Complexity, Political Conflict and Budgetary Incrementalism: the Case of the French Départements
Résumé
This essay examines how the complexity of the decision-making process and the presence of political conflict within government affect budget choices in local representative democracies. First of all, a theoretical framework is developed using a model of heuristic choice, a political bargaining model and the median voter model as its foundations. The article thus provides a more precise definition of the term incrementalism. Corresponding models are afterwards estimated on the whole set of French départements. The results of the estimations highlight the presence of budgetary incrementalism.