James D. Savage

Hello. I am Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, where I have taught since 1990. I grew up in California, and I received my PhD in Political Science, an MA in Economics, and an MPP in Public Policy from the University of California at Berkeley.

My website is: http://politics.virginia.edu/people/jds2y/

My research interests lie in the of fields of public policy, budgeting, and economic policy. More specifically, my research crosses several fields and aims to be as interdisciplinary as possible, drawing from political science, economics, history, and psychology. My work falls into several related areas: the politics of ideas, how institutions change, science policy,and the politics of government finance.

I have written four books on American and comparative budgeting and fiscal policy: 1) Balanced Budgets and American Politics1; 2) Funding Science in America: Congress, Universities and the Politics of the Academic Porkbarrel; 3) Making the EMU: The Politics of Budgetary Surveillance and the Enforcement of Maastricht; and 4) Reconstructing Iraq's Budgetary Institutions: Coalition State Building after Saddam. The common thread connecting these books together is that budgeting and budgetary policies are deeply influenced by and reflect the contest over ideas and values.

The first book explores the origins of the idea of balancing budgets and its effect on American politics, fiscal policies, and institutional development from 1690 through the Reagan presidency. The book argues that the idea of balancing the budget is fundamentally rooted in American political thought that can be tied, for example, to the political differences that divided the Jeffersonians and the Hamiltonians.

The second book analyzes the politics of congressional earmarking in the federal budget for universities and colleges. This book explores how the idea of peer review of federal research funding is violated by universities that engage in earmarking.

The third book examines how the enforcement of the Maastricht Treaty's budgetary rules played a critical role in the creation of the European Union's Economic and Monetary Union and the later enforcement of the Stability and Growth Pact.

The last book argues that consistent with the literature on state building, failed states, and foreign assistance, budgeting is a core state function that is necessary for the operations of a functional government. Employing an historical institutionalist approach, the book first explores the Ottoman, British, and Ba'athist origins of Iraq's budgetary institutions. The book next examines American prewar planning, the Coalition Provisional Authority's rule making and budgeting following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the mixed success of the American-led Coalition's capacity building programs initiated throughout the occupation.