Culture and Legal Policy Punctuation in the Supreme Court's Gender Discrimination Cases

Robinson, Rod

doi:10.1111/psj.12075

Cited by 26 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…This is not to suggest that CT has everything that is missing from other approaches to policy theory, or that the theory does not itself have missing, under‐ and undefined, or otherwise lacking elements. As proponents recognize, there is significant work to do to develop and test CT further (see Coyle, ; Jenkins‐Smith et al., ; Jones, ; Kahan, ; Klitgaard, ; Lachapelle et al., ; Ney & Verweij, ; Ripberger et al., ; Robinson, ; Swedlow, , , , , , ; Swedlow & Wyckoff, ; Swedlow et al., ; Thompson et al., ; Verweij, Lujan, & Nowacki, ; Verweij et al., ; Weare et al., ). But even in its current state of development, CT has many elements that can be very useful to existing approaches to policy theory.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More generally, events and behavior that are anomalous from one cultural perspective and/or better explained or understood from another can be catalysts of cultural change and policy change. Because these anomalies or “cultural surprises” take predictable forms for each culture (even as their mechanisms and timing need to be better understood), they can be used to specify the causes of policy and other kinds of political change (for a typology of such cultural surprises, see Thompson et al., , p. 71, Figure 4; see also 6, , , , ; Chai & Wildavsky, ; Coyle & Wildavsky, ; Douglas, ; Ellis, ; Ellis & Wildavsky, ; Hammer, ; Jenkins‐Smith et al., ; Lockhart, , , ; Malecha, ; Peck & 6, ; Robinson, ; Swedlow, , , , , , ; Weare et al., ; Wildavsky, , , ).…”

Section: An Introduction To Cultural Theory and Its Theory Of Policy mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Advancing Policy Theory with Cultural Theory: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Swedlow¹

2014

Policy Studies Journal

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Cultural Theory (CT) is a constructivist theory, developed by Mary Douglas, Aaron Wildavsky, and others, that seeks to participate in the positivist project of discovering, explaining, and predicting regularities in human behavior. Special Issue contributions and this introduction suggest some ways in which this theory can help advance policy studies. One way CT can help is by further specifying other approaches to policy theory. Thus, Hank Jenkins-Smith and his collaborators argue (and with respect to belief systems demonstrate) that the theory can be used to specify belief systems, coalitions, and causes of policy change in the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF); Rob Robinson uses CT to specify further both sources of resistance to policy change and sources of dramatic policy change in Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET); and Christopher Weare, Paul Lichterman, and Nicole Esparza use the theory to specify sources of collaboration in policy networks as well as sources of network dissolution. Other contributors argue and/or demonstrate that CT can help specify the culturally pluralized conditions for successful policy deliberation, the cultural sources of policy narratives, and how cultural biases are likely to interact with policy frames. This Special Issue invites policy scholars to consider how the theory might help advance their research interests and the field.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: An Introduction To Cultural Theory and Its Theory Of Policy mentioning

confidence: 99%

Advancing Policy Theory with Cultural Theory: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Swedlow¹

2014

Policy Studies Journal

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“…One promising explanation is cultural shifts. Building on recent research which finds that cultural change can create the conditions for agenda shifts and policy punctuation (Hong and Sohn 2014;Robinson 2014), I contend that cultural change can affect how policy images are received. Ultimately, subsystem control is a function of the cognitive limits on policymakers' attention: negative policy images draw attention and increase the possibility of conflict expansion (Jones and Baumgartner 2005), while positive policy images deflect scrutiny.…”

Section: Policy Subsystems Policy Images and Cultural Theorymentioning

confidence: 97%

Cultural Change and Policy Images in Policy Subsystems

Robinson

2015

Public Administration

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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...

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“…Cultural Theory has been employed to study various aspects of public policy. A 2014 special issue of Policy Studies Journal included contributions examining how Cultural Theory can explain elements of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Jenkins‐Smith, Silva, Gupta, & Ripberger, ), Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (Robinson, ), policy networks (Weare, Lichterman, & Esparza, ), policy narratives (Jones, ), and framing (Lachapelle, Montpetit, & Gauvin, ). Our aim here is to examine how Cultural Theory might enrich our understanding of another major policy framework, institutional analysis.…”

Section: Cultural Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Deciding How to Decide: Cultural Theory and Rule Making in Collaborative Watershed Organizations

Horndeski¹,

Koontz²

2018

Policy Studies Journal

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The growing field of collaborative governance has long sought to explain processes of collective decision making. Insights from institutional analysis highlight the influence of rules in shaping collective decisions. Yet, less is known about how such rules are created; in other words, how collaborative organizations decide how to decide. By drawing on concepts from Cultural Theory, we examine the connections between worldviews and decision rules across four collaborative watershed organizations in Ohio, United States. Results from this comparative case analysis indicate correlations between the group dimension of worldview and decision rules about choice, as well as between the grid dimension of worldview and two different types of decision rules, choice and aggregation. These results highlight the explanatory value of integrating aspects of Cultural Theory with the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. Results also suggest how governments might more effectively engage with collaborative organizations. KEY WORDS: partnerships, worldviews, IAD framework, watershed 长期以来‚协同治理领域不断寻求对集体决策过程进行解释。制度分析的见解突出了规则在塑造集体决策上的影响。然而‚我们对于这样的规则是如何产生的‚或者说‚协同组织如何决定他们的决策‚却知之甚少。通过借鉴文化理论中的概念‚我们研究了俄亥俄州中部四个协同流域组织的世界观和其决策规则之间的联系。该比较案例分析的结果表明‚世界观的群体维数与选择的决策规则之间具有相关性‚世界观的网格维数与两种不同类型的决策规则、选择和聚集之间也具有相关性。这些结果突出了将文化理论的各个方面和制度分析与发展框架相结合的解释价值。此外‚我们的结果还显示了政府怎样才能更有效地与协同组织合作。Collective action for natural resource management has long been of interest to policy scholars. As complex, interconnected challenges arise, collaborative and community-based approaches are increasingly used. A fruitful way to understand such approaches is institutional analysis, which provides conceptual tools for analyzing interactions among the physical world, community attributes, and institutions that affect actions. Of particular attention in such studies is the set of rules that shape human behavior. While ample scholarship has examined how rules affect collective action, less is known about what factors affect the kinds of rules that are created. At the same time, a tradition of scholarship in Cultural Theory has explained the role Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework (Ostrom, 1990), and the group and grid dimensions developed in Cultural Theory (Douglas, 1970). Organizations with a high group level are linked to prohibitions on members speaking for the organization. Organizations with a high grid level are associated with high-barrier boundary rules for members seeking leadership positions within the organization and use of majority voting aggregation rules.The results of this study expand our knowledge about how groups decide which decision-making rules to adopt and use, and how cultural worldviews are connected to these rules. We see both theoretical and practical value in making this connection: (i) theory building for the IAD framework: this study helps fill a gap between the framework's treatment of attributes of community and rules in use by suggesting that world view-an attribute of community-affects rules in use; (ii) empirica...

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Culture and Legal Policy Punctuation in the Supreme Court's Gender Discrimination Cases

Cited by 26 publications

References 66 publications

Advancing Policy Theory with Cultural Theory: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Advancing Policy Theory with Cultural Theory: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Cultural Change and Policy Images in Policy Subsystems

Deciding How to Decide: Cultural Theory and Rule Making in Collaborative Watershed Organizations

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