The Lifecycle of Public Policy: An Event History Analysis of Repeals to Landmark Legislative Enactments, 1951-2006

Abstract

The first stage in the policy lifecycle-creation-has garnered significant attention while the final stage-repeal-has received scarcely any. To reconcile this imbalance, an extensive data set recording repeals to landmark laws enacted from 1951 to 2006 was complied. Event history analysis yields three significant results. First, the incidence of repeal exhibits a regular pattern characterized by an increasing hazard immediately after enactment followed by institutionalization and a monotonically declining hazard. Second, divided government has a complementary effect on the policy process, simultaneously constraining lawmakers from reversing enacted policies while effecting more durable legislation over the long term. Thus, the negative effects of divided government on policy production are offset by a decrease in policy repeal. Third, polarization has a curvilinear effect on the risk of repeal. Moderate polarization facilitates coalition formation when enacting repeals while polarized and depolarized periods have an attenuating effect.

Does Separation of Powers Promote Stability and Moderation?

“…Party-line votes on significant issues suggest, though of course do not establish, more extreme redistribution. As for whether legislation adopted by unified governments is more vulnerable to repeal, although some preliminary empirical research on this point suggested the opposite (Maltzman and Shipan 2008), more recent research has found that legislation enacted under divided government is indeed more durable than legislation enacted under unified government (Ragusa 2010), which again is broadly consistent with the model's predictions (though certainly not conclusive).…”

“…Moreover, consistent with the model's predictions (and unsurprisingly) repeals are more likely following a change in the partisan control of the government (Berry, Burden and Howell 2010), but-also consistent with the model's predictions-repeals are less likely during periods of divided government (Ragusa 2010). 35 35 As noted above, partisan unity or division may not correlate perfectly with the sort of unity or division that is relevant here, but it its likely somewhat correlated.…”

“…Nonetheless, there is some suggestive evidence that dynamics of the sort predicted by the model are plausible. First, at least in the U.S. federal system, despite the common misperception that government programs are "immortal," repeals or major revisions of the statutes that create such programs (including redistributive programs) are in fact fairly common (Berry, Burden and Howell 2010;Corder 2004;Maltzman and Shipan 2008;Ragusa 2010). …”

Policy Responsiveness in Local Government

“…Counties drop out of the analysis after they adopt a policy. In this research the authors employ event history analysis, an analytical technique that is capable of producing meaningful results in models of rare events (Box-Steffensmeier and Jones 1997), and thus has been found useful by policy scholars studying policy adoption and policy change (Berry and Berry 1990;Hays and Glick 1997;Mintrom 1997;Ragusa 2010;Shipan and Volden 2006). Additionally, event history analyses explicitly model the effect of time and thus are more appropriate than standard regression approaches for handling serial autocorrelation that results from including covariates with correlated errors due to temporal patterns (Tabachnick and Fidell 2013).…”

Innovations in climate policy: conclusions and new directions

“…It may be that late adopters, by building on the experiences of first adopters, achieve more effective and longlasting change (Glick and Hays 1991, p. 837). Or are new policies quickly amended (Ragusa 2010) and maybe even totally dismantled ?…”