Cultural Change and Policy Images in Policy Subsystems

Abstract

theory of conflict expansion highlights the importance of policy imagery in the maintenance of policy subsystems, as a sharp increase in negative imagery can drive conflict expansion and subsystem dissolution. However, we still know relatively little about what drives rapid shifts in image valence. In this study, I examine how cultural change affects receptiveness to policy images, drawing on the cultural theory (CT) developed by Douglas and Wildavsky. Affecting both perception and risk assessment, cultural commitments impact how policy images are received. Returning to the policy subsystem anchored in the Atomic Energy Commission, I find that its imagery -well suited for an earlier cultural milieu -created negative associations for egalitarians, who were increasingly prevalent during this time frame. As my study shows, CT can add to the study of administration by helping us better understand, categorize, and predict which images and institutions may be endangered by specific cultural changes.By definition, democracies should be responsive to the voting public. In practice, however, there are multiple places within the administrative state where a small number of political actors effectively control policy outcomes, belying democratic control. Referred to as sub-governments or policy subsystems, these networks are highly resistant to outside influence, relying on close relationships between executive agencies, key members of Congress, and interest groups to maintain the policy status quo (Thurber 1996).While subsystems challenge the premise of democratic control, they are neither immortal nor invulnerable. In a key contribution to the policy and public administration literature, Baumgartner and Jones examined the case of nuclear power, specifically the policy subsystem anchored in the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which controlled nuclear policy in the United States from 1947 to 1974 (Baumgartner and Jones 1991). Building on Schattschneider's observations that opponents of a particular policy seek to disrupt the status quo by broadening the scope of debate (Schattschneider 1960), Baumgartner and Jones proffered a theory of conflict expansion, in which policy entrepreneurs successfully exploit subsystem weaknesses to create a feedback cycle of polarization and salience, drawing in additional actors to destabilize existing arrangements. Importantly, they found that conflict expansion was preceded by a shift in the valence of policy images: the mix of messages and values that colour policy perception. In the case of the AEC, a rapid growth in negative perceptions of nuclear power thus played a key role in catalysing the expansion of conflict.Conflict expansion remains a persuasive explanation of how subsystems can be altered or undone, as well as an important component of punctuated equilibrium theory (PET), a theory of change in which policy or institutional adjustments are generally incremental but occasionally dramatic Jones 1991, 2009;Jones and Baumgartner 2012). However, there remains considerable uncertaint...

Advocacy coalitions, beliefs and climate change policy in the United States

“…Sotirov and Winkel suggest that shared or complementary core beliefs are key in enabling strategic cross‐coalition alliances, while Jenkins‐Smith et al argue that understanding deep core beliefs in terms of cultural theory holds ‘considerable promise for enhancing the conceptual coherence and explanatory reach of belief systems within the ACF’ (Jenkins‐Smith et al , p. 485). The benefits of CT in understanding different elements of governance, such as variance in policy perceptions and coordination between policy actors and sectors, have also been recently addressed by Heims (), Linsley et al () and Robinson ().…”

Interest groups and policy volatility

“…Policy entrepreneurs wanting to change the status quo direct attention to stable policy images to expand the number of actors involved in a policy domain. Policy images offer factual information and emotional appeals (Robinson, ); this information focuses attention on particular policy problems. Issue expansion destroys the existing policy image, introduces new participants, and unlocks the policy monopoly.…”

Introduction to the Symposium

“…However, they reverse Robinson's dynamic. Robinson () follows policy ideas from changing citizens' attitudes, taken as given, through to policy‐makers. Gastil et al consider how far policy‐makers can create deliberative forums in which citizens' attitudes might change – a puzzle often important in legitimating policy change (Ney and Verweij ).…”

“…This institutional theory of cultural biases further proposes that events and behaviour which are anomalous from one cultural perspective and/or better explained or understood from another, can be catalysts for the feedback dynamics by which cultural change among individuals and institutions is driven. Because these 'cultural surprises' ) -which may be generated endogenously within any one form or by countervailing reactions between forms -have predictable sources for each culture, they can be used to specify causes of 'punctuated equilibria' in organizational and policy change (for a typology of such cultural surprises, see Thompson et al 1990, p. 71, figure 4; see also Wildavsky 1985Wildavsky , 2001Chai and Coyle and Wildavsky 1987;Ellis and Wildavsky 1990;Hammer 1994;Malecha 1994;Lockhart 1997Lockhart , 1999Lockhart , 2001Ellis 1998;Wildavsky 1998;6 2011Swedlow 2011bSwedlow , 2012Jenkins-Smith et al 2014;Robinson 2014Robinson , 2016Weare et al 2014).…”