementalism. Scholars have used definitions ranging from 2 percent to 30 percent. This research examines whether the U.S. federal budget appears to be incremental using a range of definitions and assesses whether the budgetary changes are in fact "small." The results indicate that a surprisingly low proportion of the changes actually are small by any logical standard. Most years, more than 60 percent of the budgetary changes are greater than 5 percent, and nearly half are greater dian 10 percent. This calls into question the characterization of the budget as incremental, at least in terms of small year-to-year changes.