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.     

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.     

Up in Smoke: Mapping Subsystem Dynamics in Tobacco Policy

This study develops and employs congressionally based indicators to track the evolution of the tobacco policy subsystem between 1945 and 2005. It concludes that far from disintegrating, the tobacco subsystem has proven resilient, weathering several punctuations over the course of the study. The subsystem has, however, undergone a significant transformation resulting in both the introduction of new ideas as well as changes in the policies affecting tobacco.     

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.     

Managerial Friction and Land-Use Policy Punctuations in the Fragmented Metropolis

Despite the portrayal of bureaucratic organizations as resistant to change, public managers have some ability to strategically move land-use processes out of incrementalism, even when bureaucratic lethargy acts as a drag. This article examines managerial influence in land-use policy by synthesizing theories of political markets and punctuated equilibrium. An information-processing logic is developed to explain why local government managers shift from “inward” to “outward” land-use management strategies in periods of environmental change. "Managerial friction” is defined as a strategic managerial adjustment producing punctuated land-use policy change in the face of environmental changing conditions. Hypotheses are tested using data on Florida local government comprehensive plan amendments and a Bayesian methodological approach. The evidence suggests managerial friction can be distinguished from the effects of environmental and political complexity as well as other forms of institutional friction, including management turnover, legislative institutions, and bureaucratic structure.     

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.     

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.     

A Micro Model of Problem Definition and Policy Choice: Issue Image,Issue Association,and Policy Support of Power Plants

Past research on problem definition and public policy primarily focuses on the macro-system level. In this study, we propose a micro model of problem definition and policy choice at the individual level. We argue that while individual citizens' problem definitions and policy preferences are rooted in and filtered through their predisposition characteristics (such as socioeconomic status, political orientation, and informational base), their policy choices also strongly depend on how they define public issues, particularly how they perceive the image of an issue at hand and how they associate the issue with other public issues. Our empirical analyses, based on data from a national public survey on energy and power plant issues, support the key propositions derived from our theoretical model. Key contributions to and implications for policy studies are discussed in conclusion.     

Rhetoric of unity and cultural diversity in the making of European cultural identity

The fundamental aim of the cultural policy of the European Union (EU) is to emphasize the obvious cultural diversity of Europe, while looking for some underlying common elements which unify the various cultures in Europe. Through these common elements, the EU policy produces ‘an imagined cultural community’ of Europe which is ‘united in diversity’, as one of the slogans of the Union states. This discourse characterizes various documents which are essential to the EU cultural policy, such as the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Agenda for Culture and the EU’s decision on the European Capital of Culture program. In addition, the discourse is applied to the production of cultural events in European Capitals of Culture in practice. On all levels of the EU’s cultural policy, the rhetoric of European cultural identity and its ‘unitedness in diversity’ is related with the ideas and practices of fostering common cultural heritage.     

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.     

中国对印尼外交政策中对华人问题的考虑(1965-1997年)

1965年至1997年是苏哈托真正控制印尼的32年,其间中国与印尼外交关系起起落落.双边关系的冷热都折射出各自内部政治经济形势的变化.从中国对印尼外交政策来说,对印尼华人问题的考虑可分为三个阶段,包括改革开放前的冒进与偏激(1965-1979年);推动复交前的平和与务实(1980-1990年)以及复交后的淡化与消退(1990-1997年).对印尼华人问题的考虑在中国外交政策中经过阶段性的改变和调整,直至脱钩,既是为赢得印尼的信任,也符合中国的国家利益.     

Exchange Rate Policy and the Central and East European Financial Crisis

A prominent specialist on economic developments in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries examines the ways in which the global financial crisis of 2008-2010 has impacted the economies of the 10 new eastern member states of the European Union (CEE-10). The author assesses the multiple preconditions of the crisis (e.g., excessive current account deficits, large foreign debt, inadequate currency reserves, immense credit expansion, rising inflation and real estate prices) as well as the rapid financial adjustments that had to be undertaken to overcome it (e.g., current account rebalancing, reducing budget deficits, pension and fiscal reform). He devotes considerable attention to the key issue of how the differences in exchange rate policies in these countries affected their abilities to respond to the crisis and outlines measures that should be implemented to enhance the crisis management capability of non-eurozone states relying on currency boards or floating exchange rates.     

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.     

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.     

Facing the Greek junta: the European Community,the Council of Europe and the rise of human-rights politics in Europe

Abstract

In April 1967, a group of colonels seized power in Greece. Since Greece was a member-state of the Council of Europe and held an association agreement with the European Community, both organizations had to define their positions vis-à-vis the new military regime. Very soon, politicians in the parliamentary assemblies of both organizations started to cooperate with the aim of imposing sanctions on Greece. This article examines the inter-organizational dynamics between the European Community and the Council of Europe on Greece during the colonels’ regime. It argues that the European Community imported concrete policy positions and even normative ideas which had first emerged in the Council of Europe. In so doing, the Community prepared the ground for its future human-rights policies.     

The Importance of Attention Diversity and How to Measure It

Studies of political attention often focus on attention to a single issue, such as front‐page coverage of the economy. However, examining attention to a single issue without accounting for the agenda as a whole can lead to faulty assumptions. One solution is to consider the diversity of attention; that is, how narrowly or widely attention is distributed across items (e.g., issues on an agenda or, at a lower level, frames in an issue debate). Attention diversity is an important variable in its own right, offering insight into how agendas vary in their accessibility to policy problems and perspectives. Yet despite the importance of attention diversity, we lack a standard for how best to measure it. This paper focuses on the four most commonly used measures: the inverse Herfindahl Index, Shannon's H, and their normalized versions. We discuss the purposes of these measures and compare them through simulations and using three real‐world datasets. We conclude that both Shannon's H and its normalized form are better measures, minimizing the danger of spurious findings that could result from the less sensitive Herfindahl measures. The choice between the Shannon's H measures should be made based on whether variance in the total number of possible items (e.g., issues) is meaningful.     

The Politics of Spatial Policy and Governance in Post-1990 Hungary: The Interplay Between European and National Discourses of Space

There is now a wealth of literature discussing how regional development and spatial planning practices in Central Eastern Europe have been shaped through the alignment with EU policy frameworks. However, scholars have tended to study governance dynamics in terms of adaptation and learning, paying thus little attention to how spatial policy change is inherently interlinked with the political contestation of nation-state spaces. This paper proposes to address this lack by combining insights from political economic work on state spatial restructuring and discourse theory. From this perspective, the institutionalization of spatial policies is examined as a political process in which particular understandings of space become seen legitimate and stabilized depending on how well they fit existing discourses. The paper demonstrates the added value of this approach through a case study of spatial policy change in post-1990 Hungary, and argues that the approach is more generally applicable to examine shifts in spatial policies and to address concerns with the increase in uneven development at different scales.     

Trade,culture and the European Union cultural exception

ABSTRACT

The article examines how the European Union has addressed the ‘trade and culture debate’ in its international trade agreements. From a cultural exception approach based on an attempt to detach culture from trade provisions, the European Union economic agreements seem to evolve to a broader and more holistic position aiming to promote cultural exchanges through cooperation, while still safeguarding policy space in cultural matters through its traditional cultural exception. The article provides an overview of the European positions to defend the specificity of the audio-visual services sector at the multilateral (World Trade Organization Agreements), regional and bilateral levels. It also examines how the implementation of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions has led the European Union to negotiate cultural cooperation provisions in parallel to some of its recent bilateral and regional trade agreements and the way this Convention may impact the understanding of the ‘trade and culture debate’.     

Scales and networks of neoliberal climate governance: the regulatory and territorial logics of European Union emissions trading

The growing influence of neoliberal approaches to environmental governance has significantly increased the involvement of industry non-state actors in international and national climate governance. However, the implications of this neoliberalisation and hybridisation of climate governance, and particularly state–industry relations during these processes, remain under-integrated with wider geographical debates on the scalar and network politics of environmental governance. In this paper, we probe these issues by examining the regulatory and territorial logics underpinning the negotiation and implementation of the European Union emissions trading scheme (EU ETS). We argue that overlapping interpretations of the regulatory logic of emissions trading (as a cost-effective means of meeting climate objectives) by EU, state and industry actors provided the driving force for the creation of a Europeanised climate governance space and the consolidation of the EU's governing authority in respect of the formal rule-making elements of the EU ETS. However, alliances between state and industry actors, based around intersecting interpretations of their territorial interests in relation to emissions trading, strongly influenced the scheme's design. Moreover, speculative behaviour within the EU ETS market indicates the continued ability of market networks to disrupt territorially-based climate governance regimes. We argue that critical exploration of the territorial logics and practices of EU emissions trading from regime creation to operation provides new insights into the emerging spatial politics of neoliberal environmental governance and its implications for climate protection.     

Drivers and difficulties in the economic relationship between Australia and the European Union: from conflict to cooperation

ABSTRACT

Economic relations between Australia and the European Union (EU) have always been strong, but they have not always been easy. They have been difficult for Australia because it associated the EU with the loss of the UK preferential export market on its entry into the then European Economic Community. And because Australia associated the EU with the original Common Agricultural Policy, which combined subsidies for agricultural production and high agricultural tariffs to make Australian agricultural exports not competitive. They have been difficult for the EU also. Australia developed a biosecurity system to protect its agricultural sector: quarantine requirements and food safety standards made the importation of EU plant and animal products too costly. Yet Australia and the EU need each other. The EU, which is Australia’s largest services trade and investment partner, supplies the business services that drive a knowledge economy and provides the credit to finance economic development. Correspondingly, the EU needs Australia both as a commercial base in Asia and as a reliable energy supplier. This article analyses the drivers and difficulties in the economic relationship between Australia and the EU as they start negotiations for a free trade agreement.