Potential Focusing Projects and Policy Change

Why do policies change dramatically? Most prominent theories and many empirical studies of policy change address that question with attention to external shocks to policy systems or focusing events. These shocks or events are usually described as unplanned, unpredicted jolts such as global crises or natural disasters. I assert a role for focusing projects. These planned activities continue traditional priorities in an issue but do so to a degree perceived as excessive by enough people to shatter seemingly stable policy systems. I then propose a theoretical framework to explain the varying impacts from such projects. The framework uses two dimensions: one that accounts for the mobilization of pro‐change forces and one that assesses policy learning by members of pro‐status quo coalitions. I examine this framework in the context of changes to dam‐building policies in four diverse political settings: United States, Australia, Canada, and China. I find intriguing similarities between the focusing projects in these different contexts but also considerable variation in the extent to which they produce policy change.     

Policy Change and Learning in Response to Extreme Flood Events in Hungary: An Advocacy Coalition Approach

In an analysis of the 200‐year history of flood management in Hungary, I use the advocacy coalition framework and the focusing event literature to examine what policy change occurs and what is learned as a result of experiencing extreme and damaging flood events. By analyzing the policy response to a series of extreme floods (1998–2001) in this newly democratizing nation, I attempt to identify the factors that influenced the occurrence of policy change and policy‐oriented learning. In 2003, Hungary enacted a comprehensive flood management program that included economic development and environmental protection goals, a distinct departure from Hungary's historical structural approach to flood management. However, it is less clear that long‐lasting changes in belief systems about how floods should be managed have occurred. In this analysis, I argue that processes external to the flood policy subsystem (e.g., process of democratization and Hungary's accession to the European Union), along with the occurrence of the extreme flood events, enabled a coalition of individuals and organizations to press for policy change.     

Punctuated Equilibrium in Limbo: The Tobacco Lobby and U.S. State Policymaking from 1990 to 2003

Since the mid-1980s, U.S. tobacco policy has been an intense and acrimonious issue between antitobacco advocates and the tobacco industry. In the United States, the tobacco industry has responded to heightened state antitobacco litigation, adverse public opinion, and public health advocacy by aggressively mobilizing against tobacco taxes and regulations. This article examines whether these tobacco policy trends can be generalized to punctuated equilibrium theory ideas that policy monopolies are stable over long periods and usually change because of sharp and short-term exogenous shocks to the policy system. From 1990 to 2003, there was a sharp mobilization by health advocates in all states and a significant rise in new legislation to control tobacco use. The tobacco industry, nevertheless, was able to generally keep state tobacco taxes low and counter significant regulatory threats to tobacco sales. From this, I conclude that the policy monopoly favoring the tobacco industry did not significantly change, despite the symbolic appearance of punctuation in the policy system.     

Policy Diffusion and Strategies for Promoting Policy Change: Evidence From California Local Gun Control Ordinances

Recent research efforts on policy innovation and diffusion largely have focused upon policymaking at the state government level. In this article we seek to develop an understanding of the ways momentum for policy change can be generated among receptive local governments. We use gun control policymaking within California to illustrate how local government characteristics, the presence of regional associations, and the establishment of interest groups may lead to policy development and diffusion. We also identify linkages between interest groups, focusing events, and the successful use of a new image of gun violence as a public health problem, yielding insights into strategies that may be used successfully to promote policy change.     

Coalition Structures and Policy Change in a Consensus Democracy

This paper studies the relation between coalition structures in policy processes and policy change. While different factors such as policy images, learning processes, external events, or venue shopping are important to explain policy change, coalition structures within policy processes are often neglected. However, policy change happens as a result of negotiations and coordination among coalitions within policy processes. The paper analyzes how conflict, collaboration, and power relations among coalitions of actors influence policy change in an institutional context of a consensus democracy. Empirically, I rely on a Qualitative Comparative Analysis to conduct a cross‐sector comparison of the 11 most important policy processes in Switzerland between 2001 and 2006. Coalition structures with low conflict and strong collaboration among coalitions as well as structures with dominant coalitions and weak collaboration both facilitate major policy change. Competing coalitions that are separated by strong conflict but still collaborate strongly produce policy outputs that are close to the status quo.     

Coalition cascades: The politics of tipping points in clean energy transitions

Policy change often involves multiple policy subsystems, as in the case of clean energy transitions. We argue that trans-subsystem policy feedback is a central dynamic in policy change across subsystems. Policy in one subsystem creates benefits/costs and/or learning effects that mobilize actors for policy change in another subsystem, resulting in “coalition cascades” across interdependent subsystems. If coalition cascades lead to the resolution of coordination problems across subsystems, the system reaches a tipping point in policy change. Coalition cascades are thus the transmission belts of trans-subsystem policy feedback. We illustrate our argument in the case of California's clean energy transition. We show how early renewable energy policy spilled over into the subsystems on grid policy—leading to energy storage policy—and on transport policy—resulting in electric vehicle charging policy. The article advances our understanding of the mechanisms underpinning trans-subsystem policy change, offering a model of the politics of tipping points.     

4. EVENTS GETTING AHEAD OF THEMSELVES: RETHINKING THE TEMPORALITY OF EXPECTATIONS

Whereas most theoretical and historiographical accounts of the event have focused on its present and past dimensions, this article addresses the relatively underexplored phenomenon of the future event. As temporal junctures, events often already elicit effects before they come to pass, and even if they never do. Building on foundational work on the relation between experience and expectation by Hans‐Georg Gadamer and Reinhart Koselleck as well as on current historiographical debates on “past futures,” I develop a threefold typology of the future event, distinguishing between the assumption of the routine event, the expectation of the relative event, and the adumbration of the radical event. Engaging with case studies like the year 2000, the ambivalent character of so‐called media events, and ongoing debates about a possible climate collapse and the COVID‐19 pandemic, I show how reconsidering the complex temporalities of the future event can shed new light on the ways in which past societies made their futures present.     

Political institutions,punctuated equilibrium theory,and policy disasters

This paper develops a theory of the relationship between policy disasters and political institutions. Policy disasters, defined as avoidable, unintended extreme negative policy outcomes, are important political, and historical events above that receive relatively little attention from political scientists and scholars of public policy. Using the predictions of punctuated equilibrium theory, I argue that systems with higher error accumulation will experience more policy disasters. Systems with more veto players and weaker information flows will experience more policy disasters, but information flows will have a stronger impact than veto players. I test this theory using data on financial crises and natural and technological disasters across 70 countries over 60 years. I find strong evidence that systems with weaker information flows and more veto players tend to have greater policy disaster risk.     

Policy Paradigms and Policy Change

Canadian policy towards Aboriginal Peoples is a complex regime involving property rights, constitutional entitlements, cultural concerns, and interlocking administrative, social, economic, and political aims and goals. Recent events related to constitution-making have led investigators to suggest that an old "assimilationist" paradigm established in colonial times is in the process of being replaced by a new policy paradigm of "self-government" and "peaceful coexistence." Utilizing a model of paradigmatic policy change put forward by Peter Hall, this paper examines the development of the old and new Canadian policy and the reasons for the transition between the two. In so doing, it establishes the need to focus more closely on the relationships existing between endogenous and exogenous sources of change in policy subsystems in understanding the liming and content of policy change.     

Discriminating between the end products of the earlier Middle Stone Age sub-stages at Klasies River using biplot methodology

The difference between the culture-stratigraphic entities, the MSA I and MSA II, in the Klasies River sequence is explored by statistical analysis of the end products. Technological analysis of the cores, end products and waste products suggested that the MSA I and MSA II represent distinct technological traditions aimed at producing different end products. To quantify the difference between the end products, points and blades, extensive univariate and multivariate statistical analyses of continuous variables have been undertaken. Biplot methodology is adopted for enhancing the statistical analysis. Canonical variate analysis biplots are constructed and alpha-bags added for visual displays of the overlap and separation among the different groups. It is demonstrated that the platform thickness relative to length is useful in discriminating between the end products of the MSA I and MSA II. Statistical analyses support a clear distinction between the MSA I and MSA II.     

Complexity,Capacity, and Budget Punctuations

The budgeting literature has long focused on “institutional friction” as a cause of ubiquitous punctuated equilibrium (PE) findings. A recent wave of scholarship looks to identify specific institutional mechanisms that affect the number of punctuations in policy outputs. We contribute to this growing body of research by focusing on the complexity of the institutional environment surrounding a policy area as well as that of the government as a whole. These factors have opposite effects: the more complex a policy area, the greater the likelihood of extreme spending changes. But, higher institutional capacity in general leads to greater stability. To test these ideas, we develop a novel index of budgetary change that balances the conceptual importance of extreme changes while analyzing the entire distribution of budget changes, not only the tails. In addition, we also demonstrate that findings are robust to a number of important distinctions, such as between series associated with slowly moving demographic trends or quickly moving stochastic events. We, therefore, demonstrate the robustness of important findings from the established literature, add a new measure of the dependent variable, and push the literature forward with a new focus on issue complexity and institutional capacity.     

生命历程理论及其在长期空间行为研究中的应用

生命历程理论试图通过时间维度来建构生命事件与社会环境和个体等制约间的互动关系。空间行为研究逐步由形态描述向过程和机制研究转变。生命历程理论为长期空间行为研究提供了较新的研究视角。本文试图将社会空间元素融入生命历程理论中,将长期空间行为自身及其社会空间影响作为事件状态的重要内容,从轨迹、转折点、持续期等角度来分析长期空间行为的发展演化及其社会空间后果,利用事件状态变化的恰当时间(timing)和转折点,把事件状态变化动态地置于当时的历史情境中,分析长期空间行为与社会路线、个体路线之间的内在联系。建议尽快合作开展长期空间行为纵贯调查,加强数据共享和团队合作,这是加强国内人文地理学的微观、动态和过程研究的现实需要。     

Using cultural trauma: Gandhi's assassination,partition and secular nationalism in post‐independence India

Nationalism theorists have noted the link between traumatic events and national identity, and cultural trauma theory presents a framework for understanding how these events become trauma narratives. I argue for greater consideration of how these narratives are strategically linked to ideological frames of national identity. A case study of post‐Independence India considering the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and the Partition of India and Pakistan demonstrates how two very different events were promoted as cultural traumas by various carrier groups in order to promote a secular vision of the Indian nation. Adapting Armstrong and Crage (2006), I suggest that the success of these trauma narratives depend on several criteria: the ease of narrating the event, how it is linked to underlying cultural meanings/frames and how the event interacts with historical contingencies.     

Punctuated Equilibrium and the Supreme Court

In the legislative and executive branches, policy scholars have used punctuated equilibrium (PE) theory to describe and explain patterns of change. However, there has been little examination of how PE might apply to courts and legal policy change. This article addresses that gap by providing evidence that legal policy change—here conceptualized as changes in what precedents the Supreme Court most often cites—is governed by PE theory. After making a prima facie case for the applicability of PE theory to the Court, I leverage network rankings of Supreme Court decisions to create a proxy for legal policy change that improves on existing measures. Using both a stochastic process model and an analysis of the punctuations the measure uncovers, I find strong evidence of PE processes.     

Sizing Up State Policy Innovation Research

In the literature on state policy innovation, there are three major explanations for what causes a government to adopt a new policy. One is the internal determinants model, which posits that the main factors leading a state to innovate are internal political, social and economic characteristics of the stale. The other two are diffusion models—the regional diffusion model, and the national interaction model—which see slate policy adoptions as emulations of earlier adoptions by other states. Each of the three models has been associated with a distinct strategy for empirical testing. The regional diffusion model has been tested with factor analysis, the national interaction model with time-series regression, and the internal determinants model with cross-sectional regression. In this paper, I explore the ability of these "single-explanation" methodologies to detect the true innovation process underlying stale policy adoptions, by applying these methodologies to data generated from simulated innovation processes with known characteristics. I find that the methodologies often yield incorrect conclusions about the character of innovation. I conclude by presenting an agenda for refining a superior alternative methodology: the event history analysis approach to state policy innovation research introduced by Berry and Berry (1990).     

Parched and impatient: Political engagement after drought

How does local experience of climate change alter voters' policy preferences and voting decisions? After exposure to a climate disaster, voters may elect politicians prioritising robust disaster prevention policies, or conversely, immediate economic relief. In turn, elected representatives will either mitigate or exacerbate the severity of future climate events. In this study, I leverage a climate event with a high degree of local geographic variation – a pre-election drought in Australia – to see how it shaped political beliefs and behaviours in 2019. Using a longitudinal panel survey, I show that voters in drought-exposed areas increasingly prioritised individual economic security, rather than broader climate-mitigation policies. Moreover, I find that regional micro-parties in drought-affected regions gained vote share. In other words, voters at the front-lines of climate change sought out immediate and local economic relief. Unless local politicians can propose climate policies with short-term economic benefits, disasters may limit governments' capacities to pursue long-term climate resilience.     

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.     

Late Pleistocene Technology at Rose Cottage Cave: A Search for Modern Behavior in an MSA Context

Recent excavations at Rose Cottage Cave, located in the Free State, South Africa, have revealed both a transitional assemblage, dated to ca. 20,000 bp, and a final Middle Stone Age (MSA) assemblage, dated to ca. 28,000 bp. Preliminary analysis of these assemblages was undertaken to determine if the current European model of a cultural revolution for the emergence of the Upper Palaeolithic can be applied to the southern African evidence. Examination of these assemblages revealed that differences occurred between the transition in Europe and that in southern Africa in both the chronology of the transition and the degree to which this complete cultural package is linked to the emergence of Late Stone Age (LSA) technology. The methods of lithic production, the chronology of the MSA/LSA transition, and the associated behavioral characteristics were examined and results indicated that the technological change which occurred during the MSA/LSA transition was not a dramatic innovation in technology but, rather, a shift in the emphasis of production from a level of technology already in place and demonstrate a level of continuity between the MSA and the LSA. As a gradual occurrence, the MSA/LSA transition does not seem to fit the time frame for the European Upper Palaeolithic; it both occurs at a later period and takes longer to transpire. In addition, the origins of symbolic use of lithics appear to lie within the MSA, indicating that a more complex set of behavioral adaptation was occurring in the late Pleistocene in southern Africa, and that the MSA/LSA transition in this region does not adequately conform to the model of a revolutionary shift in behavior and technology that is proposed for the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe     

重大事件对城市空间结构的影响:研究进展与管理对策

在全球化竞争日益激烈的背景下,举办重大事件已成为许多城市进行重新定位或推动城市跨越式发展的一种途径。重大事件为综合运用结构主义、制度主义等多种方法研究城市空间结构的演化与重构提供了一个难得的契机,但国内外学术界关于重大事件对举办城市空间结构影响的专门研究还比较缺乏,特别是对于事件背景下城市空间要素怎样发生演变以及城市如何借助事件契机对空间结构进行优化的研究还很薄弱。本文通过梳理国内外有关重大事件对举办城市空间结构影响的文献,初步厘清了重大事件对举办城市空间结构的影响因素及作用方式,进而为事件举办城市提出了指导性的战略管理框架,并指出了现有研究存在的不足与未来发展方向。