The large and persistent deficits observed in many countries and the reform efforts undertaken to strengthen fiscal discipline have been the focus of an active and ongoing research program in political economy. This book draws together contributions from two competing approaches seeking to explain why deficits emerge and persist, the partisan approach and the institutionalist approach. The individual chapters, originally written for a research conference of the Center for European Integration Studies at the University of Bonn, extend previous research and present new empirical evidence. The book also reports on three cases of institutional reform of the budget process in Belgium, Canada and Sweden. Presenting the current frontier of international comparative research in public finance and identifying important elements of the design of budgeting institutions, the book is of interest for the research community studying the political economy of public budgeting and for practitioners in governments and international organizations alike.