Punctuated Equilibrium and Congressional Budgeting

Robinson, Scott E.; Caver, Floun’say R.

doi:10.1177/106591290605900114

Cited by 19 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Our findings and expectations are consistent with two recent arguments put forth by Robinson and various collaborators in an important string of contributions (Robinson, ; Robinson & Caver, ; Robinson, Caver, Meier, & O'Toole, ; Robinson et al, ). This is the institutional argument: certain forms of institutional structure, such as centralization, may be more prone to generate punctuations than other structures.…”

Section: Hypothesessupporting

confidence: 93%

Complexity, Capacity, and Budget Punctuations

Epp¹,

Baumgartner²

2016

Policy Studies Journal

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The budgeting literature has long focused on "institutional friction" as a cause of ubiquitous punctuated equilibrium (PE) findings. A recent wave of scholarship looks to identify specific institutional mechanisms that affect the number of punctuations in policy outputs. We contribute to this growing body of research by focusing on the complexity of the institutional environment surrounding a policy area as well as that of the government as a whole. These factors have opposite effects: the more complex a policy area, the greater the likelihood of extreme spending changes. But, higher institutional capacity in general leads to greater stability. To test these ideas, we develop a novel index of budgetary change that balances the conceptual importance of extreme changes while analyzing the entire distribution of budget changes, not only the tails. In addition, we also demonstrate that findings are robust to a number of important distinctions, such as between series associated with slowly moving demographic trends or quickly moving stochastic events. We, therefore, demonstrate the robustness of important findings from the established literature, add a new measure of the dependent variable, and push the literature forward with a new focus on issue complexity and institutional capacity.

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Section: Hypothesessupporting

confidence: 93%

Complexity, Capacity, and Budget Punctuations

Epp¹,

Baumgartner²

2016

Policy Studies Journal

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“…The ambition of this paper is to study the link between changes in congressional attention and changes in federal spending. Ample evidence has been produced on the long‐ and short‐term dynamics of attention and spending, respectively (Jones & Baumgartner, 2005a, 2005b; Jones & Breunig, 2007; Jones, Sulkin, & Larsen, 2003; Robinson & Caver, 2006; Robinson, Caver, Meier, & O'Toole, 2007). However, the relationship between these two variables has yet to be specified theoretically and justified empirically.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Attention and Public Spending in the United States

Mortensen

2009

Policy Studies Journal

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According to Jones and Baumgartner's disproportionate information processing model, it is crucial to study fluctuations in congressional attention over time and across policy issues to understand congressional policy decisions including decisions on the federal budget. Drawing on classical ideas about reelection-oriented behavior, on the one hand, and the blocking power of federal agencies, on the other, this paper extends and specifies the attention-spending predictions of the disproportionate information processing model. Specifically, spending effects of congressional attention shifts are argued to be crucially dependent on both the spending preferences expressed by the U.S. public and on pressure from spending advocates. An empirical evaluation of the association between changes in congressional attention measures and federal budget appropriations across 12 spending domains and 33 years supports this conditional hypothesis derived from the extended disproportionate information processing model.

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“…Moreover, even within the family of democratic political systems, more openness in information processing may be associated with smoother adjustments and hence fewer policy punctuations. In a study of reforms to increase openness in the U.S. Congress in the 1970s, Robinson and Caver (2006) found reduced budgetary punctuations after the reforms were put in place. Given the shifts toward more centralized party control in Congress after 1995, it would be instructive to see if policy punctuations have increased since then.…”

Section: Informationmentioning

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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Punctuated Equilibrium and Congressional Budgeting

Cited by 19 publications

References 5 publications

Complexity, Capacity, and Budget Punctuations

Complexity, Capacity, and Budget Punctuations

Political Attention and Public Spending in the United States

Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Policy Punctuations

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