Moral Panics and Punctuated Equilibrium in Public Policy: An Analysis of the Criminal Justice Policy Agenda in Britain

How and when issues are elevated onto the political agenda is a perennial question in the study of public policy. This article considers how moral panics contribute to punctuated equilibrium in public policy by drawing together broader societal anxieties or fears and thereby precipitating or accelerating changes in the dominant set of issue frames. In so doing they create opportunities for policy entrepreneurs to disrupt the existing policy consensus. In a test of this theory, we assess the factors behind the rise of crime on the policy agenda in Britain between 1960 and 2010. We adopt an integrative mixed-methods approach, drawing upon a combination of qualitative and quantitative data. This enables us to analyze the rise of crime as a policy problem, the breakdown of the political-institutional consensus on crime, the moral panic that followed the murder of the toddler James Bulger in 1993, the emergence of new issue frames around crime and social/moral decay more broadly, and how—in combination—these contributed to an escalation of political rhetoric and action on crime, led by policy entrepreneurs in the Labour and Conservative parties.     

Stability and Change in Public Policy: A Longitudinal Study of Comparative Subsystem Dynamics

Using the theoretical framework formulated by Baumgartner and Jones in a most similar systems study of Danish civil defense and Danish national home guard policy from 1949 to 2003, this article shows how particular subsystem characteristics affect the magnitude and frequency of policy punctuations. Despite very similar starting points, the two subsystems have experienced radically different policy evolutions since they were created back in 1948 and 1949. The explanation, it is argued, is to be found in a combination of Baumgartner and Jones’ model of issue definitions and conflict expansion on the one hand, and some particular institutional differences in the foundation of the two subsystems on the other. Hence, the aim of the article is to demonstrate that in a long‐term perspective, certain institutional choices not only enhance stability but also increase the likelihood of future conflict expansions and policy punctuations, given the dynamic model of the policymaking process provided by Baumgartner and Jones.     

Information Processing and Policy Dynamics

In this article, we trace the evolution of punctuated equilibrium theories of the policy process to the development of a full theory of government information processing. Noting that punctuated equilibrium is one realization of a larger theory of government information processing, we outline a research agenda for the study of agenda setting, policy dynamics, and information flows in the policy process. In doing so, we relate the study of government information processing to such important features of American government as inter-institutional dynamics and delegation in the policy process.     

The Dynamics of Incrementalism: Subsystems, Politics, and Public Lands

A host of research has been produced in the decade since Baumgartner and Jones' theory of punctuated equilibrium first drew attention to the dynamics of policy change over time. Much of this research follows a topic across time, highlighting the shift from negative to positive feedback as challengers push an issue from subsystem to institutional level. Far less attention has been paid to the periods between major punctuations, neglecting key questions about whether incremental periods reflect an absence of challengers or the successful defense of established subsystem interests.
This research is a comparison of policy change across two segments of environmental policy. The breakup of the timber subsystem was a clear victory for environmentalists, yet these same actors have been largely unsuccessful at dislodging established grazing interests. These findings highlight the strategic value of venue shifting for bypassing entrenched interests and illustrate the potential for successful challenges to occur in judicial venues.     

Policy Punctuations and Issue Diversity on the European Council Agenda

The European Council is the highest political body of the European Union and the main venue for setting the agenda on high politics. Using a new dataset of all content‐coded European Council Conclusions issued between 1975 and 2010, we analyze the policy agenda of the European Council and test hypotheses on agenda change and diversity over time. We find that the theory of punctuated equilibrium applies to the agenda of the European Council, which exhibits a degree of kurtosis similar to that found in policy agendas of other institutions located at the juncture between input and output of the policy process. Throughout the 36‐year period, agenda‐setting dynamics involved both small changes and major shifts but also more frequent medium‐sized negative changes than found elsewhere. Given capacity limits to the agenda, large expansions of attention to topics involved large cuts in attention. Cuts were more often medium in size in order to maintain some level of attention to the topics affected, even though issue disappearance from the European Council agenda has been frequent too. This relates to the functions of the European Council as venue for high politics, with expectations about issue attendance rising with increasing policy jurisdictions throughout the European integration process. Studying dynamics over time, we measured entropy to show how the agenda became more diverse but also displayed episodic concentration in an oscillating pattern. This can be accounted for by the nature of the European Council as a policy venue: increasing complexity of this institution pushed the members to produce a more diverse agenda, but capacity limits and the need to be responsive to incoming information led to concentration at specific time‐points.     

The Right Tool for the Job: The Canalization of Presidential Policy Attention by Policy Instrument

This article investigates how presidential policy attention is allocated across policy tools and whether there is a channeling of tool use by policy area. I also examine whether there is evidence of disproportionate information processing within presidential policy attention allocation and whether it is common across presidential policy tools. Presidential messages, hearings on administrations' legislative proposals, amicus briefs, and executive orders are employed to capture presidential policy tools. The allocation of attention via these four instruments is examined from 1957–2007 in the policy areas of defense and foreign affairs, macroeconomics, banking and commerce, civil rights, law and crime, and labor and immigration. I find that there is a canalization of presidential policy attention by instrument, and that the opportunity structure of policy tools shapes attention allocation. Additionally, I find evidence for punctuated equilibrium theory in the allocation of presidential policy attention via these four tools. When presidents do shift their attention to an issue area, they often attack the issue with some coordination of their policy instruments.     

Policy Entrepreneurship and Policy Change

This article reviews the concept of policy entrepreneurship and its use in explaining policy change. Although the activities of policy entrepreneurs have received close attention in several studies, the concept of policy entrepreneurship is yet to be broadly integrated within analyses of policy change. To facilitate more integration of the concept, we here show how policy entrepreneurship can be understood within more encompassing theorizations of policy change: incrementalism, policy streams, institutionalism, punctuated equilibrium, and advocacy coalitions. Recent applications of policy entrepreneurship as a key explanation of policy change are presented as models for future work. Room exists for further conceptual development and empirical testing concerning policy entrepreneurship. Such work could be undertaken in studies of contemporary and historical policy change.     

Pet Sounds: Subsystems,Regimes, Policy Punctuations,and the Neglect of African American Farmers, 1935–2006

Punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) has reoriented the study of public policy and American politics in particular. In this study, we documented how a policy punctuation that appears to take hold at the macro level of the polity in the form of a policy regime has difficulty penetrating subsystem politics. We drew on subsystems theory, PET, and the latest work on policy regimes to document the resistance of the agriculture subsystem to efforts to add a civil rights dimension to agriculture policy between 1935 and 2006. We concluded that the issue evolution of agricultural support programs, and their insulation from civil rights policy, is a prime example of how subsystems use negative feedback to resist change.     

Understanding Local Policymaking: Policy Elites' Perceptions of Local Agenda Setting and Alternative Policy Selection

Despite the increasing interest in policy agenda research in recent years, very few studies have focused their attention on the relevant processes at the local level. Drawing on agenda-setting research, particularly Kingdon's multiple-streams framework, this study examines the key forces and factors, as well as their relative importance, in local agenda setting, problem identification, and alternative policy selection. Data are collected from 271 in-depth interviews with local policy stakeholders in three U.S. Gulf Coast areas. Interview materials are coded using a protocol focused on capturing stakeholders' perceptions of the key elements and forces in local policy dynamics. Our interview data indicate that (i) governmental actors and various interest groups have relatively more influence in shaping local agendas than the general public, experts, and election-related actors, while the mass media are found to have little agenda-setting power in local policy processes; (ii) budgetary consideration and various forms of feedback to local government are more important than objective problem indicators and focusing events in setting local policy priorities; (iii) policy alternatives that are deemed compatible with existing policies and regulations are more likely to be selected than those relying on other criteria such as technical feasibility, value acceptability, and future constraints; and (iv) consensus and coalition building is perceived as the most important political factor in local policy processes. Limitations of our study and recommendations for future research are discussed in the concluding section.     

Surfing for Problems: Advocacy Group Strategy in U.S. Forestry Policy

John Kingdon sets out a multiple streams approach to policymaking, whereby problems, solutions, and politics develop independently of one another. Kingdon's work suggests that advocates with pet policies may continually search the problem stream, looking for prominent issues to attach to their preferred solutions. I call this process "problem surfing." This paper provides an empirical test of problem surfing through the use of a case study of environmental advocacy. The paper examines Wilderness Society and Sierra Club advocacy for sustainable forestry practices from 1971 to 1994 through an analysis of articles in member magazines and interview data. Problem surfing is revealed to be a complex strategic process. I find evidence that advocacy groups adjust the problems they associate their solutions with over time to take advantage of salient issues. However, problem surfing appears to be influenced by more than just problem salience.     

Making a Policy Problem of Water Export in Canada: 1960–2002

The article explores how political tensions developed around the issue of Canadian water export, how policy solutions and alternatives to the problem were offered, and how finally it came to be recognized by the national government. The water export issue reached the formal agenda after a lengthy period of being denied serious consideration. However, it is arguable that agendas are set if an issue receives attention from policy decision makers. This is because an issue's ascension to agenda status is not an indication of how it is actually going to be decided upon. The case of water export demonstrates that the government adopted a policy solution consistent with assumptions prevalent at the time and acceptable among elected decision makers. Yet, the solution was contrary to the expectations of those who demanded a complete water export ban in Canada.     

Policy Coherence and Component-Driven Policymaking: Arctic Policy in Canada and the United States

This research extends theorizing about the implications of political environments to the content of policy areas. We consider the case of Arctic policy in Canada and the United States as an example of what we label as component-driven policymaking. We show how the lack of a clear constituency and the lack of a stable policy subsystem for the Arctic create a policy environment for which the politics of particular issues dominate Arctic policymaking. The result is a policy space labeled Arctic policy that lacks policy coherence. We suggest that similar features of component-based policymaking help explain limited policy coherence for a variety of policy areas such as policies for children, families, rural areas, urban areas, and women in the United States.     

Constitutional Blemishes: American Alcohol Prohibition and Repeal as Policy Punctuation

Historical explanations for the American “noble experiment” with alcohol prohibition based on individual conspiracies, cultural changes, social movements, or self‐interested bureaucracies are partial and unsatisfying. Recent advances in punctuated equilibrium theory shine new light on this historical enigma, providing a more persuasive account of the dramatic episodes associated with both constitutional prohibition and its repeal. Through longitudinal analysis of a unique data set reflective of early twentieth century public alcohol control sentiments, this article suggests that, as but one of a range of potential alcohol policy options, national alcohol prohibition was hardly a foregone conclusion. The ultimate adoption of prohibition over competing alcohol control alternatives, as well as its eventual repeal, can best be understood with reference to particular feedback processes inherent in the institutional structure of American policymaking, which readily account for both the mad dash for prohibition and the widespread clamor for repeal, which have traditionally eluded historical explanation.     

Drivers for Policy Agreement in Nascent Subsystems: An Application of the Advocacy Coalition Framework to Fracking Policy in Switzerland and the UK

The study of public policy deals with subsystems in which actors cooperate or compete to turn their beliefs into policy solutions. Yet, most studies concern mature subsystems in which the main actors and their allies and enemies can easily be identified. This paper tackles the challenge of studying nascent subsystems, in which actors have begun to engage in politics but are uncertain about other actors’ beliefs. Actors therefore find it relatively difficult to identify their allies and opponents. Focusing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework, we examine three main ways in which actors might agree to support the same policy design before they decide whether or not to form long‐term relationships within advocacy coalitions: they see the issue through the same lenses, they follow leaders, or they know each other from earlier cooperation. We use the case of fracking policy in Switzerland and the UK as a key example, in which actors have begun to agree with each other, but where final policy outputs were not yet defined, and long‐term relationships not yet observable. We find that, when dealing with new issues, actors strongly rely on former contacts rather than shared ideologies or leadership.     

Playing Politics with Sex Offender Laws: An Event History Analysis of the Initial Community Notification Laws across American States

Despite a decline in crime rates, the 1990s witnessed extensive media coverage of several high‐profile stranger abductions and murders of children. State legislators' swift response to the public's growing fear of sex offenders with the adoption of sex offender registration and notification (SORN) laws raises questions about the role of politics. Punctuated equilibrium theory and the diffusion of innovation jointly provide a context to conduct an event history analysis to assess the extent to which politics enhanced legislative responsiveness to public opinion in SORN policymaking. Contrary to the commonly held belief that attributes legislative interest in SORN to salient crimes against children, the results suggest that factors such as the percentage of a conservative population, district‐level competition, and state innovativeness accelerated the diffusion of innovation of the laws.     

The "Mouse That Roared": Agenda Setting in Canadian Pesticides Politics

Issue redefinition and venue shopping have been identified as key strategies for enacting agenda and policy change, but much work remains to be done in elaborating these processes. I argue that an important aspect of issue redefinition involves shifting not only the image of an issue but also the bases for considering those issues—what I call policy principles. Policy principles are the core values, beliefs, or guidelines attached to policies that help direct decision making. The emergence and acceptance of new principles by the public and policymakers can be a vital source of policy change, at times having far greater consequences for policy than redefining an issue. Venue shopping is also a multifaceted undertaking involving efforts by policy entrepreneurs and advocacy groups to keep issues out of venues they would rather not participate in as well as move decision making to new arenas. Moreover, while the literature suggests that shifting venues is usually a sensible strategy, sometimes venue shopping can backfire. A case study of the municipal movement to restrict the nonessential use of lawn and garden pesticides in Canada illustrates these theoretical points and shows the applicability of agenda setting models to contexts outside the United States.     

Culture and Legal Policy Punctuation in the Supreme Court's Gender Discrimination Cases

For the most part, punctuated equilibrium scholarship has ignored the legal policy change generated by the Supreme Court. In this study, I address this gap though an examination of the Court's equal protection and gender cases from the 1970s. My case study here has two aims. First, I offer an adaptation of the jurisprudential regimes framework as a device for framing and identifying legal policy punctuations. After identifying Reed v. Reed (1971) as the cut point of such a regime, I then use Reed and its progeny to illustrate the promise of culture in explaining stasis and change, specifically focusing on the concepts of cultural cognition and cultural surprise.     

Public Problem Characterization,Policy Solution Generation,and Intra‐Agenda Connectivity

While policy agenda studies have extensively examined the interplays of various venues, one under‐explored area is the internal dynamics within an agenda venue. In this study, we focus on one of the important venues—news media—and investigate the inherent connections between how a public problem is characterized and how problem solutions are generated in media agenda setting. Drawing on agenda‐setting theories, we develop a typology to theorize the relationships between problem characterization and solution advocacy, and use a news dataset on climate change to empirically assess how issue characterization affects issue solution generation. Our logistic regressions demonstrate that the likelihoods of climate change policy solutions being proposed in the news are significantly influenced by how the media stories characterize the issue along four key attribute dimensions: issue image, scope, linkage, and narrative style. Key implications are discussed in the conclusion.     

Smoke and Mirrors: Inverting the Discourse on Tobacco

Abstract: Understanding the mechanisms that construct and maintain the taken‐for‐granted, “common sense” understandings of everyday life is an essential prerequisite for reconfiguring conditions in more progressive directions. Highlighting particular moments, when these processes can be made visible, and drawing appropriate insights from such interrogations is useful not only for illuminating the fundamental malleability of “common sense” (itself a crucial element of change), but also for providing suggestive strategies and tactics for effectuating change. Here the construction and reconstruction of the “common sense” around tobacco is offered as an instructive case.     

A Behavioral Theory of Policy Feedback in Tobacco Control: Evidence From a Difference‐In‐Difference‐In‐Difference Study

Public policy scholars argue that in highly tangible policies, such as tobacco control, the public learns from the direct experience of the beneficial effects of the policy. Empirical evidence supports this argument, suggesting that in the United States the introduction of tobacco control measures makes people more inclined to further regulation. By relying on a set of cases which allows testing the effects of the introduction of tobacco control measures across European countries on a series of relevant variables, this study confirms that the introduction of tobacco control measures makes the public more inclined to further regulation. Yet, when the effects of these policies are disaggregated between smokers and nonsmokers, results show that these positive effects are driven by smokers. This puzzle suggests that different effects than mass attitudinal policy feedback effects, driven by learning from direct experience, might explain the positive reaction to tobacco control. This study puts forward a behavioral theory of policy feedback, which suggests that smokers react positively to the introduction of tobacco control measures because they see these measures as commitment devices, which can help them quit smoking. Evidence for this argument is found by demonstrating that the introduction of tobacco control measures increases smokers’ welfare.