Who loves input controls? What happened to outputs not inputs in UK Public Financial Management, and why?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hood, Christopher; Piotrowska, Barbara Maria
• 署名单位: University of Oxford; University of Oxford; University of Oxford
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3298
• DOI: 10.1111/padm.12741
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 303-317
• 关键词: Budget

摘要

Why do frequently criticized input controls survive in the management of public spending while apparently more enlightened output/outcome controls come and go? The question matters, because output/outcome controls are often assumed in public financial management and related literature to lead to superior policy performance as compared with input-focused approaches. We tackle the question by applying qualitative push-pull analysis to compare one key type of input controls (administration cost [AC] controls) with one much-discussed form of output/outcome controls (performance targets linked to spending allocations) in one major country case, the United Kingdom, over two decades. Drawing on documents and in-depth interviews with 120 key political and bureaucratic players, we conclude that bureaucratic inertia at most only partially explains the survival of input AC controls in this case. The push/pull factors associated with the politics of blame and credit made the political players fair-weather output controllers but all-weather input controllers.