Déjà Vu All Over Again

Abstract

For a brief period in the 1910s, the municipal budget exhibit was viewed by good-government reformers at the trailblazing New York Bureau of Municipal Research as a key outlet for cleaning up corrupt local governments and educating the masses to play their proper role in the new administrative state. For a time, the budget exhibit spread to other cities adopting municipal research bureaus. However, the municipal budget exhibit quickly fell out of favor with reformers and disappeared from public administration's reform agenda. Did it vanish completely? The authors suggest that modern-day exhibits by government agencies at state fairs and similar events are the metamorphosis of the municipal budget exhibit. Although the goal of reaching the masses for purposes of democratic accountability has been preserved, the venues and packaging of such exhibitions have significantly changed from the original conception of municipal budget exhibits.