welcome back this week we are talking about punctuated equilibrium theory this is another theory in our set of tools here that we can use to understand public policy and how it comes about so punctuated equilibrium theory is often thought of in conjunction with some of the other theories we've studied studied already or parts of theories like things like bounded rationality but it's kind of a more complete theory from front to back so let's go ahead and dive in and talk about what it is what it isn't and what it can actually help all for us in terms of understanding public policy so we first should probably take a stop and think about a concept called the iron triangle the iron triangle is an understanding of policymaking that deals with subsystems of Congress interest groups and bureaucracies and the idea here is that the three of them work together to constitute or create iron triangles kind of status quo of policy that cannot be broken an agency within the bureaucracy can affect policy outcomes directly in Congress usually through committees and subcommittees by aligning itself with constituency select constituencies in favor of the agency's work or existence or sometimes a part of the agency's work or existence so you can think about this in terms of for example the FDA and its decision for many years not to regulate tobacco was part of an Iron Triangle about tobacco regulation to maintain that status quo constituencies are powerful groups that influence Congress and can influence reelection in return for support for their policy proposals or programs in other words they can influence members of Congress who then can shape the bureaucracy Congress or really a subpart thereof seeks to align itself with a constituency in order to gain collect electoral or political support so they'll end up supporting legislation that advances the interest groups agenda this creates the two sides of the triangle or the two points the triangle the bureaucrats or the agencies are pressured by the same interest groups that they are in charge of regulating and they have close ties within the regulated industry itself now this ends up creating a 3-way stable alliance called the Iron Triangle or it can also be called a sub government this often results in limiting possibility for large-scale changes this is heavily influencing budgeting and may circumstances what is funded and what is not funded and usually only benefits a small segment of the population rather than the general public which whose needs usually go unmet so this is kind of a political science version of thinking of kind of policy status quo and why certain policies do not change and the favorable beneficiaries continue to be the same the policy theory that we're talking about today is punctuated equilibrium theory and this was first introduced by Baumgartner and Jones in 1993 and what they attempted to do here was talk about how to measure and explain these long periods of status quo or stasis in policy continuity which were disrupted by short but very intense periods of instability and change so policy making in this sense both makes leaps and kind of slows down to a near near stop as issues emerge and then recede from the public agenda American political institutions tend to exacerbate this tendency towards punctuated equilibrium because they are just set up to be status quo machines so policy images play a critical role in expanding issues beyond the control of specialists and special interests that might occupy policy monopolies so we're going to break down all of these things but what we can see happening in here is that we have a period of status quo the disruption of that status quo and then the emergence of a new status quo so there are two systems at play that we should recognize here the first is the macro political system this includes Congress government officials state governments etc those things are extremely hard to focus on multiple attention or hard to focus their attention on multiple problems at any given point in time so what ends up getting created is this policy subsystems where you have different groups working on different subjects which sounds a lot like what we talked about last week with the multiple streams theory and these can include interest groups policy entrepreneurs and the like the question then is why the status quo exists this is the first question we have to to face and what Baumgartner and Jones argue is that we have what is going on here is a negative feedback loop the macro system is designed to promote the status quo so there are multiple veto points in the process of making laws itself in political science we call this pivotal lawmaking the idea that there are many points in time in which you can kind of veto out and end up with gridlock the separation of powers both into three branches in the federal government and between the states and the federal government and federalism means that there are different super structures that policy entrepreneurs have to consider when they are trying to make policy or shift the status quo and often it's it's impossible to get any of these to work together so that's one reason another reason is something we've previously touched on which is bounded rationality the idea that we cannot consider all problems and all facts at all times this means that disproportionate attention is paid to certain problems and is given to certain framings of certain problems so policy makers often ignore issues or pay them too much attention based on external factors that don't relate to important the issue is this is the result of the serial and parallel processing divide serial processing or devoting attention to one thing at a time is something that individuals tend to do and it allows people to make decisions in sequence one after another what it does not allow is parallel processing or decision structures that can handle many issues simultaneously now political systems have subsystems that can do this but as a macro system they are bad at this and this is because of the way in which this processing works what it ends up happening is that we have the creation of policy monopolies these policy monopolies are groups that try to maintain power by having the policy defined as they wish and by making minimum or by minimizing attention to the policy solutions that do not benefit them while others seek to disable eyes this by expanding the attention and encouraging new audience and participants so this is the stage at which we think about power and agenda setting a monopoly of understanding occurs when policymakers accept the subgroup or the policy monopolies preferred way to frame an issue for long periods of time perhaps even taking it for granted or as fact or gospel this monopoly can become institutionalized because rules get built up around it and resources get divided up based on these terms so groups seeking to make policy change have to destabilize these policy monopolies through a variety of methods which we will talk about next otherwise this negative feedback loop continues so then how do you break the status quo and create a positive feedback so P et argues that policy actors can intervene at the subsystem level not the macro level where the government is concerned but at the subsystem level and their intervention takes hold when information nine problems it's matched with a focusing event at the macro-level so let's take a step back the first thing that can happen at the subgroup level is framing groups compete to in flown influence how a problem is understood framing is how we define a problem how we categorize sub issues or how we measure choices it could be as simple as saying what do you want to eat for dinner today versus do you want to get pizza today suggesting something as a potential solution and it can also be very complex about understanding how things work and how different outcomes are derived from different starts the next is venue shopping to challenge a policy monopoly that maybe has hold over some sub systems related to Congress groups may seek an audience in a different governmental venue maybe in the courts if they feel like they have a better chance at getting a fair hearing there and finally and this is kind of the biggest contribution of PE T is the notion of these focusing events these are sudden calamities that cause both citizens and policymakers to pay more attention to a public problem and often to press it for solutions these focusing events allow this venue shopping and framing to really rise to the top and have a chance at making a difference in how policy is formed so for a minute let's talk about policy images and frames and then we'll give an example of how this all kind of comes together policy images can be very powerful number one you should note that there is a race to frame the issue anytime something happens or changes different parties will try and find the right kind of mix of empirical information and appeals to emotions that helps define the issue as favorable to the outcome they want to see so what this does is it allows people to make shortcuts it reduces ambiguity by giving people background information with the information they're receiving and refocuses attention when a single image or single view of the world's is exceptive accepted and supportive of the status quote is generally associated with a successful policy monopoly when there is disagreement however about how to view a policy proponents and opponents focus on different sets of images so the status quo is successful definition of a policy in the policy monopolies successful definition of a problem can take care of a problem as taken care of or too technical for the public this sets it up for the policy monopolies to hold on to it the interruption then would be reframing the issue or disruption of the status quo frame often this can only be a bra bought about by external events and so that brings us to an example nuclear power was thought of for for quite some time in the post-world War two ERA as a net good that it could promote our a reliance on clean energy that it could minimize dependence on foreign oil promote new jobs reduce energy costs etc and so as a result of all of this there was huge investment based on this policy monopoly that nuclear power was kind of the way of the future this investment meant that new power plants that were nuclear were granted far faster than other ones and often times because of the dominant narrative there were not thoughts about long term costs and positive next negative effects so the policy monopoly in this area was really only challenged in the 1970s in the mainstream when there were major incidents the first one being in the 1970s at Three Mile Island the United States where there was a nuclear incident as referenced by this historical marker here but also in the next decade in Chernobyl the view of nuclear power certainly shifted worldwide after this a new negative image of nuclear power took shape that held true for many years the the idea in the late 80s into the 90s and early 2000s of establishing new nuclear power plants was much harder to do than it was prior to that now this has been shifting there are a lot of people even presidential candidates who argue that nuclear power needs to be part of kind of a a clean energy package and it is true that when it is functioning properly nuclear power can present clean functioning in the moment power now there are a couple of questions one is what do you do with spent fuel which has a half-life far longer than humans and the thousands of tens of thousands of years range but secondly how do you stop events like Three Mile Island Chernobyl and later Fukushima from happening when these focusing events come up this kind of destabilizes different status quo understandings of how the world works so this ends up being a really good example of the Pitti theory and how punctuated equilibrium truly works so our discussion question in the discussion circles this week focuses on nuclear energy I want you to think about who has the dominant narrative or policy monopoly in this policy area when it comes to nuclear power in 2020 so I've posted a video that talks about kind of our narrative surrounding nuclear energy and its potential for cleaner fuel sources I want you to think about historical examples I will also pop up a bit of Three Mile Island that helps explain that in a little more depth what do you think would disrupt what you see is the current status quo in your view is it what would that focusing event have to look like you think to change the narrative and shift things and how does that relate back to some of the things we're learning about disasters and disaster responses all right that's it this week I will talk to you soon