Punctuated Equilibrium Theory: Explaining Stability and Change in Public Policymaking

Abstract

This chapter reviews Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET), and discusses new empirical studies in the United States and elsewhere. It deals with an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the PET approach to understanding public policymaking and notes the close linkage between the creation of a data infrastructure and the theoretical approach of analyzing policy dynamics. Political systems cannot simultaneously consider all the issues that face them at the highest level, so policy subsystems can be viewed as mechanisms that allow the political system to engage in parallel processing. When an issue area is on the macropolitical agenda, small changes in objective circumstances can cause large changes in policy, and it can be said that the system is undergoing a positive feedback process. Negative feedback maintains stability in a system, like a thermostat maintains constant temperature in a room. With its foundations in both political institutions and boundedly rational decision making, PET is at base a theory of organizational information processing.