Premium
The determinants of structural changes in public budgets: a theoretical and empirical analysis for the Federal Republic of Germany
Author(s) -
MÜLLER Frank G.,
ZIMMERMANN Klaus
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.1986.tb00846.x
Subject(s) - politics , federal republic , economics , public economics , political science , law
. Since there is no generally accepted and satisfactory theory that can explain structural changes in public budgets over time, this article focuses on the determinants of the budget structure and its changes over time. Thus, it would already be an improvement in the development of a complex and coherent theory of budgetary structures and its changes if initially appropriate variables could be identified which could explain in the short, intermediate and long runs the structural changes in public budgets with respect to the various governmental levels. Potential candidates for explaining structural changes could be socio‐economic, political and institutional variables. These sets of variables will be analyzed here in detail for the Federal Republic of Germany for the time period 1964–1978. The results are very similar to those found in various U.S. studies. In comparably developed nations with similar political (federal) structures, institutional factors seem to play the dominant role in determining and explaining changes in the budgetary structure.