What do we know about the punctuated equilibrium theory in China? A systematic review and research priorities

The punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) shows that government policy is mostly stable with occasional drastic change, which scholars attribute to institutional friction and limited information processing capacity. Although the existing PET literature predominantly focuses on democracies, scholars have started to apply the theory to authoritarian countries. Autocracies are a fertile testing ground for the theory's underlying mechanisms because they appear to experience less institutional friction but more informational restrictions than democracies. However, PET studies on autocracies are still rare. To deepen our understanding of the PET and the policy process beyond democracies, we conduct a systematic review of 88 Chinese language PET journal articles. We show that Chinese language PET research is increasing. Contrary to the English language PET literature, most Chinese studies are qualitative, while a key similarity is the weak operationalization of PET core concepts. The reviewed studies confirm a punctuated equilibrium pattern of policymaking in China but provide only limited evidence for more intense punctuations compared with democracies. Future PET research on China ought to use long-term data sets and examine institutional friction and information processing by policymakers. We also argue for more international exchange and comparative research to advance our understanding of the policy process in China and other autocracies.     

The multiple streams framework in a nondemocracy: The infeasibility of a national ban on live poultry sales in China

In response to calls to apply the multiple streams framework to nondemocracies, this article adapts the framework to an authoritarian context and applies it to a case study of live poultry sales in food markets in China, a key issue in epidemic prevention. Using a dataset consisting of Chinese policy documents, Chinese news articles, World Health Organization data, and secondary literature, the study shows that despite the public health threat posed by live poultry sales and despite high-level political support, a national-level permanent ban has not been adopted because it is technically infeasible, financially inviable, and inconsistent with existing norms and values. The study suggests that—despite the country's top-down governance style and lack of political pluralism—policy preferences expressed by members of the policy-making elite are not necessarily adopted in authoritarian China. Future research should test the proposed hypotheses in other policy areas and other authoritarian contexts.     

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.     

Narco-Cattle Ranching in Political Forests

In Central America, drug traffickers are deforesting the region's remaining forests and protected areas through a process known as narco-ganadería, narco-cattle ranching. Drawing on the case study of Laguna del Tigre National Park, this article argues that narco-cattle ranching is a key driver of deforestation in Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve. Using ethnographic and remote-sensing methods, we describe narco-cattle ranching's money-laundering practices, its territorial dynamics, and its environmental impacts. We draw on theorisations of “political forests” to explain how drug trafficking organisations transform land use in the reserve, and along the way, remake its ecology, territories and subjects. Our work illustrates that drug policy is inextricably linked to conservation policy in the Americas. More specifically, we argue that community-based resource management improves forest and protected area residents’ abilities to resist drug-trafficking related land use change by strengthening local governance and land tenure regimes.     

Why and how electoral systems matter in autocracies

This study uses a nearly comprehensive set of the world’s electoral democracies and authoritarian regimes, comprising 185 country-level observations, in order to examine the effects of electoral institutions upon party system nationalisation. Party system nationalisation is defined as the achievement of substantial electoral support for major political parties on a national basis. I hypothesise that while largely inconsequential from the perspective of alternation in power, authoritarian electoral institutions are highly consequential in that they affect party system properties in consistent, theoretically predictable ways. The empirical test confirms this hypothesis by demonstrating that in democracies and authoritarian regimes, the effects of electoral systems on party system nationalisation are similar in strength and direction. These findings imply that conventional electoral engineering can be used to enable the survival of modern autocracies.     

Perspectives on Australian foreign policy, 2005

The year 2005 was notable for the Howard government's embrace of China. Spectacular resource deals were accompanied by the government's optimistic public declarations that China's rise could be accommodated in the current Asia–Pacific power structure. Alliance relations, which were the cornerstone of the Howard government's foreign policy, were boosted further by the decision to strengthen the Australian Defence Force's capacity to contribute to future US operations. The central challenge for this government arising from its decision-making in 2005 was to manage both major power relations in tandem. This was a year where the connection between international policy and domestic issues stood in stark relief. Terrorism concerns provided the context for the government's foreign policy but it also drove stringent domestic legislation. Australia's relationship with Indonesia improved but the commitment to Iraq remained problematic. Not the least of these difficulties stemmed from the exposure of the Australian Wheat Board's corporate dealings in Iraq which had operated counter to the government's international policy.     

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.     

The Arab Uprisings and the United States: The Dichotomy Between Balancing Stability and Upholding Commitment to Democracy

The Arab Spring, a revolutionary movement for democracy that swept across the Arab Middle East in 2010, has contributed to the downfall of several oppressive authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. The movement represented several uprisings that placed the United States in a precarious position. While the uprisings have shaken U.S. policy to the core, they also presented a historic opportunity for American policymakers to craft a new and comprehensive policy that is compatible with the much‐coveted principles of democracy, freedom, and justice in a region that has historically been unable to grasp such principles. This article argues that the American administration under President Barak Obama squandered this opportunity by pursuing an incoherent and inconsistent policy. This policy revealed Obama's support of the uprisings calls for political reforms that aligned with American liberal values. However, the policy also reflected a commitment to ensure security and stability by maintaining autocratic regimes the protesters hoped to overthrow. This article demonstrates that the policy lacked consistency and clarity as it shifted from one uprising to another.     

Are All Policy Decisions Equal? Explaining the Variation in Media Coverage of the UK Budget

A country's budget is one of the most important public policy instruments, as it establishes the government's policy priorities and has the potential to determine winners and losers. The budget, however, is a mixture of different components and these get varying degrees of attention in the media. Drawing on sociology of news research, this paper seeks to explain this heterogeneous coverage of a budget's policy decisions. To do so, it uses a unique data set of over 5,000 articles of press coverage of six UK budgets (2008–2012). These articles are coded for the presence/absence of each of the budget's policy decision, via automated content analysis. On the basis of a multivariate negative binomial model, we find that the salience of a policy decision in the coverage is determined by its cost, whether it is negative (i.e., tax hikes and spending cuts) or positive, the income group that is the most affected by it, and the level of attention given to it by the government.     

More than just experts for hire: A conceptualization of the roles of consultants in public policy formulation

Consultants are increasingly a part of public policy formulation, and their policy involvement draws extensive interest in research and public debate. However, there is a gap in how we think about their formulation role: they are often conceptualized as a type of expert, while their actual interaction with and contribution to policy formulation is much more varied. This paper develops a conceptualization of consultants' formulation roles. It demonstrates that rather than just informing policy formulation, consultants take multiple roles and interact with policymaking and makers in multiple ways. Using a policy network/subsystem distinction and a substance/process distinction as the main axes for analysis, the paper develops four role categories: (1) experts and knowledge brokers, in which consultants provide policy advice and analysis; (2) seeing for the government, in which they construct a picture of the policy field; (3) legitimizers and validators, in which they provide symbolic capital to policy; and (4) channels for stakeholders' policy preferences, in which they manage deliberation and synthesize actors' policy preferences. The paper provides much-needed clarity on how consultants engage with policy formulation and policymakers and forwards our understanding of how consultants exert their policy influence.     

Policy dimension: A new concept to distinguish substance from process in the Narrative Policy Framework

This article introduces the distinction between substance (questions of policy design) and process (questions of power in the policy process) to the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). While both occur in existing NPF research, so far, they are not separated analytically. We conceptualize them as categories of the “policy dimension,” a new aspect of narrative content. Applying this dimension to an exploratory case, we show that such an analysis leads to useful insights for NPF scholars. Substance policy narrative elements show a debate about a policy's implementation model, whereas process policy narrative elements reveal that this debate is permeated by power conflicts. Furthermore, we find that the two categories' occurrence in narratives is influenced by the debate venue, whereas political parties as narrators do not seem to be relevant. The policy dimension allows for new research avenues and provides practitioners with a new tool to understand and intervene in policy debates.     

Relational coupling of multiple streams: The case of COVID-19 infections in German abattoirs

After a series of COVID-19 outbreaks among employees in the German meat-processing industry, the Work Safety Control Act protecting these workers made it on the government's agenda in July 2020. From a Multiple Streams perspective, local corona hotspots may be understood as policy windows for introducing respective measures. However, this alone is not sufficient to explain agenda setting. This study investigates the coupling of streams within policy windows. Introducing the notion of relational coupling to the MSF research agenda, discourse network analysis provides a new methodology to reveal entrepreneurial activities. Studying the German mass media discourse on the issue identifies two stages: (1) An initial problem brokerage without coupling of core policies, followed by (2) a coupling across all streams based on a focusing event. We argue that relational coupling allows for an enhanced understanding of agenda setting.     

The evolution of the Chinese Communist Party's policy on the bourgeoisie (1949–1952)

From its very beginning, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had a shifting policy towards the bourgeoisie. Until the early 1940s, it maintained a relatively stable policy which successfully isolated the monied classes in China and helped it overthrow the rule of the KMT. But with the establishment of the new regime, the CCP Central Committee came under conflicting pressures: on the one hand it continued its former policy out of political expediency; on the other hand, based on traditional socialist political theory and Soviet experience, it kept a close watch on the bourgeoisie and even proposed targeting them as the chief enemy of next revolution. After the establishment of the PRC, as a result of the failing economy and the new government's lack of economic support and political experience, the CCP firmed up its policies on the bourgeoisie. However, with the bourgeoisie and capitalism still prominent elements in Chinese society, the communists became uncertain about which direction to take. As the CCP Central Committee had anticipated, officials of both the party and the government often gave way to corruption after taking over major cities. The Central Committee regarded this particular combination of money and power as a “violent attack” against the new communist regime by the bourgeoisie as a whole. In order to tighten its grip on national power, the Central Committee launched two anti‐corruption movements known as the Three‐Antis and the Five‐Antis. These movements were in fact aimed at the bourgeoisie as a whole, and succeeded in destroying the basis for capitalist business in the New China. Encouraged by this outcome, the CCP launched a policy of socialist transformation aimed at depriving Chinese capitalists of their means of production. Thus the CCP gradually and inevitably moved away from its original policy of cooperation with the national bourgeoisie.     

China's date with big data: will it strengthen or threaten authoritarian rule?

The rise of big data has brought with it enormous possibilities, for better or worse. In China, the government has been enthusiastically preparing for the coming of the era of big data. This article examines how the authoritarian regime in China has been employing big data to improve its governance and to move towards a ‘Big Brother 2.0’ model. The regime has combined cooptation with coercive control to exploit digital technology, in order to maximize its utility and thus maintain authoritarian rule. Moreover, existing debates on digital technology largely focus on the changing power structures between state and society, but neglect power structures within regimes and their implications for authoritarianism. This article argues that the use of massive digital data may backfire against the authoritarian regime as it may change the power structure within the state. That is to say, efforts to embrace big data may also undermine the authoritarian rule. A more accurate understanding of the Chinese authoritarian regime's resilience and vulnerability in the information age will help us grasp the essence of China's rise as a fragile global power.     

Georgii Mirskii and Soviet Theories of Authoritarian Modernization

This article examines Soviet thinking about authoritarian modernization through the life and thought of Georgii Mirskii, a noted expert on Arab politics. Mirskii was a regular adviser and speechwriter for the Soviet Central Committee, and was also followed by the KGB for his criticism of Stalin. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mirskii looked to the example of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser to develop a theory of military-led modernization. This article examines how Mirskii's faith in the ability of Third World militaries to function as modernizing forces changed over time. The course of military politics in the Third World during the 1970s and 1980s, when military coups proliferated, bringing to power violent and self-interested regimes, disabused Mirskii of any faith in military modernization. Examining Mirskii's thought not only sheds light on the ideas that motivated Khrushchev-era Soviet foreign and development policy, it also provides an illuminating comparison for better-studied theories of authoritarian modernization in the United States.     

Misaligned Social Policy? Explaining the Origins and Limitations of Cash Transfers in Sudan

This article examines whether the transitional government in the wake of the December 2018 Sudanese revolution succeeded in realigning social policy with public demands. The article focuses on the evolution of cash transfer programmes from the 2012 cash programme under the Ingaz regime to the transitional government's programme 2021. While the recent programme was popularly viewed as a ‘World Bank programme’, its originators were in fact Sudanese professionals. Similarly, the Ingaz regime experimented with cash transfers before seeking out World Bank technical support. In this sense, cash transfers cannot be seen as an external imposition, as domestic actors have favoured them across different regimes. Yet, their appeal may still reflect the ‘choicelessness’ that Thandika Mkandawire associated with structural adjustment, as in both cases cash transfers were introduced as part of broader economic reform. Sudan's case is distinct in the sense that its domestic policy makers did not begrudgingly accept cash transfers but were enthusiastic instigators of them. The article traces the origins of this enthusiasm within Sudan's recent political history and explores the way in which alignment with international mainstream policy making locks Sudan into a bind. The country urgently needs to reverse the fragmentation of social policy along geographic and racial lines, yet these programmes do little to overcome such regional and racial inequalities. Thus, even after a popular revolution displaced the prevailing political settlement and called for radical change, policy makers remain misaligned to public demands.     

A comparative survey of the economic decline of Empires

Abstract

On 15 December 1965 Tanzania broke off diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom (UK) because of Harold Wilson's policy towards Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). Although Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere took this course of action to comply with a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Organisation of African Unity, he made the support for Rhodesian independence a central pillar of Tanzania's nation-building project. Since 1967 human dignity, African liberation and opposition to racialism and colonialism became central tenets of both Tanzania's foreign policy as well as the Ujamaa socialist policy implemented internally by its government. The loss of a British £ 7.5 million loan notwithstanding, Tanzania's unyielding criticism of British policy towards UDI strengthened Nyerere's national and international legitimacy and reinforced the Tanganyika African National Union's hegemony over the national political space. Relations between Tanzania and the UK were finally restored in July 1968, after the other African governments had re-established them. Nyerere felt sure that this policy reversal would not put at risk his government's political legitimacy.     

Mitigating conflict with collaboration: Reaching negotiated agreement amidst belief divergence in environmental governance

High levels of conflict among coalitions in a policy process are often attributed to belief divergence and may lead to policy gridlock. Thus, reducing belief divergence may facilitate negotiation and open the door for policy change. Beliefs are notoriously difficult to change, however, especially in high-conflict settings. Collaborative governance has been touted as one method for mitigating conflict to a level where negotiation is possible by means including but not limited to belief change. This study investigates the relationship between belief divergence as a driver of policy conflict and collaborative governance as a conflict mitigation tool by analyzing the beliefs of two opposing coalitions as they participate in a decade-long collaborative environmental governance process that ended in negotiated agreement. Using longitudinal survey and interview data, we find that coalitions' beliefs diverge more at a later point in the process, due primarily to the reinforcement and strengthening of one coalition's beliefs; however, we also identify aspects of the collaborative process that helped foster negotiated agreement amidst this growing belief divergence. These findings can inform scholarship on conflict mitigation in environmental governance as well as the design of more effective collaborative processes in high-conflict settings.     

Budgetary Punctuations: A Fiscal Management Perspective

Although the development of punctuated equilibrium theory makes broad reference to the bureaucratic procedures that regulate budgetary decision making and makes reasonable assumptions about the influence of those procedures on the dynamic of resource allocation, little is known about how the specific mechanisms work. This has led to a call to understand the processes that cause friction in greater detail. This study examines how budgetary output patterns may be influenced by governments' strategic fiscal choices. Using an approach that highlights the roles of various fiscal policy-making processes, we found significant deviations of budgetary output patterns in capital projects, restricted funds, and entitlement spending, thus signifying the influence of fiscal practices on resource allocation decisions. We further examined how fiscal influences may be realized in the political process of democratization in Hong Kong. By examining legislative filibuster cases related to capital projects, we found evidence associating democratization with greater institutional friction and consequently with larger budgetary output punctuations.     

Voluntary Environmental Programs: A Canadian Perspective

In light of the increasing number of environmental problems necessitating government's attention and the limited scope and budget for addressing these issues, environmental protection has, and continues to evolve as more flexible approaches to regulation are being sought and embraced by governments throughout the world. Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) are a pragmatic response by both governments and business to find a more flexible way to protect the environment. We discuss the theoretical motivations for firms to adopt VEPs in general and examine Canada's experience with three types of VEPs, public, negotiated, and unilateral agreements, to assess whether the motivating factors are present. We then argue that the institutional, political, and regulatory framework governing environmental policy in Canada does not provide the conditions necessary to effectively promote superior corporate environmental protection across jurisdictions. Despite the lack of government‐directed VEPs, there has been considerable interest by both the private sector and civil society who have taken the lead by developing unilateral agreements. Using existing literature and our current research, we examine the factors that motivate firms in Canada to participate in unilateral agreements and the characteristics of firms with the higher environmental performance and suggest some policy implications.