Research in the field of budgetary decisionmaking is undergoing a difficult period of transition. After more than a decade of minor variations on themes introduced by Wildavsky, Crecine, Dye, and others, attention has begun to shift away from a small number of fundamental questions such as "Is budgeting incremental?" and "Does politics matter?" to questions more closely tied to specific policy issues and thedetailed operation of policymaking organizations. It could be argued that this shift in emphasis is nothing more than a stage in the natural process by which seminal research is refined and extended. The complexities that are brushed aside in initial research efforts eventually demand concentrated attention. Yet, there also seems to be growing evidence that continued theoretical progress is less likely to come from the direct pursuit of timeless generalizations about the nature of budgeting than from a careful analysis of how budgetary conventions evolve in specific contexts and the policy issues that these contexts present.