Political dynamics are likely to proceed according to more general laws of human dynamics and information processing, but the specifics have yet to be outlined. Here we begin this task by examining public budgeting in comparative perspective. Budgets quantify collective political decisions made in response to incoming information, the preferences of decision-makers, and the institutions that structure how decisions are made. Most models to date stress preferences (organized by political parties) almost exclusively. We suggest a quite different approach.We begin by noting that input distributions for complex information-processing systems are Gaussian, providing a standard for comparing outputs against inputs. Next we examine public budget change distributions from a variety of countries and levels of government, finding that they are invariably distributed as double Paretians-two-tailed power functions. We find systematic differences in exponents for budgetary increases versus decreases (the latter are more punctuated) in most systems, and for levels of government (local governments are less punctuated).Finally, we show that differences among countries in the coefficients of the general budget law are probably explained by differences in the formal institutional structures of the countries. That is, while the general form of the law is dictated by the fundamental operations of human and organizational information processing, differences in the magnitudes of the law's basic parameters are country and institution-specific. 2 A General Empirical Law of Public Budgets 1Political systems, like many social systems, are characterized by considerable friction.Standard operating procedures in organizations, cultural norms, and all sorts of facets of human cognitive architectures act to provide stability of behavior in a complex world. In politics, ideology and group identifications provide stable guides to behavior in complex circumstances. In politics, however, a second source of friction exists: institutional rules that constrain policy action. In the United States, policies can be enacted only when both houses of congress and the president reach agreement on a measure. In parliamentary democracies, action may be constrained by the necessity to put together multi-party governing coalitions.Institutional rules 'congeal' preferences (Riker 1980), making it difficult for new policies to enter the political arena.In the past, scholars characterized these systems using comparative statics, a method of analysis that concentrated on equilibrium processes based on the preferences of decisionmakers. (Shepsle and Weingast 1987, Krehbiel 1998). Change was admitted primarily though the replacement of governing parties through elections, which established a new preference-based equilibrium to which the policymaking system quickly adjusted. But comparative statics ignores the on-going information-processing needs of an adaptive system, and political systems are clearly adaptive systems. They dynamically respond to incoming i...

In this article, we examine long-term state budget trends to find evidence of punctuated equilibrium. We use the American states as a broad set of institutional variation with which to examine the nature of policy change through the lens of incrementalism and punctuated equilibrium theories of policymaking. The strength of this article is its sensitivity of variations in policy outcomes across time (18 years), across space (50 state institutions), and across issue space (10 budget categories). This research advances the characterization of policy outcomes by employing a quantitative measure that is both less sensitive to outliers and one that characterizes budget distributions on a simple numeric scale. Our general findings are: (i) state budget categories are interdependent; (ii) state budgets are generally punctuated; but (iii) to varying degrees: Thus, considerable stability (indicated by tall peaks) and punctuations (represented by fat tails) are a central feature of policy outcomes in the American states. This result confirms the logic of punctuated equilibrium theory, but raises future questions about the impact specific variations in institutional costs have on policymaking across the 50 states.

Local food system governance increasingly occurs in collaborative venues at the local, state, and regional levels. Prominent examples of such are food policy councils (FPCs). FPCs take a systemic approach to improve local food systems by including diverse stakeholders to advise on policy development. Th e authors study public FPCs to understand how policies structure the stakeholder composition and goals of FPCs and how FPCs' stakeholder composition facilitates and/or impedes performance. Data come from a content analysis of policies that mandate the structure and functions of public FPCs and interviews with FPC representatives. Findings indicate that FPCs connected to a broader array of food policy actors in their communities produce more diverse policy outputs, but this outcome is tempered by whether council members represent personal or organizational interests. Practitioner Points• Collaborative governance can be an eff ective strategy when public problems are reframed to account for new information or failures of traditional governance approaches. • Collaborative policy-making eff orts in food system governance should include participants who serve as liaisons to a broader array of community stakeholders. • Diverse governance structures are more productive when members have latitude to leverage individual expertise in policy making rather than simply serving the interests of organizations they represent. • Local communities interested in addressing a wide range of food-related policy issues should consider creating food policy councils or similar collaborative policy-making eff orts.part of the policy process (Ansell and Gash 2008).

This research addresses state requirements that public facilities be constructed as "green buildings" that promote environmental friendly, energy efficient, and healthy workplaces. We consider state choices to adopt green building mandates and the form of their policy enactment. In considering the way that low salience issues like green buildings get on state agendas and the circumstances under which governors decide to engage the issue, we extend William Gormley's (1986) depiction of "board room" regulatory politics. State energy agencies provide an attention-focusing role while governors behave strategically in deciding whether to issue executive orders about green buildings. This research adds to the growing understanding of states as innovators in aspects of environmental policy not normally subject to state regulation. Copyright 2007 by The Policy Studies Organization.

Cities worldwide have taken the lead in addressing climate change; however, this does not tell the full story in understanding the puzzle of local climate action. Rather than in isolation, city actions occur in the context of a complex of other government arrangements. Whereas the majority of the literature concerning subnational responses to climate change in the US is addressed in the literatures of federalism and diffusion, we offer an explanation of climate actions through a multilevel governance approach. Multilevel governance allows us to consider the horizontal city-to-city influences on climate action while also considering the vertical influences of state-to-local action. We conduct a large quantitative study of climate actions in all US cities with populations greater than 50,000 people. We find that cities' and states' climate action efforts are complementary, rather than attenuating; however, we note that horizontal influences are generally stronger than vertical influences in motivating climate action at the local level. We conclude that, in spite of the potential for an increased role of federal and state governments in climate action in the United States, city-to-city networks are likely to remain important in motivating cities to mitigate climate change.

The diffusion literature is replete with examples of highly salient policies spreading across subnational governments. However, low‐salience policies that do not benefit from a groundswell of public opinion also spread across jurisdictions in patterns that appear similar to those of other, more well‐known policy ideas. This research is an investigation of the mechanisms that propagate low‐salience policies. I analyze the adoption of the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) Leadership in Energy Efficient Design standard across 119 U.S. cities from 2000 to 2008. The investigation indicates that a knowledge broker, in this case the USGBC, occupies critical roles in linking a low‐salience policy to a broader set of widely held societal values, developing a common policy vocabulary, providing a base policy that jurisdictions may freely adapt, and creating a diffusion infrastructure by acting as a communication hub for existing and interested jurisdictions to discuss innovations and progress.

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Municipal agreements have been instrumental in communicating commitment to addressing climate change at the local level. However, what is the practical implication of this potentially symbolic decision? This study examines the power of mayoral participation in climate change agreements in driving the proliferation of sustainable or “green” building in a city as a mechanism to reach its climate change goals. In addition, mayors can localize what is otherwise a public good by framing green buildings as having other tangible impacts on a community. We analyze the impact of political leadership on green building projects in 591 cities in 50 U.S. states, controlling for a variety of city‐ and state‐level variables. Hierarchical models indicate that mayoral leadership in climate change policy fosters green building, while state‐level predictors are not as important as city policy in creating green buildings. Our research concludes that local governments can be a very effective venue in addressing broad climate change goals.