Frank R. Baumgartner

Agenda Dynamics and Policy Subsystems

Rapid change in public policy outcomes often occurs, but most theories of pluralism emphasize only incrementalism. Yet from a historical view, it can easily be seen that many policies go through long periods of stability and short periods of dramatic reversals. Often the grand lines of policy may be settled for decades during such critical periods of mobilization. In this paper, we argue a single process can explain both periods of extreme stability and short bursts of rapid change. This process is the interaction of beliefs and values concerning a particular policy, which we term the policy image, with the existing set of political institutions--the venues of policy action. In a pluralist political system, subsystems can be created that are highly favorable to a given industry. But at the same time, there remain other institutional venues that can serve as avenues of appeal for the disaffected. Here we use the case of civilian nuclear policy to examine the process by which policy images find a favorable reception in some institutional venues but not others, and how the interaction between image and venue can lead to the rapid creation, destruction, or alteration of policy subsystems. We rely on data from a variety of sources to trace agenda access of the nuclear power issue in each of the policy venues available.

Interest Niches and Policy Bandwagons: Patterns of Interest Group Involvement in National Politics

Using data from more than 19,000 reports filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, we analyze the distribution of lobbying on a random sample of 137 issues and find a tremendous skewness. The median issue involved only 15 interest groups, whereas 8 of the issues involved more than 300 interest groups. The top 5% of the issues accounted for more than 45% of the lobbying, whereas the bottom 50% of the issues accounted for less than 3% of the total. This distribution makes generalizations about interest group conflict difficult and helps explain why many scholars have disagreed about the abilities of lobbyists to get what they want. We also confirm and expand upon previous findings regarding the tremendous predominance of business firms in the Washington lobbying population.

Comparative studies of policy agendas

Abstract Studying agenda-setting and policy dynamics is a well-established research tradition dating back to the work of Bachrach and Baratz and Schattschneider. The research tradition provides considerable insights into how changes in agendas and political attention affect public policy. However, the research tradition has been strongly dominated by studies of the US and has suffered from a lack of comparative studies. This paper discusses the different ways in which such comparative studies can be conducted as well as the potential insights which may be gained from them.

Policy punctuations: U.S. budget authority, 1947-1995

Baumgartner and Jones (1993) described a process of punctuated equilibrium in their study of policymaking in the United States since World War II Evidence was drawn from a series of particular issue-areas, but the model has implications for all areas of policymaking In this paper, we explore the validity of this approach with a new dataset that tabulates congressional budget authority at the Office of Management and Budget subfunction level across all areas of the federal budget for the entire postwar period We find that government spending is characterized by much greater change than is typically portrayed in the literature, even if there is great stability for most categories most of the time In addition, overall patterns of spending have been affected by two large-scale punctuations These punctuations divide national spending into three epochs one of postwar adjustment, lasting until FY 1956; one of robust growth, lasting from 1956 through 1974, and one of restrained growth, beginning in FY 1976 We test the epoch hypothesis against three plausible rival hypotheses: changes in the robustness of the postwar economy; partisan divisions; and public opinion The epoch hypothesis survives all of these rivals whether modeled individually or together This paper provides empirical evidence that punctuations occur, not just in some programs or subsystems, but also throughout government.

THE DESTRUCTION OF ISSUE MONOPOLIES IN CONGRESS

Scholars studying congressional committees have noted the potential for members to seek membership on particular committees, leading to bias. Underpinning this line of scholarship is what might be termed a theory of comparative committee statics, characterized by a cross-sectional empirical approach. We present a new approach that focuses on the dynamics of jurisdictional control. By following a series of issues through the committee hearing process, we show that there is indeed significant issue bias in particular committee venues. However, we also find that new committees often claim jurisdiction over issues as they are redefined in the political process. The degree of jurisdictional monopoly enjoyed by different committees has been overlooked in the literature on this topic in spite of its importance in determining the nature of representation of interests in Congress.

Measuring the size and scope of the EU interest group population

We present a new data set enumerating the population of organizations listed and/or registered as lobbyists in the European Union. In the first part of the paper we describe how we arrived at the population data set by drawing on three independent sources (CONECCS; Landmarks; European Parliament registry). We briefly discuss the validity of these registers in the context of recent substantial changes to each of them. In the second part, we present descriptive information on the number and type of groups as well as their territorial origins. In the final section, we outline potential research questions that can be addressed with the new data set for further research on the role of groups in the EU policy process.

Drawing Lobbyists to Washington: Government Activity and the Demand for Advocacy

Using an agenda-setting approach, we show the interaction between the growth of groups and the growth of government. A pooled time-series analysis of more than 45,000 lobby registration reports from 1996 to 2000 and measures of government activity from the Policy Agendas Project indicates that groups become active in Washington, D.C., in large part because of pre-existing levels of government activity in the issue-areas that concern them. The growth in the range and number of activities of government has created incentives for organizations of all kinds to mobilize, whether they are supporters or opponents of new government programs. We find that levels of government attention in an issue-area explain the level of interest-group lobbying more consistently than does government spending or the number of business firms in that area. We conclude with a discussion of the need for theories of group mobilization to include attention to the demand-creating actions of government itself.

Survey Research and Membership in Voluntary Associations

National surveys of the American electorate conducted regularly since the 1950s do not reflect accurately the growth of the publics involvement in voluntary associations. The problem stems from continued use of standard forms of the question which were last revised in the 1960s. A revised version of the question that takes into account financial contributions and multiple affiliations within group types reveals much greater participation in the American group system. New forms of affiliation have increased the relative importance of certain types of groups more than others. Labor unions, for example, are relatively unaffected by these changes, but charitable and other types of groups are heavily affected. As previous researchers have found, participation in voluntary associations leads to greater political participation, especially where individuals perceive political activities within their groups.

Does Incrementalism Stem from Political Consensus or from Institutional Gridlock

Theory: Wildavsky (1992) indicated that consensual politics lead to incremental budget results and that dissensual politics result in large and rapid budget changes. Yet it is also possible that dissensual politics could result in policy gridlock with budgets changing very little. Hypotheses: By associating increased dissensus with divided governments and by measuring the long-term trend in budget volatility, we can test (1) whether the trend is toward more or less incremental budgeting, (2) whether divided government increases or decreases budget volatility, and thus infer (3) whether incremental budget results stem from political consensus or institutional gridlock. Methods: We use OLS regression to study the intersextile ranges of annual percentage changes in budget authority for the domestic subfunctions of the Budget of the United States Government from Fiscal Year 1947 through 1995. A model including the exponential decay of this robust measure of budget variability and a dummy variable for years of divided government is estimated. We then add two additional measures of dissensus: percentage of bills vetoed by the president, and the polarization of the congressional parties (based on the divergence in their respective ADA scores). A variety of alternative hypotheses are also tested. Results: Variability in relative changes in national government spending is trending downward, and divided government increases budget volatility. Neither additional measure is independently related to volatility. We infer that volatility thus indicates dissensus and that budgeting was more volatile and probably less consensual in the past than in the supposedly rancorous present.

The Evolution of Legislative Jurisdictions

We consider the clarity of the jurisdictions of the committees of the U.S. Congress over the entire post-war period. We offer a theory to explain changes in clarity over time, emphasizing how the rise of new issues and the redefinition of existing ones undermine the clarity and stability of committee jurisdictions. We present results from a new dataset on all congressional hearings between 1947 and 1994-67,291 cases in all. Using new summary indices of jurisdictional clarity, we trace the evolution of the jurisdictional system for both the House and Senate. We demonstrate low levels of clarity for most issues and a decline in clarity for the system as a whole over time. Further, we show that these developments are the result of changes in issue-density (the rise of new issues and the redefinition of old ones) and increases in institutional resources, in particular professional committee staff. We note the implications of these findings for models of legislative behavior and government decision-making more generally.