Editors' Notes

Abstract

This issue of the Policy Studies Journal includes a number of path-breaking and provocative articles that will be required reading for policy scholars. The articles reflect the breadth of concerns for policy scholars. One such concern is the behavior of non-profit organizations, which play an enormous and growing role in domestic and international policy. Given their prominence, how can policymakers and citizens evaluate the performance of non-profits? Arthur Brooks takes on the critical issue of how non-profits, which by definition look beyond the financial bottom-line in their programmatic activities, can be evaluated for efficiency in their operations. He develops a measure that focuses on the non-program activities of non-profits, and uses a large sample of data on US organizations to evaluate variations in the efficiency of these operations. Another urgent policy concern is whether air pollution is geographically distributed in such a way that harms fall disproportionately on disadvantaged communities. Manuel Pastor, Rachel Morello-Frosch, and James Sadd combine census, school and toxic air release data to evaluate the distribution and impacts of toxic air emissions on school children in California. Their disturbing results suggest that emissions fall disproportionately on students of color, and that these emissions result in net decrements in educational accomplishment. These kinds of environmental justice implications add urgency to policy efforts to reduce toxic air emissions. Two of the papers included here advance significant concepts to theories of the public policy process. Peter May, Joshua Sapotichne, and Samuel Workman evaluate the coherence of public policy across 18 policy domains. The idea of the coherence of public policies is central to empirical and normative questions, but has not previously been the focus of much systematic analysis. May et al. find variation in coherence across types of domains (e.g., substantive versus identity-based domains) and by level of Congressional and federal agency involvement. Bill Lowry suggests that, in addition to exogenous, unplanned external shocks that induce policy change, a kind of “focusing project” resulting from over-reaching by supporters of the status quo can induce change. In this scenario, the focusing project is an extension of traditional priorities, but is perceived by proponents of change to be sufficiently excessive to disrupt the stability of policy subsystems. Lowry develops he idea of the focusing project by evaluating dam building projects in multiple countries. The largest grouping of papers in this issue focus on aspects of Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones' punctuated equilibrium theory of policy continuity and change. Chris Koski and Christian Breunig focus on an innovation in the measurement of variations in policy outputs over time (in this case, state budget expenditures by category) in a way that is less sensitive to outliers and that provides a simple, intuitive numeric representation of budget distributions. Focusing on 10 budget categories within 50 states over an 18-year time span, the analysis confirms and extends the applicability of punctuated equilibrium theory to state politics. Michael Givel, however, argues that seeming punctuations in policy equilibriums may be misleading: evaluating the changes in the tobacco policy subsystem, Givel finds that key policy outcomes (tobacco taxes and stringency of regulations on sales) did not change significantly. Thus, despite the appearance of sharp, short-term shocks to the system, Givel argues that changes in policy were largely symbolic. Two papers take issue with Givel's characterization. Robert Wood suggests that the change in the tobacco policy domain is better characterized as a “tipping event” than as a typical punctuation. Properly understood, Wood argues that the policy subsystem underwent major policy change. Jeff Worsham uses congressionally-based time-series data (1945–200%) to track the evolution of the tobacco subsystem and finds that, although the subsystem has proven resilient it did – contrary to Givel's argument – undergo majors transformation resulting from punctuations. Givel follows up with a trenchant rebuttal. This set of papers will prove invaluable to both scholars and students of the policy process.