Does Agency Autonomy Foster Public Participation?

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Cited in

Published date	01 January 2014
DOI	http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12180
Date	01 January 2014
Author	Milena I. Neshkova

Milena I. Neshkova is assistant

professor of public administration at Florida

International University. Her research

focuses on bureaucracy and democracy

and how to achieve a more responsive,

fair, and accountable public administration

at both the domestic and international

levels. Her work has been published in

Public Administration Review, Journal

of Public Administration Research

and Theory, American Review of

Public Administration, Governance,

Policy Studies Journal, and Journal of

European Public Policy.

E-mail: mneshkov@f‌i u.edu

64 Public Administration Review • January | February 2014

Public Administration Review,

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12180.

Milena I. Neshkova

Florida International University

Allocation of public resources is an area in which

considerations of both economic ef‌f‌i ciency and democratic

legitimacy are likely to be present. Public administra-

tors are often blamed for being too devoted to the norms

of bureaucratic ethos, such as ef‌f‌i ciency, ef‌f ectiveness,

and top-down control, and less so to the norms of

democratic ethos, such as inclusiveness and bottom-up

decision making.  is ar ticle examines whether manag-

ers in agencies with greater budget autonomy are more

likely to include the public when allocating resources.

Because participation of‌f ers an opportunity for agencies

to enhance the legitimacy of their decisions, it is expected

that the value of citizen input will increase with the

degree of agency autonomy. Using data on the prac-

tices of citizen participation in budgeting in two state

departments—transportation and environment—this

study f‌i nds that agencies with a higher degree of auton-

omy tend to be more open to public comment than agen-

cies with more centralized budget processes.

llocation of scarce public resources is an area

in which considerations of both economic

ef‌f‌i ciency and democratic legitimacy are likely

to be present.  ese conf‌l icting incentives are even more

pronounced in a situation in which administrative agen-

cies are delegated greater autonomy to perform their

budget activities. Public administrators are often seen as

being too devoted to the norms of bureaucratic ethos,

such as ef‌f‌i ciency, ef‌f ectiveness, and top-down control,

and less so to the norms of democratic ethos, such

as inclusiveness and bottom-up decision making (see

Nabatchi 2010). To test whether this is the case, I study

the incidence and practices of citizen involvement in the

budget process at two state-level agencies—transporta-

tion and environment—both

of which are relatively uniform

across the United States.1 In

other words, I examine whether

managers in public agencies with

greater autonomy in their budget

activities are more likely to

include the public when making

allocation decisions.

 e diversity in state budgeting practices of‌f ers an

ideal situation to empirically test these conf‌l icting

motives in budgetary decision making. States dif‌f er

signif‌i cantly in the degree of centralization of their

budget processes, the number of players involved,

and the degree of openness to the public. For Rubin

(2010, 84), one of the politically signif‌i cant char-

acteristics of budget processes is their level of cen-

tralization; she def‌i nes centralization as referring to

the extent to which the budget process is bottom-

up or top-down and the extent to which power is

distributed among the participants. According to

the National Association of State Budget Of‌f‌i cers

(NASBO), the power and restrictions placed on

budget players af‌f ect the design of the budget process

as well as funding decisions.

Because some agencies enjoy greater autonomy in

the budget process, their managers face two main

scenarios. On the one hand, independence from the

political bosses (such as the executive budget of‌f‌i ce or

higher-level government) allows agency management

to deploy a strictly technocratic process and allocate

program resources in the most ef‌f‌i cient way by just

relying on agency expertise and experience. Adding

the incremental approach widely used by the states

in budget development, it seems natural that agen-

cies would rather invoke instrumental rationality and

ignore time-consuming and expensive exercises such

as public participation.

On the other hand, administrators face strong incen-

tives to pursue more inclusive approaches, even at the

expense of ef‌f‌i ciency. First, there has been an increas-

ing number of regulations at the

federal and state levels requiring

the involvement of a broad array

of stakeholders. Legislation

such as the Intermodal Surface