Representative systems and policy punctuations

Fagan, E. J.; Jones, Bryan D.; Wlezien, Christopher

doi:10.4324/9780203733202-3

Cited by 8 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…The efficiency of representational systems centers on the seamlessness with which public opinion is transmitted into the decision-making process. Fagan, Jones, and Wlezien (2017) address the connection between policy punctuations and representational efficiency directly, and show that in systems where institutional features, such as executive dominance, electoral systems, and federalism, impede that translation, policy punctuations seem to be more severe.…”

Section: Incentives To Solve Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Policy Punctuations

Jones¹,

Epp²,

Baumgartner³

2019

irpp

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Do democracies perform better than more autocratic political systems? Most existing literature focuses on single issues, such as maintaining the peace, avoiding famines, or promoting stable economic growth. The key to policy success for all these and other issues is adaptive policymaking in complex, dynamic environments. Relying on theory and empirical tests from policy process studies, we focus on extreme policy punctuations as indicators of maladaptive policymaking. We conceive of a continuum from the most open democracies to the most closed authoritarian systems, with intermediate forms of less open democracies, hybrid regimes, and less closed authoritarian systems. Based on a review of the existing literature, we extract four factors that seem to affect maladaptive and hence more punctuated policymaking: friction imposed by formal rules and informal norms on the policymaking process, the absence of incentives to address problems, centralization in policymaking, and lack of diversity in channels of information. Many of these factors cluster, so it is difficult to discern their specific effects, but our approach allows a start at doing so.

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Section: Incentives To Solve Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Policy Punctuations

Jones¹,

Epp²,

Baumgartner³

2019

irpp

Self Cite

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“…Numerous studies find that governments and parties respond to changes in public priorities in Western democracies (Bevan & Jennings, 2014; Chaqués‐Bonafont & Palau, 2011; Jones et al, 2009). Responsiveness tends to decrease when institutional friction is high and democratic accountability is low (Fagan et al, 2017), but responsiveness to public issue priorities has not been tested in non‐Western countries, where governments may have a different relationship with public priorities.…”

Section: Mapping Executive Attention In Brazilmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, agenda‐setting models were originally developed to deal with the U.S. political system, which has specific characteristics. Most U.S. models were replicated in several Western contexts, but scholars have found some interesting variation in different institutional contexts (see Fagan, Jones, & Wlezien, 2017). We might expect even more variation in non‐Western contexts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy Change in Brazil: New Challenges for Policy Analysis in Latin America

Brasil¹,

Capella²,

Fagan³

2020

Latin American Policy

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From the emergence of punctuated equilibrium theory in the United States in the mid‐1990s to the creation of the Comparative Agendas Project, scholars have predicted that punctuated equilibrium theory and related agenda‐setting theories can be applied across all systems. Yet most of the literature to date has focused on Western countries. The Brazilian Agendas Project has now made data available on a wide range of policy inputs and outputs, the first such data available in Latin America. The objective of this article is introduce the data from the Brazilian project, justify the choices made in collecting and coding it, and present descriptive analyses on the dynamics of governmental attention toward different policy issues over time.

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“…They present results that show that there is a significant variation among democracies when it comes to budgetary punctuation. Similarly, Fagan et al (2017) examine if differences in representational systems can affect budget punctuations. They focus on responsivity to public opinion and investigate whether less major punctuation occurs in political systems that are more responsive to public opinion.…”

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This score of 0.467 for 1990-2013 is also very close to the results bySebők and Berki (2017) with regards to final accounts (as opposed to appropriations) in Hungary for the period 1991-2013.7 An optimal research design could make use of a more nuanced analysis than the one presented here. Ideally, one could rely on a modelling strategy that is similar to the research design ofFagan et al (2017). However, it is important to note that the limited availability of original sources and the generally less developed research infrastructure (such as pre-existing data sets) hinders such an approach.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Sebők

Berki

2018

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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The article investigates the dynamics of budgeting and its explanatory factors in Hungary based on a new database. Previous work for the period between 1991 and 2013 demonstrated that year-on-year changes in budgetary allocations by policy topics show a leptokurtic distribution. This distribution of policy changes is generally associated with the notion of punctuated equilibrium. We extend this analysis to cover over 155 years of Hungarian budgetary history. Our investigation of a database of 2580 spending category observations (covering the period between 1868 and 2013) lends support for the theory of punctuated equilibrium. We also analysed the impact of political regimes on budgetary dynamics. Here we provided empirical evidence for the validity of the informational advantage hypothesis which states that democracies will show lower level of kurtosis than other political regimes. This finding is also in line with the results of available comparative studies.

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Representative systems and policy punctuations

Cited by 8 publications

References 1 publication

Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Policy Punctuations

Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Policy Punctuations

Policy Change in Brazil: New Challenges for Policy Analysis in Latin America

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

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