We develop the concept of a policy bubble to capture the notion of long-term overinvestment in a policy. In sketching the relation of policy bubbles to economic bubbles, we describe how these two concepts have similar origins but different trajectories because they are filtered by different institutions. We examine in some detail three likely instances of ongoing policy bubbles: crime policy, school reform (charter schools and private education vouchers), and the contracting and privatization of public services. We show how these cases differ from the housing bubble of 1997-2007, how they differ from each other, and the extent to which they can be considered policy bubbles. Last, we suggest this concept can help unify the policy process literature with the practice of policy evaluation and outline testable hypotheses for future research.
For many years, the scholarship of urban politics has drifted away from political science, both theoretically and methodologically. In this article, we systematically examine the boundary between urban political studies and the broader discipline of political science through an analysis of journal citations. We find that the analogy of a “black hole” is apt: No ideas escape the event horizon surrounding urban politics; furthermore, ideas from outside rarely penetrate the subfield's borders. Our evidence suggests that this is mostly due to a stunted solipsism that has engulfed too much of urban politics, but some of the blame must rest with the increasing insularity of political science. We suggest a research agenda that highlights the inherent dynamism in urban politics, and conclude with an endorsement of framework-driven citation analysis as a method of examining the flow of ideas across scholarly boundaries.
Media attention is fundamental to the policy process and policy change in punctuated equilibrium theory. In this literature, media attention is usually conceptualized as fomenting or contributing to shifts in attention, positive feedback, and large‐scale policy change. This article extends how we understand the role of the media and punctuated equilibrium by arguing that media coverage can also contribute to negative feedback and stability in the political system. Media attention should also slow down the speed of policymaking and the momentum for policy change as new policy participants and problem definitions enter the debate. Using event history analysis, this article tests the effects of media coverage on the length of time it takes legislation, once introduced, to become law for public laws from the 109th U.S. Congress (2005–06). Findings provide support for media attention “putting the brakes” on policymaking. Controlling for other factors, the speed of bill passage slows down as media attention increases. This effect decays over time for high levels of media coverage.
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