Editorial introduction: Punctuated equilibrium, multiple streams, environmental governance, and many more

Abstract

Greetings! As we enter the second quarter of the year, we are thrilled to present the second issue of the Policy Studies Journal (PSJ). This issue features 10 top-notch research articles that cover various topics related to policy theory and substantive policy domains. Before diving into the details of the articles, we would like to share some exciting news related to PSJ operations. First, in February, we established a strategic partnership with the Seoul National University (SNU) Graduate School of Public Administration (GSPA) in South Korea. Along with PSJ's existing relationship with the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, this new partnership will help strengthen mutual scholarly collaboration and promote policy research in South Korea and beyond. Second, due to the nuances of the existing production model, we decided that Policy Theory and Practice (PT&P) will be a rolling special collection within PSJ. Many policy researchers cannot afford to publish their works in a new non-indexed journal, and now they can publish under the PSJ's impact factor. By introducing PT&P as a special collection, the PSJ will significantly increase both the number of articles it publishes and the range of subject matter it covers while upholding its fundamental mission of advancing policy theory. We are confident that this new model will benefit emerging scholars and, most importantly, better serve the needs of the policy community. Third, in April, we successfully hosted the PSJ Policy Scholar Reception at the 80th annual Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) meeting in Chicago. It saw a large turnout of policy scholars and resulted in many meaningful exchanges. The reception was made possible by the generous financial support of Dr. Michael D. Jones (University of Tennessee-Knoxville), Dr. Paul Teske (University of Colorado-Denver), and others, and we are very grateful for their support. Fourth, we are pleased to announce the launch of a new manuscript submission platform called Research Exchange (ReX), which will provide authors with a more intuitive and streamlined process for submitting their work. The ReX platform will integrate with PSJ's existing ScholarOne manuscript management system. So, those authors who have already submitted their manuscripts through ScholarOne will not experience any changes to the peer review workflows. Now, let us turn our attention to the 10 exceptional research articles included in this issue. The first four articles focus on Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) (e.g., Chen & Flink, 2022; Fernández-i-Marín et al., 2022; Meza, 2022), covering topics such as political institutions, policy disasters, international politics, a systematic review of research priorities in China, and the role of political parties and prime ministers in shaping the executive lawmaking agenda in Australia. In the lead article, “Political Institutions, Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, and Policy Disasters,” Fagan (2023) puts forth a theory about how political institutions relate to policy disasters. According to what is predicted by PET, the author suggests that systems that accumulate errors more easily will have a higher volume of policy disasters. Systems with a greater number of veto players and lower levels of information flow will also experience more policy disasters, but the impact of information flow on this outcome will be greater than that of veto players. The author tests this theory by analyzing data on financial crises, natural disasters, and technological disasters in 70 countries over 60 years. The results confirm that systems with limited information flows and more veto players have a higher risk for policy disasters. In the second article, “The Calm Before the Storm: A Punctuated Equilibrium Theory of International Politics,” Joly and Richter (2023) argue that the field of International Relations (IR) has not given enough consideration to PET and investigate the causes of stability and change in international politics and how these dynamics work at both the domestic and international level, as well as how they interact with each other. They demonstrate that various indicators of international politics, such as troop deployments, foreign aid, and international trade, exhibit a leptokurtic pattern of change. This pattern characterizes Punctuated Equilibrium, whereby countries typically experience periods of relative stability with incremental changes in behavior, punctuated by sudden, large-scale changes that overthrow existing policies. Their analysis reveals that institutional friction plays a significant role in comprehending policy changes within the IR context as well. Next, in their article, “What Do We Know About the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory in China? A Systematic Review and Research Priorities,” van den Dool and Li (2023) suggest that the PET theory, which is usually applied to democracies, can also be tested in autocratic states. They argue that authoritarian regimes may experience less institutional friction, but more restrictions on information flow, making them a unique case for testing the theory's mechanisms. To broaden our understanding of PET and the policy process beyond democratic states, the authors review 88 research articles on PET written in Chinese. Contrary to the PET literature in English, most Chinese studies on this subject are qualitative and have a weak operationalization of PET's core concepts. The reviewed studies confirm that policymaking in China follows a punctuated equilibrium pattern, but there is limited evidence for more intense punctuations when compared with democracies. The authors recommend that future PET research on China should use long-term data sets and more carefully examine institutional friction and information processing by policymakers. The authors also suggest that conducting more international exchange and comparative research is necessary to enhance our comprehension of the policy process in autocracies like China. Lastly, in their article, “The Executive Lawmaking Agenda: Political Parties, Prime Ministers, and Policy Change in Australia,” Gibbons and Evans (2023) analyze 3982 Australian bills introduced from 2000 to 2017 to see if PET's theoretical postulations are applicable to Westminster systems. They find that while the policy content of executive lawmaking agendas remained mostly stable, changes in prime minister had a larger impact on Australia's executive lawmaking agenda, compared to changes in the governing party. The authors use the comparative policy agendas approach to analyze government bills in Australia, providing insights into executive lawmaking priorities during a turbulent period in Australian politics. The next two articles relate to the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) (e.g., DeLeo & Duarte, 2022; Derwort et al., 2022; Dolan, 2021; Fowler, 2022), examining the infeasibility of implementing a national ban on live poultry sales in China and exploring the relational coupling of multiple streams of policy in the context of tackling COVID-19 infections in German abattoirs. In her article, “The Multiple Streams Framework in a Nondemocracy: The Infeasibility of a National Ban on Live Poultry Sales in China,” van den Dool (2023) uses the MSF in a case study about the sale of live poultry in food markets in China, which is a major concern for preventing epidemics. By analyzing Chinese policy documents, news articles, World Health Organization (WHO) data, and other sources, the author demonstrates that despite the danger to public health, and even though high-level Chinese government officials support it, a national ban on live poultry sales has not been implemented because it is not technically possible, financially feasible, or compatible with current beliefs and practices. The author claims that although China has an authoritarian government and lacks political pluralism, the proposed policies of the policy elite are not always implemented while suggesting that further research should explore these ideas in different policy domains and in other authoritarian regimes. In the next article, “Relational Coupling of Multiple Streams: The Case of COVID-19 Infections in German Abattoirs,” Möck et al. (2023) argue that the COVID-19 outbreaks among employees in the German meat-processing industry, combined with the Work Safety Control Act introduced in July 2020 to safeguard these workers, served as policy windows to introduce related measures from an MSF perspective. However, the authors further argue that this is not enough to understand the agenda setting process and suggest the examination of the coupling of streams within related policy windows. The authors use the concept of relational coupling to analyze the text data from German mass media to identify entrepreneurial activities. The results of their discourse network analysis show that there were two key stages in the agenda setting process: first, there was an initial problem brokerage without coupling of core policies, and then all the different streams were coupled together based on a focusing event. The authors suggest that understanding relational coupling provides a better understanding of the agenda setting process in MSF. The final four articles in this issue are linked to environmental governance broadly (e.g., Deslatte et al., 2022; Dobbin & Lubell, 2021; Haider & Teodoro, 2021; Henry et al., 2021), covering issues such as justice in collaborative environmental governance, the environmental governance in China, policy attributes shaping climate policy support, and reaching negotiated agreements amidst belief divergence in environmental governance. In their article, “Drivers of (In)Equity in Collaborative Environmental Governance,” Dobbin et al. (2023) analyze how well collaborative groundwater planning in California addresses the needs of small and rural drinking water users who are vulnerable. The authors use various types of data and the Boosted Regression and Classification Trees (BRCT) method to determine factors that may influence this planning process, such as collaboration, representation, elite capture, stakeholder engagement, and problem severity/salience. The authors claim that all these factors have a meaningful impact on the equitable planning process; however, the effects of these factors can be complex and may vary depending on the policy context and outcome. As such, the authors suggest that it is necessary to analyze collaborative governance systems from diverse contexts to gain a better understanding of how to promote social and environmental equity in decentralized reforms. Next, in their article, “Environmental Governance in China: The Effects of Policy Clarity, Career Concerns, and New Appointed Officials on Pollution Control,” Sun et al. (2023) examine how policy clarity and high-powered incentive systems work together to influence organizational performance in the context of environmental governance in China. They use data from the city-level Report on the Work of the Government from 2004 to 2015, along with a Difference-in-Differences (DID) design. The authors discover that when policy clarity and high-powered incentives are present, local officials are more likely to comply with environmental protection measures, resulting in better environmental outcomes. The authors also find that newly appointed Party Secretaries in cities play a crucial role in improving environmental regulation policies and propose a typology based on the principal–agent theory to explain how China succeeded in environmental governance in recent decades. The authors provide practical implications for those looking to improve the effectiveness of environmental governance. Policymakers can design effective policies to address complex problems like climate change by considering how citizens' preferences for different policy options impact their level of support. When it comes to climate change policies, the costs and benefits at both local and global levels can influence public opinion on policy approaches. In their article, “Policy Attributes Shape Climate Policy Support,” Coleman et al. (2023) explore how citizens' views on climate policies are influenced by their perception of conditional cooperation, distributive concerns, and different levels of government. The authors utilize data from Sweden and conduct a conjoint experiment to alter the level of government, policy type, and targeted group. Their findings show that individuals are more likely to support policies when costs are shared widely. Furthermore, they discover that support for climate policies depends on whether other government units at different scales adopt them. This suggests that unpopular climate policies could become more widely accepted if they have a binding policy structure and if the cost-sharing happens at higher levels of government. Coalition conflicts in policy processes often occur due to differing beliefs, resulting in policy gridlock. Decreasing belief divergence may allow for negotiation and policy change, but this can be challenging to achieve. Collaborative governance is a suggested approach to reduce conflict to a manageable level, enhancing the potential for negotiations and policy changes without necessitating belief changes. In their article, “Mitigating Conflict with Collaboration: Reaching Negotiated Agreement amidst Belief Divergence in Environmental Governance,” Koebele and Crow (2023) examine how belief divergence can cause policy conflict and how collaborative governance can be used to mitigate such conflicts while analyzing the beliefs of two opposing coalitions involved in a 10-year-long environmental governance process that ended in a negotiated agreement. By analyzing longitudinal survey and interview data, the authors find that the beliefs of different coalitions start to differ more as the process progresses. This is mainly because one coalition's beliefs become stronger and more reinforced. Nonetheless, the authors identify some collaborative approaches that can facilitate negotiated agreement despite the increasing divergence of beliefs. These findings could be useful for policy researchers studying conflict mitigation in environmental governance and for designing more effective collaborative processes in high conflict context. In conclusion, we hope that this collection of articles inspires new ideas and meaningful discussions in the broader policy community. We invite you to read and engage with this issue and look forward to your feedback. As always, we would like to express our utmost gratitude to everyone involved in the publication of this issue, including the authors, reviewers, and editorial staff. We continue to appreciate your support and assistance as we strive to provide a high-quality platform for scholarly discourse in policy studies. We wish you all success and happiness in the coming months and look forward to seeing you again in the next issue of PSJ in August! PSJ Editorial Team.