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.     

Policy Networks as Collective Action

An important contribution to the policy sciences, and to interorganizational research in particular, has been the introduction of the so-called policy network approach. Despite the fact that this approach has produced a multitude of concepts, it still lacks a theoretical scaffold. In this article it is argued that simply to refer to something called "network theory" is an unsatisfactory solution. It is suggested that one way of advancing the policy network approach is to apply collective action theory and explicitly regard different empirical appearances of network concepts as expressions of collective action. Six tentative building blocks of such a theory are suggested. It is further argued that the policy network approach would benefit from incorporation into a broader analytical framework such as the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. Finally, it is concluded that such an incorporation would advance our ability to understand the processes of policymaking and thus to fulfill one of the old commitments of policy analysis, namely to contribute to the refinement of policymaking processes in society.     

Testing Policy Theory with Statistical Models of Networks

This article presents a conceptual framework for clarifying the network hypotheses embedded in policy theories and how they relate to macrolevel political institutions and microlevel political behavior. We then describe the role of statistical models of networks for testing these hypotheses, including the problem of operationalizing theoretical concepts with the parameters of statistical models. Examples from existing theories of the policy process and empirical research are provided and potential extensions are discussed.     

Tobacco's Tipping Point: The Master Settlement Agreement as a Focusing Event

Focusing events have been widely referenced in policy studies literature as important drivers of major policy change. In multiple streams theory, punctuated equilibrium theory, and the advocacy coalition framework, they play a prominent role in explaining how major changes occur. Nearly all existing research, however, has focused on the very large and catastrophic events that catapult otherwise obscure issues onto the agenda, to the neglect of focusing events that may perform other functions. This article examines one such event: the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between the tobacco industry and the states signed in 1998. I observe that although the MSA focused substantial attention on the topic of tobacco regulation, produced major policy change, and shifted the policy image of the domain, it was not a typical focusing event. Drawing from the tipping point theories of Sociology and Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point , I expand a theoretical distinction articulated by Baumgartner and Jones between "triggering" events and "consolidating" or "tipping" events to resolve this discrepancy.     

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: How Do We Combine the Insights of Multiple Theories in Public Policy Studies?

The combination of multiple theories in policy studies has a great potential value—new combinations of theories or concepts may produce new perspectives and new research agendas. However, it also raises important ontological, epistemological, methodological, and practical issues that need to be addressed to ensure disciplinary advance. This article identifies three main approaches: synthesis, in which we produce one theory based on the insights of multiple theories; complementary, in which we use different theories to produce a range of insights or explanations; and contradictory, in which we compare the insights of theories before choosing one over the other. It examines the issues that arise when we adopt each approach. First, it considers our ability to “synthesize” theories when they arise from different intellectual traditions and attach different meanings to key terms. Second, it considers the practical limits to using multiple theories and pursuing different research agendas when academic resources are limited. Third, it considers the idea of a “shoot‐out” in which one theory is chosen over another because it appears to produce the best results or most scientific approach. It examines the problems we face when producing scientific criteria and highlights the extent to which our choice of theory is influenced by our empirical narrative. The article argues that the insistence on a rigid universal scientific standard may harm rather than help scientific collaboration and progress.     

Toward a Theory of Collaborative Policy Networks: Identifying Structural Tendencies

Support for the "democratization of the policy sciences" has led to the development of a number of frameworks and theories to enhance the normative, multidisciplinary approach to policy analysis. However, this approach has been challenged for failing to produce the objective empirical and normative standards implied by its scientific aspirations. One consideration that has been advanced under a variety of rubrics is "participatory policy analysis." This is a methodological proposal that expands the range of actors/stakeholders involved in the making and execution of public policy in a discursive or deliberative mode. While much of the research on policy networks is focused on the management and coordination of such networks (i.e., collaborative management), there is little attention on analysis of networks as a participatory policy analytical approach. We propose a theory of "collaborative policy networks" that examines not only the stakeholder composition of a group or the partnerships between any two stakeholders but also the way these stakeholders are embedded in various degrees of institutionalized structure and the discursive tendencies of exchange among them that leads to policy initiative, implementation, evaluation, and possibly termination. Collaborative policy networks are characterized by discursive properties, specifically reciprocity, representation, equality, participatory decision making, and collaborative leadership. We suggest that the results of such research can identify structural signatures of collaborative policy networks that serve as "stamps" of the common nature of such networks that, if fostered, can inform and improve the attempt of networks of partners to achieve policy goals.     

旅游研究中的三种社会心理学视角之比较

旅游是一个新兴的研究领域,需要从其他学科引入相关的理论和方法来推动自身的成熟与发展。旅游感知、态度和行为是旅游研究的重要领域之一,直接关系到旅游业的健康持续发展。在过去数十年间,社会心理学的社会交换理论和社会表征理论为这一领域的研究提供了有力的理论支撑。相对剥夺理论是一种二战以后逐渐发展起来的社会心理学理论,在社会弱势群体的心理失衡和疏导机制研究方面有较强的解释能力。本文通过对旅游研究中的既有社会心理学视角剖析的基础上,分析了相对剥夺的内涵和旅游发展中的相对剥夺现象,进而比较了相对剥夺理论与既有社会心理学理论视角的独特性和互补性。作为一种新的社会心理学视角,相对剥夺理论在旅游地相对剥夺感的表现形式、成因、疏导机制和定量测量等方面有较大的应用价值和潜力。     

Policy Theory, Policy Theory Everywhere: Ravings of a Deranged Policy Scholar

The field of policy theory abounds with numerous theories, with each theory having a set of practitioners that are working independently of the others. Resolving conflicts among policy theories as a result is difficult. This essay has a more modest goal of posing some questions and suggesting some avenues for future research. Key points include defining the purpose of policy theory, incorporating management into our theories, making strategic choices about areas of study, addressing the parsimony-comprehensiveness tradeoff, and providing a more nuanced role for institutions.     

What Is Next for Policy Design and Social Construction Theory?1

The study of policy design has made great progress over the past decade in leading scholars to understand why the American political system produces certain kinds of designs rather than others, and the consequences that policy designs have for democracy. This article outlines the distinctive and important elements of policy design theory—the centrality of policy design, the attention to social constructions, the attention to policy consequences (or feed‐forward effects), and the integration of normative and empirical research and theory. It then suggests how policy design theory can complement other policy theories in guiding research and evaluating the conditions of U.S. democracy, and how in its own right it can be further developed and used to guide important inquiry about public policy's politics and social impacts.     

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.     

Operationalizing social equity in public policy design: A comparative analysis of solar equity policies in the United States

While it is widely recognized that energy injustices are prevalent in the clean energy transition process, there has been limited research attention on policy efforts aiming to mitigate these inequities. In this paper, we use solar equity policies as an empirical case study to understand how social equity considerations are conceptualized and operationalized in energy policy content. We build upon the policy design literature and code institutional statements of 54 solar equity policies adopted between 2001 and 2021 in the United States. In our comparative analysis, we focus on three levels of policy design elements that can be directly observed in written policy language: macro-policy goal construction, meso-policy instrument choices, and micro-level policy settings and calibrations. We find that the policy goal of energy justice is multifaceted, with a great emphasis on solar energy accessibility and provision of economic benefits and security for disadvantaged communities. There is a dominant preference by policymakers to use redistributive policies and community solar programs to advance energy justice-related goals. Solar equity policy instruments on-the-ground measures have also been calibrated to target specific disadvantaged populations in the energy system, which focus mostly on income-based vulnerability.     

西方主义与实证主义幻象:近三十年来中国人文地理学理论研究透视

基于对近三十年来中国人文地理学理论研究的文献解读,将中国人文地理学的理论演进脉络划分为三个阶段,即1980年代的理论引进、1990年代的理论消化和21世纪以来内生-外生并存阶段。将当前中国人文地理学理论研究的主要特征概括为两点,即"西方主义"和"实证主义",并认为其背后的思想根源是"实用主义"。通过文献梳理本文认为,实用主义思维是近三十年中国人文地理学理论成果缺少的主要原因。而要推动中国人文地理学的理论研究,必须同时重视两个方面,一是加强批判性研究,二是基于自身观察的本土概念总结。最后,本文结合当前研究现状,对推进中国人文地理学的理论研究提出若干建议。     

Agency Evolution, New Institutionalism, and 'Hybrid' Policy Domains: Lessons from the 'Greening' of the U.S. Military

Neoinstitutionalists applying the logic of rational choice institutionalism have leavened our understanding of public agency design and evolution in the domestic and national security policy domains. This paper seeks to advance theory building in empirically grounded ways by assessing the explanatory power of an important theoretical perspective (rational choice institutionalism), in an understudied "hybrid" policy domain where domestic and national security aims interact (domestic environmental policy and national security policy), and in an organizational type (the U.S. military) that has drawn scant attention from students of bureaucracy in political science, public administration, or public management. Analysis of three major efforts to green the U.S. military suggests that the patterns of politics accompanying agency evolution involving hybrid policy domains differ from domestic and national security domains in ways that limit the generalizability of rational choice institutionalism.     

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.     

流动、旅游与后现代——一个研究视角与一种精神转向

后现代思潮作为对现代性的全面反思甚至批判,为我们理解今天的社会现实和社会生活提供了一个系统的视角。在这一背景下,人们可以开始重新思考和重构旅游的意义,并在新的后现代和后结构哲学思潮以及更广阔的流动背景下探讨旅游的新特征和旅游体验的新方向。流动作为一种批判语境,意味着对传统以稳定和界限为主体的文明形式的挑战,也在更深层意义上代表着新的社会精神内涵。随着社会流动的增加和人们意识的改变,人们将习惯一种流动的生存和生活方式,在流动中居住,在居住中流动。在此意义上,旅游的内涵或者是生活化了,又或者是生活旅游化了。文章最后从"何为旅游世界"、"旅游体验"以及"再谈游的精神"等三个方面对后现代语境下旅游发展的趋势进行了论述分析。     

Human geography without scale

The concept of scale in human geography has been profoundly transformed over the past 20 years. And yet, despite the insights that both empirical and theoretical research on scale have generated, there is today no consensus on what is meant by the term or how it should be operationalized. In this paper we critique the dominant – hierarchical – conception of scale, arguing it presents a number of problems that cannot be overcome simply by adding on to or integrating with network theorizing. We thereby propose to eliminate scale as a concept in human geography. In its place we offer a different ontology, one that so flattens scale as to render the concept unnecessary. We conclude by addressing some of the political implications of a human geography without scale.     

The Implementation of Public Policy: Still the Missing Link

Although theories of public policy and theories of governance both seek to establish relationships between policymaking and its consequences, they do not complement each other very well. Public policy models tend to de-emphasize that which governance theories tend to emphasize: the influence on government performance of implementation, broadly described as the actions taken by those engaged in administration (including managers at all levels, those engaged in service delivery, and third-party agents) after a policy has been lawfully promulgated by elected officials and interpreted by the courts. A comparison of a recently developed theory of public sector performance with several prominent theories of policymaking suggests that multilevel governance theories can supply what continues to be the missing link in public policy theories. At the same time, governance theories might be enriched by the process modeling of public policy theories.     

Decline and sprawl: an evolving type of urban development – observed in Liverpool and Leipzig1

Much of the empirical research on urban sprawl has been carried out in North America and most theoretical studies on this problem have been concerned with expanding urban areas. This study differs, firstly in that it is concerned with sprawl in two European cities, Liverpool in England and Leipzig in Germany, and secondly because both these cities are in decline. This presents an opportunity to explore whether the process of urban sprawl is somehow specific in a situation of urban decline and what its outcomes might be for both urban form and urban policy.