The U.S. Bureau of the Budget As Agency Evaluator

L. L. Wade

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1968, vol. 27, issue 1, 55-62

Abstract: Abstract— The U.S. Bureau of the Budget has the important function of recommending to the President the size of agency “shares” in the federal budget. A major research problem, then, is: what standards and criteria are employed in the Budget Bureau in evaluating the agencies and in arriving at budgetary decisions which affect the positions and missions of the agencies of the executive establishment? One scheme of analysis has suggested on the basis of the Parsonian pattern‐variables that public administrators tend to be specific, affectively neutral, universalistic, collectivity‐oriented, and achievement‐oriented in their evaluations of social objects. To test this hypothesis, the pattern‐variables were related to the operations of the agency, each on the basis of a single qualitative indicator, and applied in survey research conducted among the professional budget examiners and their superiors in two of the Budget Bureau's five examining divisions. The data indicate that, in fact, the respondents tended to be diffuse, affective, particularistic, collectivity‐oriented, and achievement oriented toward the federal agencies with which they deal. Thus they tended (on three of the pattern‐variables) to adopt orientations more typical of the political partisan than of the public administrator, a result which, it is hypothesized, is due in part to the unique relationship that the Budget Bureau bears to the President. The results explain, in part, the insolvable nature of the conflicts that exist between the executive agencies and the Bureau of the Budget.

Date: 1968
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