Theories of policy change and variation reconsidered: a prospectus for the political economy of public policy

Abstract

Studies of decision-making in public policy may be conceived as three distinct ages of theory building and testing. The first was the classic period of studies of decisionmaking and rationality; the second was the age of synthesis when theories of decisionmaking were blended into accounts of agenda setting. The third-which is starting to take shape-is the age of the political economy of public policy, drawing on models and methods that have been applied to the study of international relations and comparative politics, which are increasingly addressing issues in public policy. The paper's argument offers a challenge to public policy scholars to use theory and approaches from political economy and to integrate them with classic and synthetic approaches. Insights from public policy approaches from the first two ages could also inform the political economy of public policy. The paper contains a review of the development of public policy theory in the 1990s; it provides an account of the recent period as one of relative stability; it then presents work in comparative political economy as examples of research on public policy.Keywords Public policy Á Political economy Á Decision-making So far there have been two ages in the study of decision-making in public policy: the firstthe classic period-was when key terms were defined. Debates took place about the nature of decision-making and the extent to which full information prevails. It was the time when incrementalism, the rational model, the stages heuristic and sectoral representations of decision-making processes were elaborated, notably set out as the second two lens in Allison's influential Essence of Decision (1971). The second and synthetic age was of complex accounts of decision-making, which produced the policy advocacy coalition framework, the garbage can and policy window metaphors, and the punctuated equilibrium model-the currency of many of today's policy scholars. In these frameworks of analysis,

A Political Economy Approach to the Grammar of Institutions: Theory and Methods

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Bridging international political economy and public policy and administration research on central banking

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