Stability and change in the public’s policy agenda: a punctuated equilibrium approach

Abstract

Much research within the punctuated equilibrium framework demonstrated that policy agendas are invariably punctuated, due in part to cognitive and institutional frictions that constitute barriers to change in attention. While the bulk of past scholarship explored the extent to which institutional friction varies by organizational design, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the empirical examination of the cognitive aspect of disproportionate information processing. In an attempt to close this gap, I utilize a newly available dataset that codes nearly a million Americans’ responses to the ‘most important problem’ question from 1939 to 2015 to analyze the distribution of annual changes in the policy priorities of the American public. Drawing on the punctuated equilibrium theory literature, I argue and show that punctuations in the public’s policy priorities are more severe and frequent than those in institutional agendas. These results emphasize the need for a more subtle treatment of disproportionate information processing within the public, calling for relaxing the implicit assumption that cognitive friction is constant within organizations and across issues.

Letters to leaders: Political participation and punctuated equilibrium theory

“…These topics were consistently in Mr Howard's mailbag, throughout the period under study, reducing the level of punctuation. This is consistent with other CAPbased punctuated equilibrium research (Dowding & Martin, 2017;Yildirim, 2022), which has found less punctuations in macroeconomics, because of it is more consistently on the agenda, reducing the capacity for high levels of fluctuation. Once a topic is more consistently on the political agenda, it is likely to be easier for an individual to pay attention to it -there is more information available, reducing the transaction costs.…”

“…Since being first identified in the United States of America (Baumgartner & Jones, 1991), the research has spread significantly: across countries and regions (e.g. USA, France, Hong Kong, Turkey, Russia and the EU -see (Yildirim, 2022)); across different regime types (Baumgartner et al, 2017;Chan & Zhao, 2016;Lam & Chan, 2015); across policy areas (tobacco (Givel, 2006), foreign policy (Joly & Richter, 2019), drug policy (Rychert & Wilkins, 2018) and policy disasters (Fagan, 2021)); and across stages in the policy process (election results, media coverage, party platforms, bill introductions, hearings, budgets -see Baumgartner et al (2009).…”

Institutional shifts and punctuated patterns in digital policy

“…First, we analyze the distribution of the change score to map the general pattern of the evolution of digital policy Vannoni, 2018). An incremental process is associated with a normal distribution , while a punctuated process is associated with a leptokurtic distribution in which the central peak represents the equilibrium and the fat tails the punctuations Yildirim, 2022). This analysis can be done in two ways.…”

“…First, we explore which mechanisms (i.e., positive or negative feedback) occur during the analyzed period via a distributional application of the PET (e.g., Jones & Baumgartner, 2005). This is done through leveraging data from budgets, regulation and media coverage (Baumgartner et al, 2009; Yildirim, 2022). Second, we gain insights in the entities and activities engaging in the established mechanisms via an explaining‐outcome congruence case‐study (Beach & Pedersen, 2016; George & Bennett, 2005).…”

Punctuated equilibrium and the dynamics of political participation: the case of letter writing

“…Since being first identified in the United States of America (Baumgartner and Jones 1991), the research has spread significantly: across countries and regions (e.g. USA, France, Hong Kong, Turkey, Russia and the EU -see (Yildirim 2022)); across different regime types (Baumgartner et al 2017;Chan and Zhao 2016;Lam and Chan 2015); across policy areas (tobacco (Givel 2006), foreign policy (Joly and Richter 2019), drug policy (Rychert and Wilkins 2018) and policy disasters (Fagan 2021)); and across stages in the policy process (election results, media coverage, party platforms, bill introductions, hearings, budgetssee Baumgartner et al (2009)).…”