Policy Regime Decay

Abstract

This paper develops the concept of policy regime decay to examine what happens when the political foundations of public policies break down. Policy regime decay consists of an erosion of consensus over policy goals, an unraveling of support coalitions, and an exhaustion of institutional capacity to structure the policy process. These elements of decay have observable implications and they inform an empirical strategy for a case study of U.S. food and agriculture policy. Using content analysis of congressional hearings, analysis of legislative roll calls, and policy agenda measures, the paper finds evidence of elite disagreement over nutrition programs, a partisan divide on Farm Bill votes, and a diffusion of committee jurisdiction over food and agriculture issues in Congress. These findings have implications for understanding the policy consequences of polarization, policy feedback effects, and the dynamics of policy regimes.

Path dependence and resistance to it in public policies: The case of charter school policies in the United States

“…What appeared here were not policies law makers largely ignored until the next big punctuation, so charter school policy does not fit the traditional punc-tuated equilibrium model. Nor is it an example of "policy drift" (Galvin & Hacker, 2020) or the policy regime "decay" (Sheingate, 2022). State charter school policies clearly evolved in particular directions, becoming increasingly similar to each other over time, changing as an ensemble reflecting structure and purpose, even if the rate of change diminished.…”

“…Proponents of punctuated equilibrium theory, most notably Baumgartner and Jones (1993), argue with evidence that many policies do not change meaningfully between punctuations. However, Patashnik (2008), Galvin and Hacker (2020), Sheingate (2022), and Brown (2020) all find evidence of policies continuing to shift, change, and decay in the years after enactment, suggesting that we cannot assume that policies are stable between the big bursts of change. Perhaps the real question is why does change sometimes continue to happen while at other times it does not.…”

Understanding policy influence in hybrid regimes: Insights from a qualitative study of policy advice in Ukraine and Moldova

“…On the other hand, the greater polarization of the political system in Moldova and, to a lesser extent, in Ukraine, in which pro-Russian and pro-European political forces still credibly compete for political power, allows for the coexistence of fundamentally differing views on a number of issues making subsystems substantially more ideationally contested than in many Western democracies. Understanding the consequences of such political polarization for policy advisory influence could be relevant to a wider set of countries, including democracies like the United States, where the mainstream political landscape is highly polarized (Sheingate, 2022).…”

Neopatrimonialism in the 2020 Regional Head Elections in the Power Cube Perspective

“…Based on the explanation above, it can be understood that neopatrimonialism can define the practice of kinship politics that occurs in Indonesia. Even in an implementation manner, neopatrimonialism is a manifestation of power relations that are not only owned by formal state institutions, but also by other actors outside the state system (Sheingate, 2020�. If this practice continues to take root due to weak party regeneration, the potential impacts that will be generated are:…”