Environmental change, leadership succession and incrementalism in local government

A theoretical model of strategic budgetary choices in local government is d eveloped and tested. The model assumes that expenditure decisions are a fun ction of changes in environmental circumstances and the characteristics of local leaders. Environmental change is operationalized through measures of workload, munificence and regulatory controls. Leadership succession is def ined as the turnover in managerial and political elites. These environmenta l and leadership variables are included in a multivariate statistical model of budgetary incrementalism. The model is tested on the spending decisions of 402 English local authorities from 1981 to 1996. The empirical results suggest that the extent of budgetary change is influenced strongly by envir onmental change but weakly by leadership succession. Furthermore, environme ntal constraints became tighter during the study period. The characteristic s of public sector organizations that impose limits on the strategic choice s of new leaders are identified.