Rethinking Budgeting as a Continuous Process

In their article "Budgeting and Rebudgeting in Local Governments: Siamese Twins?" Eugenio Anessi-Pessina, Mariafrancesca Sicilia, and Ileana Steccolini address a very important subject for the community of public sector financial practitioners that is severely underinvestigated in the international literature. The article argues that approved budgets are a starting point for a continuous process of budget execution and revision, or rebudgeting. The authors adopt an explanatory perspective and test hypotheses on the determinants of the rebudgeting process. This research speaks powerfully to the professional community, which is already used to thinking about budgeting as a yearlong cycle, far from a one-stop-shop exercise that culminates with the issuance of an organization's budget whose allocations are to be simply monitored and reported. As the authors note, future research should further investigate the rebudgeting process in terms of the roles and interactions of its main players.