Lobbying after 9/11: Policy Regime Emergence and Interest Group Mobilization

Does the emergence of a new boundary‐spanning policy regime shift the focus of well‐established organized interests, or does it mobilize new ones? In this article, I show that interest groups with a presence in Washington before 9/11 rapidly—but temporarily—shift their attention to the homeland security issues. Established groups' entrenchment in antecedent subsystems appears to buffer against widespread policy disruption and interest upheaval. However, a new set of previously latent groups opportunistically mobilizes after the regime is institutionalized. Newly mobilized groups replace those that retreat back to the regime's antecedent subsystems. Though the policy regime fails to resolve the jurisdictional turf conflicts that triggered its creation, the institutionalization of homeland security generates its own original, distinct government demand for lobbying. Interests that previously had no business in Washington before 9/11 took advantage of the new opportunities the regime offered without supplanting interests established long before the Department of Homeland Security and its congressional committees existed.     

Beyond Subsystems: Policy Regimes and Governance

We suggest attention to policy regimes provides a fruitful means for joining the contributions of scholars who study policy processes with those who are concerned with governance challenges. Our research synthesis underscores the limits of existing theorizing about policy processes for problems that span multiple areas of policy and highlights the prospects for and limitations of governing beyond the boundaries of subsystems. We suggest new avenues for theorizing and research in policy processes based on the concept of a boundary‐spanning policy regime. We develop notions about this type of policy regime within the context of the broader literature about regimes in political science, discuss the forces that shape the strength and durability of such regimes, and provide a variety of examples. This synthesis challenges the focus of policy process scholars on subsystems and broadens the traditional focus on policymaking to consideration of the dynamics of governing.     

Constructing Homeland Security: An Anemic Policy Regime

This research addresses the strength of the homeland security policy regime that was constructed after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. We argue that homeland security provides a preeminent example of the challenges of developing policy regimes that focus policymaking on a common goal across diverse subsystems. All the ingredients for fashioning a powerful regime were in place after the terrorist attacks of September 2001—a common purpose, engaged stakeholders, and institutional redesign. But for a variety of reasons that we discuss, the results are far from cohesive. The lessons we draw are more general ones regarding factors that influence the strength of boundary‐spanning policy regimes.     

实践中的转变：抗日根据地减租减息运动中的减息政策研究

在抗日根据地的减租减息运动中,减息政策的变化受多种因素的影响,但借贷利率的限制无疑是其中最重要的因素。由于规定的利率过低,造成农村金融借贷停滞,给农民的生产和生活造成很大困难,放开对借贷利率的限制成为唯一的选择。减息政策经历了从严格的利率限制到完全放开的转变,这是在实践中根据实际情况作出的政策改变,但从实际效果来看,放开对借贷利率的限制并没有起到预期的恢复农村借贷的效果,借贷困难的局面一直持续下去。     

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.     

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.     

The Intersection of Narrative Policy Analysis and Policy Change Theory

Narrative policy analysis and policy change theory rarely intersect in the literature. This research proposes an integration of these approaches through an empirical analysis of the narrative political strategies of two interest groups involved in policy debate and change over an eight‐year period in the Greater Yellowstone Area. Three research questions are explored: (i) Is it possible to reconcile these seemingly disparate approaches? (ii) Do policy narrative strategies explain how interest groups expand or contain policy issues despite divergent core policy beliefs? (3) How does this new method of analysis add to the literature? One hundred and five documents from the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the Blue Ribbon Coalition were content analyzed for policy narrative strategies: identification of winners and losers, diffusion or concentration of costs and benefits, and use of condensation symbols, policy surrogates, and science. Five of seven hypotheses were confirmed while controlling for presidential administration and technical expertise. The results indicate that interest groups do use distinctive narrative strategies in the turbulent policy environment.     

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.     

Private Citizens as Policy Entrepreneurs: Evidence from Autism Mandates and Parental Political Mobilization

Growing bodies of research in the social sciences point to politicians, bureaucratic officials, interest groups, and other actors who serve as policy entrepreneurs. In this paper, we argue that private citizens can also serve a primary role as policy entrepreneurs. To analyze this phenomenon, we investigate the behavior of private citizens and their role in changing state policies surrounding insurance mandates for autism coverage. Using a thematic analysis of focus groups and interviews conducted with individuals active in the push for autism policy change, we demonstrate that private citizens meet all of the requirements identified for policy entrepreneurs in the existing literature. We then investigate when, why, and how these private citizens step forward into the policy process as entrepreneurs. We show that entrepreneurship occurs when private citizens have needed resources, a sense of duty to fix a policy status quo they see as unjust, and a stake in policy change. We conclude by discussing the importance of our findings to the study of public policy and their generalizability beyond autism policy.     

Policy Coherence and Policy Domains

Policy scholars generally agree that greater coherence of policies is desirable, but the concept is under-theorized and has received little empirical examination. This research examines the policy coherence of 18 policy domains and considers institutional factors that affect variation among them. There is considerable variation in coherence among substantive, regional, and identity-based policy domains. Greater degrees of policy coherence exist for policy domains that have dominant congressional committees or have more involvement of lead federal agencies. These findings extend what policy scholars know about policy subsystems in American policymaking to consideration of the coherence of policy domains.     

The Politics of Crisis Policymaking: Chernobyl and Swedish Nuclear Energy Policy

Public policy scholars often accentuate the key role of crises in explaining policy change; however, much empirical work still remains to be done in order to explain crisis‐induced policy outcomes. This article explores the prediction of the Advocacy Coalition Framework that stable coalitions and impediments to learning reduce the likelihood for policy change after a crisis. Strategic action is emphasized as a supplementary variable focusing on the role of political motivations in post‐crisis policymaking. Sweden's decision not to accelerate the nuclear power phaseout following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster provides a case study to assess the utility of these explanations. Findings corroborate theoretical expectations about stable minority coalitions, cast doubts over the presumed rigidity of policy core beliefs, and emphasize strategic action and cognitive heuristics as important motivations for policy choice. The article concludes by outlining three sector‐specific variables (ideological salience, level of conflict, and previous crisis experiences) that add to the explanation of crisis‐induced policy outcomes.     

Private Conflict and Policy Passage: Interest-Group Conflict and State Medical Malpractice Reform

James Madison argued in Federalist 10 that "rival political factions" work against the public good. In contrast to Madison's pessimistic account, I suggest that factional conflict can lead to more representative public policy, and thus further the will of the people. I theorize that elected officials often seek a safe political position—one that corresponds to the preferences of the public at large—during periods of high conflict. I assess this theory in one, salient policy area, medical malpractice. I measure conflict with contributions for state candidates given by (i) the health and insurance industries, which generally support malpractice laws, and (ii) lawyers, who frequently oppose the laws. I find that group conflict matters to policy outcomes. I also find evidence that, under conditions of elevated conflict, adopted policies are more likely to move toward the general ideological preferences of the public at large. These results suggest that group conflict affects both the quantity and character of policy in the American states.     

Policy Feedback and Preschool Funding in the American States

The early childhood education policy community has been described as a “divided constituency” in which groups with the same underlying goals sometimes work at cross purposes. This article examines how this internal division affects the contemporary funding of preschool education. It finds that states with a relatively large Head Start community are significantly more likely not to fund preschool education and significantly less likely to dedicate preschool funding exclusively to a freestanding state program. These results suggest that the creation and political solidification of Head Start generated policy feedback. They contributed to an ongoing tension within the early education community as Head Start beneficiaries viewed the creation of a freestanding preschool program as a political threat. This political dynamic illustrates the more general way in which the existence of a public policy can alter the dynamics of future political action.     

Constructing Policy Narratives in 140 Characters or Less: The Case of Gun Policy Organizations

This study examines interest groups’ framing of gun policy issues via an analysis of nearly 10,000 tweets by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the National Rifle Association spanning from 2009 to 2014. Utilizing the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), I investigate the extent to which interest groups use social media to construct policy narratives. This research shows that much can be conveyed in 140 characters; both gun control and gun rights organizations used Twitter to identify victims, blame “villains,” commend “heroes,” and offer policy solutions. This research sheds light on the politics of gun control by revealing trends over time in groups’ framing and suggests refinements for hypotheses of the NPF. Finally, this work underscores the importance of social media for public policy scholarship.     

近代早期的国际竞争与财政动员:关于西荷与英法的比较研究

在16—18世纪西方各国的竞争中,财政动员能力对竞争的走势起着决定性的作用。财政动员主要包括税收和公债两个相互联系的方面。考察尼德兰革命期间的联省共和国和西班牙、18世纪的英国和法国的财政史可以发现,各国的政治—社会结构对财政动员的效率产生了不同的影响,这体现在税收体制的合理性和公债信用之上,而公债信用之优劣也直接反映在公债利率上。相比而言,英国与联省共和国的政治制度使其税收更具合法性基础并提升了其公债信用,从而能够更好地动员民间财政资源;西班牙和法国王权受制于其政治—社会结构,在国际竞争中受其低效的财政动员的拖累。     

Policy Narratives and Policy Processes

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has influenced a generation of policy scholars with its emphasis on causal drivers, testable hypotheses, and falsification. Until recently, the role of policy narratives has been largely neglected in ACF literature partially because much of that work has operated outside of traditional social science principles, such as falsification. Yet emerging literature under the rubric of Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) demonstrates how the role of policy narratives in policy processes is studied using the same rigorous social science standards initially set forth by Paul A. Sabatier. The NPF identifies theories specifying narrative elements and strategies that are likely useful to ACF researchers as classes of variables that have yet to be integrated. Examining this proposition, we provide seven hypotheses related to critical ACF concepts including advocacy coalitions and policy beliefs, policy learning, public opinion, and strategy. Our goal is to stay within the scientific, theoretical, and methodological tradition of the ACF and show how NPF's empirical, hypotheses, and causal driven work on policy narratives identifies theories applicable to ACF research while also offering an independent framework capable of explaining the policy process through the power of policy narratives. In doing so, we believe both ACF and NPF scholarship can contribute to the advancement of our understanding of the policy process.     

公众参与和执政党政策的合法性

执政党依靠的是制定和实施公共政策来实现对社会的治理,执政党的政策能否得到广泛的认同和支持,直接影响到执政党自身的合法性。因此,执政党必然通过各种渠道和方式强化其与民众的联系。改革开放以来,中国共产党通过一系列制度和机制的创新,特别是倡导和鼓励公众参与,使执政党政策的合法性途径更为多元,这不仅实质性地提高了执政党的执政能力,有效地降低了执政成本,也为建构社会主义和谐社会提供了重要的制度平台。     

Smart Growth Policy Choice: A Resource Dependency and Local Governance Explanation

Smart growth is a planning and land use policy objective that generally focuses on where development should occur and how best to protect natural resources. What explains the adoption of smart growth policy by local government? This study focuses on a cooperative intergovernmental program that seeks to enhance local government abilities to work toward achieving state goals on sustainability. Extant research suggests that local interest group preferences shape policy decisions. However, much of the evidence on the influence of local interest groups on smart growth policy is presented within the coercive intergovernmental context. This article argues that resource dependency influences local decisions in pursuing a smart growth agenda when state incentives are provided. The findings suggest that fiscal capacity and the characteristics of local governing institutions are significant predictors in the decision to take part in an intergovernmental program. Business and neighborhood interest groups have a significant effect on policy adoption, as do local characteristics depending on the smart growth functional area.     

Policy Innovativeness and Interstate Compacts

Are some American states inherently more innovative than others? This question has confounded researchers for more than four decades. In this study we develop a measure of collective policy innovation that measures formal cooperative policy arrangements among the states, compare the measure to existing measures of internal state policy innovation, and assess whether existing innovativeness measures explain policy cooperation among the states. This test of the innovativeness concept addresses internal and external validity concerns that have long plagued this research tradition. Our multivariate analyses indicate that policy innovativeness is often a statistically and substantively important determinant of compact participation. These results suggest that (i) innovativeness is a meaningful and durable state attribute, (ii) several existing indices successfully capture the underlying latent concept, and (iii) innovativeness provides analytic utility in multiple empirical contexts.