Punctuated equilibrium in democracy and autocracy: an analysis of Hungarian budgeting between 1868 and 2013

Sebők, Miklós; Berki, Tamás

doi:10.1017/s1755773918000115

Cited by 28 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…We coded thousands of documents produced by these venues to generate 11 series of yearly policy priorities during the Hu and Xi administrations. Consistent with widely applied procedures (see Jones & Baumgartner, 2005; Baumgartner et al, 2009; Baumgartner et al 2017; Jones et al, 2009; Sebők & Berki, 2018), each data point is categorized into discrete policy topics. Our analysis follows the official policy classification where feasible.…”

Section: Analysis and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elite bargains and policy priorities in authoritarian regimes: Agenda setting in China under Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao

2020

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What explains agenda outcomes in authoritarian regimes? Existing research attributes policy priorities to either the autocrat's survival needs or the co‐optation of external interests. The former leaves out policy choices beyond the calculus of regime survival; and the latter elite power play that bears more immediately on government priorities than activities at the fringe. We hypothesize that officials working under autocrats who seek co‐optative elite bargains are more likely to prioritize domain‐specific concerns and less inclined to disrupt the status quo than those under leaders who rule with coercion. Our comparison of the Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping administrations of China reveals patterns consistent with these hypotheses: Hu's “steward” leadership is associated with increased agenda inertia and diversity, whereas policy priorities change in greater frequency and converge to a stronger focus under Xi's “strongman” rule. These contrasts are also clearer in policy venues closer to the central leader's direct control.

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Section: Analysis and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elite bargains and policy priorities in authoritarian regimes: Agenda setting in China under Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao

2020

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“…Yet, when it comes to another region with a turbulent past and multiple regimes changes, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), similar studies are few and far between (for two exceptions see (Boda and Patkós 2018;Sebők and Berki 2018). In light of this gap in the literature, the dual purpose of this article is to conceptualise policy dynamics for settings beyond liberal democracy and to extend the external validity of previous research on policy dynamics both in a geographical and historical sense.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…We undertake this challenge by investigating four hypotheses derived from the relevant literature. We first test three hypotheses originally formulated by Baumgartner et al (2009: 608-609) and Baumgartner, Carammia, Epp, Noble, Rey, and Yildirim (2017), as well as a fourth one based on Sebők and Berki (2018).…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Punctuated equilibrium and progressive friction in socialist autocracy, democracy and hybrid regimes

2022

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The analysis of public policy agendas in comparative politics has been somewhat limited in terms of geography, time frame and political system, with studies on full-blown autocracies and hybrid regimes few and far between. This article addresses this gap by comparing policy dynamics in three Hungarian regimes over 73 years. Besides our theoretical contribution related to policy-making in Socialist autocracy and illiberal democracy, we also test hypotheses related to non-democratic regimes. We find that – similarly to developed democracies – policy agendas in autocracies are mostly stable with occasional but large-scale “punctuations”. Our data also confirms that these punctuations are more pronounced in non-democratic polities. However, based on our results, illiberal political systems, such as the hybrid regime of Viktor Orbán, are difficult to pin down on such a clear-cut continuum between democracy and autocracy as the level of punctuation differs by policy agendas from parliamentary debates to budgets.

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“…If so, one would expect higher policy instability in autocracies. Indeed, both Baumgartner et al (2017) and Sebők and Berki (2018) found that policy punctuations are higher in autocracies.…”

Section: Contentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By procedures and actors we describe formally or informally institutionalized processes that channel policymaking from agenda-setting throughout the whole policy cycle; the venues that provide policy actors access to the process; and the number and composition of policy actors having an influence on policy outputs and outcomes. Procedures employed under different regimes have spurred less academic interest than the content of policies until recently when a number of publications have treated the issue from different angles (Bartha et al, 2020;see Baumgartner et al, 2017;Boda & Patkós, 2018a;Guy & Jon, 2019;Howlett & Tosun, 2019;Sebők & Berki, 2018).…”

Section: Procedures and Actorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Political Regimes on Policy Agendas: A Theoretical Framework

Boda

2021

Policy Agendas in Autocracy, and Hybrid Regimes

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Policy dynamics refer to the patterns of stability and change of policies. Jones et al. (2019) argue that policy dynamics varies with regime types: policy punctuations, that is, large-scale policy changes are higher and more frequent in non-democratic (or: 'unfree') regimes which they interpret as a sign of a deficiently adaptive system of policymaking. Adaptive policymaking refers to the ability to address relevant policy problems while avoiding "overly large and erratic shifts in policy commitments" (Jones et al., 2019: 9).Both stability and change are needed in policymaking. Stability provides a reliable institutional background for policy actors -it is not desirable that laws and regulations change frequently because this would bring unpredictability for stakeholders. However, policies sometime do have to be updated or even radically reformulated, because external circumstances change, technology develops, political preferences and values evolve. Therefore, each government develops certain capacities embodied in institutional rules and practices to deal with the dual challenge of policy stability and change (Weaver & Rockman, 1993). 2019) argue that policy dynamics measured in terms of punctuation is an indicator of the quality of policy making. The empirical case of lower policy punctuation in democracies brings further evidence to those studies which uphold that democratic regimes provide better governance and more adaptive policies (Robinson & Acemoglu, 2012). The question is, which mechanisms realize the effect of the regime on policies. 2019) present four basic mechanisms: friction, incentives/representation, centralization, and information. Friction is the institutional resistance to change and the authors advance empirical evidence that institutional friction in the policy process is higher under non-democratic circumstances (this finding is corroborated by many other studies, such asSebők & Berki, 2018). But why is it lower in democracies than in autocracies? The thesis of 'institutional efficiency' (Baumgartner et al., 2017) of non-democratic regimes looks just as convincing: the relevant policy actors are much less numerous in autocracies and the lack of political and institutional checks and balances render radical policy reforms easier to implement. Why do 'efficient' autocracies still face larger friction? Incentives, centralization and information provide the explanation. Jones et al. ( Jones et al. (Incentives are set by democratic accountability in a way that motivates decision-makers to address social problems in an effective way. In a democracy politicians are under the constant scrutiny of the citizens who will decide at the end of the electoral cycle whether to trust them for yet another electoral period or to replace them. Therefore, democratic decision-makers have strong incentives to take signals about policy problems seriously, and to process and, possibly, solve them. Although a certain level of friction and policy punctuation is characteristic of the democratic policymaking process ...

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Punctuated equilibrium in democracy and autocracy: an analysis of Hungarian budgeting between 1868 and 2013

Cited by 28 publications

References 23 publications

Elite bargains and policy priorities in authoritarian regimes: Agenda setting in China under Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao

Elite bargains and policy priorities in authoritarian regimes: Agenda setting in China under Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao

Punctuated equilibrium and progressive friction in socialist autocracy, democracy and hybrid regimes

The Effect of Political Regimes on Policy Agendas: A Theoretical Framework

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