Agendas and Instability in American Politics, Second Edition

Frank R. Baumgartner, Bryan D. Jones

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780226039534
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

When Agendas and Instability in American Politics appeared fifteen years ago, offering a profoundly original account of how policy issues rise and fall on the national agenda, the Journal of Politics predicted that it would "become a landmark study of public policy making and American politics." That prediction proved true and, in this long-awaited second edition, Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner refine their influential argument and expand it to illuminate the workings of democracies beyond the United States.The authors retain all the substance of their contention that short-term, single-issue analyses cast public policy too narrowly as the result of cozy and dependable arrangements among politicians, interest groups, and the media. Jones and Baumgartner provide a different interpretation by taking the long view of several issues—including nuclear energy, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safety—to demonstrate that bursts of rapid, unpredictable policy change punctuate the patterns of stability more frequently associated with government. Featuring a new introduction and two additional chapters, this updated edition ensures that their findings will remain a touchstone of policy studies for many years to come.

PART ONE

Theoretical Beginnings

We propose a punctuated equilibrium model of policy change in American politics, based on the emergence and the recession of policy issues from the public agenda. During periods when issues emerge, new institutional structures are often created that remain in place for decades, structuring participation and creating the illusion of equilibrium. Later agenda access can destroy these institutions, however, replacing them with others. In our first three chapters, we outline the theoretical focus that drives the research. First, chapter 1 discusses agendas and instability in politics. Chapter 2 discusses the importance of how issues are portrayed and which institutions have jurisdiction over them. The interaction of these two forces drives the punctuated equilibrium mechanism we describe. Finally, chapter 3 describes our quantitative and empirical approach to the study of policy change in America, comparing our approach with those of others.

1

Punctuated Equilibria in Politics

Does the American political system provide safe haven for privileged economic interests, or does it ensure competition among political ideas, constantly providing opportunities for those on the losing side of the political debate to reverse their fortunes? Is it conservative, resisting change through the complex institutions of separated powers and federalism, or does it provide numerous opportunities for policy entrepreneurs to try out new ideas? Do mass publics influence elite behavior, or do elites govern with little democratic accountability?

These are among the great questions of democratic theory endlessly debated by political scientists. In this book we show why both sides of each of these rhetorical questions have merit, but not at the same time and in the same place. We develop a model to account both for long periods of stability and domination of important policy areas by privileged groups of elites, and for rapid change in political outcomes, where apparently entrenched economic interests find themselves on the losing side of the political battle.

Many areas of the American political and economic system appear to provide continuing benefits to the same group of privileged elites, with few signs of change. Such arrangements have carried many different labels: policy subsystems; islands of functional power; systems of limited participation; iron triangles; power elites. Each of these terms suggests a structural arrangement that benefits elites. But these descriptions have been incomplete. Two things have been missing from descriptions of elite privilege. First, the manner in which ideas undergird these arrangements is seldom analyzed. Second, the longer-run fragility of these arrangements has often escaped students of the policy process.

In this book, we describe the conditions that often lead to the creation of policy monopolies—structural arrangements that are supported by powerful ideas. This subject has received much attention in political science. We also discuss the dynamics of decay in such systems, a topic that has received scant attention. Finally we address the conditions under which policy monopolies fail to form, that is, when other patterns of politics emerge. This is particularly common in large-scale policy problems where the political parties and major social groups disagree on potential solutions. We argue that all of these processes can be understood with reference to a single model of the political process, the agenda-setting model.

We show how the agenda-setting process implies that no single equilibrium could be possible in politics, and how the generation of new ideas makes many policy monopolies unstable in the long run. As disadvantaged policy entrepreneurs are successful in convincing others that their view of an issue is more accurate than the views of their opponents, they may achieve rapid success in altering public policy arrangements, even if these arrangements have been in place for decades. They need not alter the opinions of their adversaries; as new ways of understanding old political problems take hold, different policymakers and governmental institutions suddenly begin to claim jurisdiction over issues that previously had not interested them. The old policymaking institutions find themselves replaced or in competition with new bodies that favor different policy proposals. So agenda-setting has important policy consequences, and these are expected often to be dramatic reversals rather than only marginal revisions to the status quo. In the end, we depict a political system that displays considerable stability with regard to the manner in which it processes issues, but the stability is punctuated with periods of volatile change. Hence any study of the dynamics of American political institutions must be able to account for both long periods of stability and short, violent periods of change—again, with respect to the processing of issues, not in the basic constitutional framework.

In this book, we adopt an empirical focus, studying a number of important public policies over long periods of time. We compare the development of issues both over time and across areas, and we demonstrate the forces that create both incrementalism in many circumstances and rapid changes in others. We gather a broad range of both quantitative and qualitative information in order to demonstrate the validity of a single model of the policy process and of agenda-setting that can explain both stability and rapid change, since we believe that both of these features are important characteristics of how policies are made in the United States.

Governance and Agendas

Pluralist works such as those by Truman, or even Madison, have tended to assume that the mobilization of one group will lead to the countermobilization of another. In this book, we note some important instances where countermobilizations have occurred. As a description of the entire system of policymaking, however, this view is misleading. Major political decisions affecting the political system for decades to come are often made in the absence of countermobilization. Rather, waves of enthusiasm sweep through the political system as political actors become convinced of the value of some new policy. They create the institutions to pursue the policy, often in the absence of serious opposing voices. The political system may later settle into a period of incrementalism surrounding a new point, but we should not mistake this incrementalism for evidence of a true political equilibrium. Rather, it may be a structure-induced equilibrium, that is, one that relies on the continued power of certain political institutions (see Shepsle 1979). In the agenda-setting process, however, these institutional jurisdictions may be manipulated by strategic entrepreneurs (see Riker 1980). Thus, the same processes that create incrementalism in many areas of the economy may also create the opportunities for dramatic change.

One strong critique of the countermobilization thesis has been voiced by Grant McConnell (1967) and Theodore Lowi. Lowi (1979) decries the tendency of modem American pluralism to degenerate into “islands of functional power” (Sayre and Kaufman 1965) seemingly immune from popular control. Many political scientists have focused on the problem of differential intensities of preference in society and the consequent likelihood of preferential treatment for intense minorities over the public interest. This has particularly been a theme in studies of the policy process, where studies focusing on iron triangles, policy subsystems, and policy networks have long dominated. Such “policy monopolies” are indeed powerful. But they are also fundamentally unstable, as we argue in the coming pages.

To date, the study of policy subsystems has not been integrated with agenda-setting models. John Kingdon (1984) has developed an approach to the study of agendas that separates problems, solutions or policies, and opportunities, and analyzes the conditions under which all three “streams” come into phase. Kingdon provides a “close-up” view of the infusion of new ideas into the policy process and is convincing in his arguments that problems and solutions ought be analyzed separately in order to understand governmental decision-making. At the systems level, however, agenda-setting is part of the same process of policymaking that produces stability in other cases. New policies are not continually adopted because many are simply variants on a theme that has been pursued in the past. When a general principle of policy action is in place, policymaking tends to assume an incremental character. When new principles are under consideration, the policymaking process tends to be volatile, and Kingdon’s model is most relevant.

The American governmental structure is highly disaggregated. American public policy is primarily the sum of many actors in numerous “decisionmaking systems organized around discrete programs and issues” (Thurber 1991, 319). Each of these decisional systems may be characterized by domination by a single interest, by competition among interests, or by disintegration (Meier 1985). But each characterization is a snapshot of a dynamic process. Moreover, this process may be affected by either positive or negative-feedback at any of these points in time. When a system is subject to negative feedback, an initial disturbance becomes smaller as it works its way through time. In positive feedback, small disturbances become amplified, causing major disruptions as they operate across time. As Meier (1985) notes, these systems can be linked in complex networks, with events in one affecting events in another.

Policy subsystems are continually being created and destroyed in American politics. When they are strong, they may be able to enforce a conservative and incremental process. As they are being created or destroyed, however, changes can be dramatic and self-reinforcing. In sum, the American political system is a mosaic of continually reshaping systems of limited participation. Some are strong, others are weak; some are being created, and others are being destroyed at any given moment. These processes ride a longer wave of secular change that favors some ideas at some particular times, and therefore some policy monopolies, over others. Indeed, it has been assumed by some that the more open modem era of American politics, inaugurated by the 1960s, is inhospitable to policy monopolies. Yet a closer look suggests that many groups find niches within the governmental structure (Browne 1990). Nonetheless, it is not enough just to look at the “creative destruction” of policy monopolies; we must also examine the historical factors that make them possible at some times and infeasible at others.

Policy Monopolies

Every interest, every group, every policy entrepreneur has a primary interest in establishing a monopoly—a monopoly on political understandings concerning the policy of interest, and an institutional arrangement that reinforces that understanding. Nobody likes protracted conflict and continual competition. Much preferable to a system of constant conflict is one where each side retreats into a given area where its influence is uncontested. Obviously, convincing others that one group should be granted such a monopoly of influence may not be easy. However, policy monopolies abound in every political system. Experts in all areas spend much of their time convincing others that “outsiders” are not qualified to make decisions in a given area. This is usually accomplished by arguing that the questions to be decided are highly complex technical matters, that the decisions being made have few social impacts, or that those social impacts are neutral or unavoidable. So bankers claim their lending practices are based on neutral rules, doctors argue that accepted medical practices give them a clear guide on complex issues of life and death, and the military argues that it can be the best judge of the nation’s defense needs. Of course any “outsider” who dared question the judgments of the professionals in any of these areas would meet the hostility, indignation, and resentment of the experts who feel that they are the only ones knowledgeable enough to decide such things. Clearly, everyone wants a policy monopoly. Equally clearly, many groups have them, or have had them in the past.

Policy monopolies have two important characteristics. First, a definable institutional structure is responsible for policymaking, and that structure limits access to the policy process. Second, a powerful supporting idea is associated with the institution. These buttressing policy ideas are generally connected to core political values which can be communicated directly and simply through image and rhetoric. The best are such things as progress, participation, patriotism, independence from foreign domination, fairness, economic growth—things no one taken seriously in the political system can contest. If a group can convince others that their activities serve such lofty goals, then it may be able to create a policy monopoly. Once such positive understandings of public policy questions come to be accepted, government officials move to foster the development of the industry or practice involved. Of course the government is interested in fostering economic growth, in independence from foreigners, in high-quality education, in bringing “drug kingpins” to justice, and in a host of other things. The trick for policymakers is to convince others that their policy, program, or industry represents the solution to one of these long-standing policy problems (see Kingdon 1984).

Political scientists have studied what we have termed policy monopolies in a variety of settings and have used several different terms for the phenomenon, including iron triangles, policy whirlpools, and subsystem politics (Griffith 1939; Redford 1969). All have stressed the lack of interference by broader political forces in subsystems, and deference to the judgments of experts. None, however, has stressed the importance of positive images in supporting the system of deference and noninterference.

Constructing a positive image, then, is closely related to the creation of a policy monopoly, as government institutions are created or redesigned to promote the activity. Those most closely involved in promoting the industry naturally come to play a key role in establishing government policy. Participation in a policy monopoly is structured by two things: the formal or informal rules of access discourage the participation of “outsiders,” and the prevalent understandings of the policy are so positive that they evoke only support or indifference by those not involved (thereby insuring their continued noninvolvement).

The dilemma of differential intensities of preference is that those with a vested interest in a given policy area will always be more active than those with nothing to gain. Agenda-setting is concerned with the question of whether those with only a single vested interest are able to dominate policymaking in their area, or whether a broader range of actors becomes involved; it is therefore a fundamental question in a democracy. A policy monopoly is a system where intensities of preference work as Madison feared they might. Behind a wall of institutional arrangements designed with their help, and with a public or an official image also created by their own efforts, some policy experts enjoy tremendous freedom of action, seldom being called upon to justify their actions in terms of broad public accountability.

While concerned policymakers often strive toward the establishment of policy monopolies, such a state of affairs is remarkably difficult to sustain in the open American political system. As a consequence, many policy subsystems are incomplete policy monopolies. The classic tight subsystem was described by Maass (1951) in his study of river projects in 1949. Maass reports unity of interests in the subsystem, with the Army Corps of Engineers, congressional committees, local political actors, and major interest groups all collaborating toward the end of developing local river projects. However, Redford reports a far less tidy subsystem for civil air regulation in the late 1950s, even though participants were generally unified in their outlook on the role of government in maintaining and promoting the nation’s air transportation system (1969, 99–102; see also 1960). By the mid-1970s, Heclo discerned a tendency for subsystems to broaden into “issue networks,” loose collections of interested parties that often disagreed about the development of policies (1978).

This discussion makes clear that there must be a dynamic associated with the various attempts to construct and undermine policy monopolies. Destruction of policy monopolies is almost always associated with a change in intensities of interest. People, political leaders, government agencies, and private institutions which had once shown no interest in a particular question become involved for some reason. That reason is typically a new understanding of the nature of the policies involved. Where proponents claim that a practice serves only to promote equality and fairness, two widely shared goals in America, opponents may argue that in fact it harms the environment, leads to profits for foreign investors, is a waste of taxpayer resources, or something else. Any given policy usually could be associated with many contending images, so logically these may change over time, and in fact the dominant public understandings of many public issues have often changed in the past. In the wake of crumbling public images, policy monopolies that were constructed behind their shield have often weakened or even disintegrated.

Simply because a disadvantaged interest proposes a new interpretation of events and attempts to attract the attention of allies in other areas of the political system does not mean that those challengers will be successful. The advantaged fight back, attempting to reinforce their original view of the situation. And there is no reason to assume that those originally favored by the political system will not be able to use their superior resources and political connections to their advantage. On the other hand, all disadvantaged actors are not small and defenseless. Often monopolies are broken up by the intrusion of powerful groups from other areas of the economy. As the economy grows ever more complex, interactions among previously distinct groups become more common. Increasingly, these lead to jurisdictional battles between powerful groups on both sides. Even where a political battle pits economically powerful Goliaths against much poorer Davids, the victory of Goliath is not to be taken for granted. The skills and resources useful in private negotiations may not be the same as those useful in public debates. Technical expertise, inside contacts, and legal skills may prove to be of no value where an emotional public media campaign is waged. So if a challenging group is able to choose an arena where its special skills are reinforced and where the skills and resources of its opponents are rendered useless, then it may win. It is possible in some cases, therefore, for the weak to upend the strong. These reversals in fortune are by no means to be taken for granted, but they do occur from time to time.

When looked at during a particular time, a political system may appear to offer many havens to favored economic interests, safe in their well-insulated monopolies. Fifteen years later, however, many of those interests may have been replaced, even though the system as a whole may still feature many monopolies. The destruction or creation of policy monopolies may be much faster than people realize, so the cumulative impact of the continual, but sporadic, creation and destruction of policy monopolies may be that a competitive and pluralistic political system is much less conservative than it sometimes appears.

Agenda-Setting and Equilibrium

Models of policymaking are generally based on the twin principles of incrementalism and negative feedback. Incrementalism can be the result of a deliberate decisional style as decision makers make limited, reversible changes in the status quo because of bounds on their abilities to predict the impact of their decisions (Lindblom 1959; Hayes 1992). For example, new budgets for agencies are generally based on the previous year’s allocation (Wildavsky 1984). Incremental changes in political systems can also be the result of countermobilization. As one group gains political advantage, others mobilize to protect themselves. In such situations, mobilizations are subject to a negative-feedback process in which changes from the current state of the system are not large.

Both forms of change, one ...