DOES INCREMENTALISM STEM FROM POLITICAL CONSENSUS OR FROM INSTITUTIONAL GRIDLOCK

Theory: Wildavsky (1992) indicated that consensual politics lead to in cremental budget results and that dissensual politics result in large and rapid budget changes. Yet it is also possible that dissensual poli tics could result in policy gridlock with budgets changing very little . Hypotheses: By associating increased dissensus with divided governme nts and by measuring the long-term trend in budget volatility, we can test(1) whether the trend is toward more or less incremental budgeting , (2) whether divided government increases or decreases budget volatil ity, and thus infer (3) whether incremental budget results stem from p olitical consensus or institutional gridlock. Methods: We use OLS regr ession to study the intersextile ranges of annual percentage changes i n budget authority for the domestic subfunctions of the Budget of the United States Government from Fiscal Year 1947 through 1995. A model i ncluding the exponential decay of this robust measure of budget variab ility and a dummy variable for years of divided government is estimate d. We then add two additional measures of dissensus: percentage of bil ls vetoed by the president, and the polarization of the congressional parties (based on the divergence in their respective ADA scores). A va riety of alternative hypotheses are also tested. Results: Variability in relative changes in national government spending is trending downwa rd, and divided government increases budget volatility. Neither additi onal measure is independently related to volatility. We infer that vol atility thus indicates dissensus and that budgeting was more volatile and probably less consensual in the past than in the supposedly rancor ous present.