Theory in budgeting, like much of public administration,
has been of two kinds, descriptive and normative.
Descriptive theory is based on close observation or participation
in public sector activities. Theorists describe
trends, sequences of events, and infer causes, paying attention
to local variations as well as uniformities across
cases. Normative theory-advice-may be based on a
much narrower range of observations than descriptive theory
and its proposed solutions may be based on values
rather than observations. If the explanatory power of the
descriptive theory is too weak, or if the advice of normative
theory is not adopted by public officials or is adopted
and abandoned because it does not work, the gap between
theory and practice may become unacceptably wide.
An examination of the gap between budget theory and
practice requires separate examination of the success over
time of normative and descriptive budget theory. This
article is therefore divided into two parts, one on normative
theory and one on descriptive theory. In each part, the
past, present and likely future of the relationship between
theory and practice is outlined. Where the analysis indicates
deterioration of the relationship, suggestions are
made on how the relationship might be improved.