Budget Theory and Budget Practice: How Good the Fit?

TLDR

Budgeting theory is divided into descriptive, grounded in observation of public sector activities, and normative, based on value‑driven advice. When descriptive theory lacks explanatory power or normative advice is ignored or discarded, the gap between theory and practice can become unacceptably wide.

Abstract

Theory in budgeting, like much of public administration, has been of two kinds, descriptive and normative. Descriptive theory is based on close observation or participation in public sector activities. Theorists describe trends, sequences of events, and infer causes, paying attention to local variations as well as uniformities across cases. Normative theory-advice-may be based on a much narrower range of observations than descriptive theory and its proposed solutions may be based on values rather than observations. If the explanatory power of the descriptive theory is too weak, or if the advice of normative theory is not adopted by public officials or is adopted and abandoned because it does not work, the gap between theory and practice may become unacceptably wide.