Towards inclusive public administration systems: Public budgeting from the perspective of critical race theory

Abstract

While there is a developing consensus that governments need to address systemic racism, public administration scholarship has not played a large role in supporting policymakers who want to achieve that end. To institutionalize that effort, we analyze the budget process as a setting to identify inequities and incorporate social equity given its overarching reach across all programs and policies. This article uses the tenets of critical race theory to illustrate how to use the budget process to incorporate equity. The resulting racial equity budgeting (REB) framework has three tenets: acknowledging and correcting historic biases, increasing the voice of nondominant groups, and disrupting the status quo by ensuring equity in current policies. The REB framework suggests how public officials may apply these tenets to the stages of public budgeting, including the use of reparation statements, increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities, and reviewing the disaggregated impact of policies, among others.