Punctuations and turning points in british politics: The policy agenda of the queens speech, 1940-2005

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 561-586

  John, Peter ^a   Jennings, Will ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 78349267666     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123409990068     Document Type: Article

References (126)

1. E.g. Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)
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5. Virginia Gray and David Lowery, 'To Lobby Alone or in a Flock: Foraging Behavior Among Organized Interests', American Politics Quarterly, 26 (1998), 5-34
6. Bryan D. Jones, Tracey Sulkin and Heather Larsen, 'Policy Punctuations in American Political Institutions', American Political Science Review, 97 (2003), 151-69
7. Bryan D. Jones and Frank R. Baumgartner, The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
8. E.g. Jeremy Richardson and Grant Jordan, Governing Under Pressure: The Policy Process in a Post-parliamentary Democracy (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1979)
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13. For a recent review, see Colin Hay, 'Whatever Happened to Thatcherism?', Political Studies Review, 5 (2007), 183-201.
14. For simplicity, the remainder of this article refers to the Speech from the Throne as the 'Queen's Speech'.
15. See www.policyagendas.org.uk for details of the UK Policy Agendas Project and datasets for replication purposes. This article refers to Queen's Speech dataset v1.0.
16. John Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies (New York: HarperCollins, 1984), p. 3.
17. Stuart Soroka, Agenda-Setting Dynamics in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2002)
18. David L. Swanson, 'Feeling the Elephant: Some Observations on Agenda-Setting Research', in James Anderson, ed., Communication Yearbook 11 (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1988), pp. 603-19.
19. See Peter John, 'The Policy Agendas Project: A Review', Journal of European Public Policy, 13 (2006), 975-86.
20. Baumgartner and Jones, Agendas and Instability.
21. Charles Lindblom, 'The ''Science'' of Muddling Through', Public Administration Review, 19 (1959), 79-88
22. Charles Lindblom, 'Still Muddling, Not Yet Through', Public Administration Review, 39 (1979), 517-26
23. Aaron Wildavsky, The Politics of the Budgetary Process (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1964).
24. Baumgartner and Jones, Agendas and Instability.
25. Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, 'Agenda Dynamics and Policy Subsystems', Journal of Politics 53 (1991), 1044-74
26. Baumgartner and Jones, Agendas and Instability
27. Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, 'Positive and Negative Feedback in Politics', in Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, eds, Policy Dynamics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)
28. Baumgartner and Jones, Policy Dynamics
29. Bryan D. Jones, Reconceiving Decision-making in Democratic Politics: Attention, Choice, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)
30. Bryan D. Jones, James True and Frank R. Baumgartner, 'Does Incrementalism Stem from Political Consensus or from Institutional Gridlock?', American Journal of Political Science, 41 (1997), 1319-39
31. Bryan D. Jones, Frank R. Baumgartner and James True, 'Policy Punctuations: U.S. Budget Authority, 1947-1995', Journal of Politics, 60 (1998), 1-33
32. Bryan D. Jones and Frank R. Baumgartner, 'A Model of Choice for Public Policy', Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 15 (2005), 325-51
33. Jones and Baumgartner, The Politics of Attention.
34. Jones, Reconceiving Decision-making in Democratic Politics, p. 185.
35. James True, Bryan D. Jones and Frank R. Baumgartner, 'Punctuated- Equilibrium Theory: Explaining Stability and Change in American Policy-making', in Paul Sabatier, ed., Theories of the Policy Process, 2nd edn (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2007).
36. True, Jones and Baumgartner, 'Punctuated-Equilibrium Theory', p. 160.
37. Jones, Sulkin and Larsen, 'Policy Punctuations in American Political Institutions'
38. Jones and Baumgartner, The Politics of Attention, p. 88.
39. See John, 'The Policy Agendas Project' for a review of the original US Policy Agendas Project and the programme of research that it generated.
40. See http://www.policyagendas.org/codebooks/topicindex.html. For technical details about the origins of the US categories and its coding procedures, see Frank R. Baumgartner, Bryan D. Jones and Michael C. MacLeod, 'Lessons from the Trenches: Quality, Reliability, and Usability in a New Data Source', Political Methodologist, 8 (1998), 1-11.
41. Frank R. Baumgartner, Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Bryan D. Jones, 'Comparative Studies of Policy Agendas', Journal of European Public Policy, 13 (2006), 959-74
42. John, 'The Policy Agendas Project'.
43. Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky, The Private Government of Public Money (London: Macmillan, 1974)
44. Richardson and Jordan, Governing Under Pressure.
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47. David Marquand, The Unprincipled Society (London: Cape, 1988)
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50. Jim Bulpitt, Territory and Power in the United Kingdom (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983).
51. Hugh Heclo, A Government of Strangers (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1977).
52. Gabriel Almond and Sydney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963).
53. R. A. W. Rhodes, Beyond Westminster and Whitehall (London: Routledge, 1988)
54. David Marsh and R. A. W. Rhodes, Policy Networks in British Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
55. Anthony King, The British Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
56. E.g., a ban on smoking in public and work places was enacted in Scotland in March 2006, prompting the UK Parliament to enact similar legislation, which became active in July 2007.
57. Quintin Hogg, 'Elective dictatorship', The Listener, 21 October 1976, pp. 496-500.
58. Finer, Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform.
59. Arendt Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999).
60. George Tsebelis, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002).
61. David Butler, Andrew Adonis and Tony Travers, Failure in British Government: The Politics of the Poll Tax (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
62. Dunleavy, 'Policy Disasters'.
63. Moran, The British Regulatory State.
64. Peter John and Helen Margetts, 'Policy Punctuations in the UK: Fluctuations and Equilibria in Central Government Expenditure Since 1951', Public Administration, 81 (2003), 411-32.
65. Ian Budge, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Andrea Volkens, Judith Bara, Eric Tannenbaum, Richard Fording, Derek Hearl, Hee Min Kim, Michael McDonald and Silvia Mendes, Mapping Policy Preferences: Parties, Electors and Governments: 1945-1998: Estimates for Parties, Electors and Governments 1945-1998 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
66. Ian Budge, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Andrea Volkens, Judith Bara and Michael McDonald, Mapping Policy Preferences II: Estimates for Parties, Electors and Governments in Central and Eastern Europe, European Union and OECD 1990-2003 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)
67. Michael McDonald and Ian Budge, Elections, Parties, Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
68. Francis G. Castles, ed., The Impact of Parties: Politics and Policies in Democratic Capitalist States (London: Sage, 1982).
69. Richard Rose, Do Parties Make a Difference? (London: Macmillan, 1980).
70. Andrew Gamble, The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism (Basingstoke, Hants.: Macmillan, 1988)
71. Richard Heffernan, New Labour and Thatcherism: Political Change in Britain (Basingstoke, Hants.: Macmillan, 2001).
72. Stuart Hall, 'Popular Democratic vs. Authoritarian Populism', in Alan Hunt, ed., Marxism and Democracy (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980).
73. Jim Bulpitt, 'The Discipline of the New Democracy: Mrs. Thatcher's Domestic Statecraft', Political Studies, 34 (1985), 19-39
74. David Marsh, 'Explaining 'Thatcherite' Policies: Beyond Uni-dimensional Explanation', Political Studies, 43 (1995), 595-613
75. Peter Kerr, Modern British Politics: From Consensus to Conflict (London: Routledge, 2001).
76. See the review of this debate in Hay, 'Whatever Happened to Thatcherism?'
77. E.g. Sara B. Hobolt and Robert Klemmensen, 'Responsive Government? Public Opinion and Policy Preferences in Britain and Denmark', Political Studies, 53 (2005), 379-402
78. Sara B. Hobolt and Robert Klemmensen, 'Government Responsiveness and Political Competition in Comparative Perspective', Comparative Political Studies, 41 (2008), 309-37.
79. Indeed, Namenwirth and Weber's phase-shifting and cyclical model of political-cultural attention, see J. Zvi Namenwirth and Robert P. Weber, Dynamics of Culture (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), resembles the attention-shifting associated with the punctuated equilibrium model of Baumgartner and Jones.
80. Jeffrey Cohen, 'Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda', American Journal of Political Science, 39 (1995), 87-107
81. Jeffrey Cohen, Presidential Responsiveness and Public Policy-Making: The Publics and the Policies that Presidents Choose (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).
82. Judith Bara, 'A Question of Trust: Implementing Party Manifestos', Parliamentary Affairs, 58 (2005), 585-99
83. Michael D. McDonald and Ian Budge, Elections, Parties, Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 164.
84. A quasi-sentence (or policy statement) constitutes an expression of a single policy idea or issue. See Andrea Volkens, Manifesto Coding Instructions. Discussion Paper FS III 02-201 (Berlin: WZB, 2002). Often, this unit of analysis is identifiable from the use of punctuation, though it is possible for sentences to include multiple references to policy content (in particular those that address a series of major policy issues).
85. The UK Policy Agendas Project codebook retains the US categories but uses examples specific to Britain to aid the user. See UK Policy Agendas Codebook v.1.0, www.policyagendas.org.uk.
86. E.g., Jones, Sulkin and Larsen, 'Policy Punctuations in American Political Institutions'
87. Jones and Baumgartner, The Politics of Attention
88. Jones and Baumgartner, 'A Model of Choice for Public Policy'.
89. Kurtosis is the fourth moment around the mean (where variance and skew are the second and third moments). This is a measure of the relative 'peakedness' of a given distribution.
90. E.g., Frank Baumgartner, Martial Foucault and Abel François, 'Punctuated Equilibrium in French Budgeting Processes', Journal of European Public Policy, 13 (2006), 1082-99
91. Christian Breunig, 'The More Things Change, the More Things Stay the Same: A Comparative Analysis of Budget Punctuations', Journal of European Public Policy, 13 (2006), 1069-85
92. John and Margetts, 'Policy Punctuations in the UK'
93. Jones, Baumgartner and True, 'Policy Punctuations'
94. Jones, Sulkin and Larsen, 'Policy Punctuations in American Political Institutions'.
95. Jones, Sulkin and Larsen, 'Policy Punctuations in American Political Institutions', p. 166.
96. These stochastic process methods examine the overall distribution of agenda change, and as a result are concerned with the general pattern of stability and change.
97. I.e., the introduction of a major topic code with no empirical relevance to national policy-making, either because policy change is rare or policy decisions are taken at a subnational or supranational level (e.g., refuse collection), would otherwise create a cluster of change scores equal to zero as the level of attention remained constant at zero over time.
98. However, truncation of the distribution on its left tail, with a spike at 2100 per cent, is quite unlike other distributions of political attention. These distribution properties are mathematical in origin, but empirical in magnitude. By mathematical construction, decreases in percentage share cannot exceed 100 per cent while any decrease from x to 0 is equal to 2100 per cent. As a result, the skewness of the distribution is positive and equal to 2.71, with the mean equal to 7.80, whereas the median is equal to 211.80. Thus, while the policy agenda seems to be punctuated in the United Kingdom, constraints on the vailable agenda space (i.e., percentage share of the Queen's Speech) mean that the active agenda does not appear to cumulate in the way that budgets or even congressional hearings are found to cumulate in other studies (e.g., Jones, Baumgartner and True, 'Policy Punctuations'
99. Jones, Sulkin and Larsen, 'Policy Punctuations in American Political Institutions'
100. Baumgartner, Foucault and François, 'Punctuated Equilibrium in French Budgeting Processes'
101. Breunig, 'The More Things Change, the More Things Stay the Same'. For those cases, the distribution of change scores tends to tail off before it reaches the 2100 per cent bound. At the same time, a comparative lack of 'true zeroes' in budget data means that there are few decreases of 2100 per cent, whereas attention to topics in the Queen's Speech can, in an instant, drop off the political agenda (going from hero to zero).
102. Indra M. Chakravarti, Radha G. Laha and J. Roy, Handbook of Methods of Applied Statistics, Volume I (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1967), pp. 392-4.
103. Samuel S. Shapiro and Martin B. Wilk, 'An Analysis of Variance Test for Normality (Complete Samples)', Biometrika, 52 (1965), 591-611.
104. The kurtosis score for Britain (19.21) is less than that estimated for percentage change in the policy content of the 'State of the Union Address' in the United States (40.10) for the period between 1946 and 2005 (see www.policyagendas.org for the US dataset), although both are punctuated.
105. The theory is to consider the relationship between the sample distribution and the theoretical class of probability distribution with the greatest likelihood of generating the same empirical data. As such, it is possible to recognize the Paretian or exponential distributions. For semi-log plots the midpoint values are presented on a logged scale, but the frequencies are not. For log-log plots, both midpoint values and frequencies are logged. Figures 4 and 5 present both the negative and positive tails on the same scale (with negative midpoints multiplied by 21 in order to present them on the same scale as positive midpoints). The frequencies are each cumulated from their extreme tail to the centre of the distribution in order to stabilize 'chatter' in the tails of the distribution. Note that there are a large number of observations for the zero midpoint, which here cannot be approximated with a power law function because of its singularity at x=0.
106. bx ⇒ ln(y) = ln(a) + b(X); where X is the category midpoint and y represents the frequencies associated with the midpoints.
107. See Jones and Baumgartner, The Politics of Attention, p. 184.
108. Jones and Baumgartner, 'A Model of Choice for Public Policy'.
109. This concentrates upon positive changes (i.e. increases in political attention), because of the mathematical limit of 2100 per cent for negative changes (which prevents differentiation between 133 observations of 2100 per cent).
110. It is also possible to identify the significance of punctuations in the political agenda through estimation of their effect as step or pulse inputs for Box-Tiao intervention models. However, these would tend to be significant in most instances because of the nature of model construction and would not assist inferences about the underlying cause of change.
111. The results of additional tests confirm that there are significant differences in the kurtosis of the distribution of attention change for the 1940-78 and 1979-2005 periods. For the earlier period (of stagnation and club government), the kurtosis score is positive and equal to 23.214, whereas for the latter period it is positive and equal to 7.442. This suggests that the political agenda was far more punctuated in the earlier period (of the traditional Westminster/Whitehall model) than in the latter modern evolution of British government. Also, to confirm these results, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test generates a D statistic of 0.146 for 1940-78 and 0.141 for 1979-2005, significant at the 99 per cent confidence level for each, rejecting the null that the sample is drawn from a normal distribution. Likewise, the more powerful Shapiro-Wilk test generates a W statistic of 0.792 for 1940-78 and 0.884 for 1979-2005, significant at the 99 per cent confidence level, again rejecting the null that this is a random sample drawn from a normal distribution.
112. E.g., Gray and Lowery, 'State Interest Group System Diversity'
113. Gray and Lowery, The Population Ecology of Interest Representation
114. Gray and Lowery, 'To Lobby Alone or in a Flock'
115. Baumgartner, Jones and MacLeod, 'The Evolution of Legislative Jurisdictions'.
116. i)). That is where the entropy score is estimated as the sum for all topics of the likelihood, p(x), that an object x (in this instance, a policy statement in the monarch's speech) falls within a particular topic i, multiplied by the natural log of that likelihood, multiplied by minus one.
117. Since logs of zero cannot be calculated, it is assumed that 0 x ln(0)50 for those topics where there was no attention in a given year. The maximum possible entropy score for the twenty-one major topic codes (here inclusive of the regional/local government and arts, culture and entertainment topics) is equal to the natural log of 21 (i.e. 3.04).
118. The first peak in the polynomial regression is a year before the peak in the actual entropy series in 1965 (2.704)
119. Christopher Wlezien, 'On the Salience of Political Issues: The Problem with 'Most Important Problem', Electoral Studies, 24 (2005), 555-79.
120. t. This reveals that for the period between 1979 and 2005, the relationship between attention and entropy is negative and significant at the 95 per cent level for macroeconomics (21.809), defence (22.723) and international affairs (21.700), though with varying degrees of fit for each regression. As attention to each of these topics increased, the level of entropy decreased, while - as attention to the topics decreased - the level of entropy increased.
121. This low point in the polynomial regression is two years before the low point in the actual entropy series in 1993 (1.999).
122. David Sanders, 'Conservative Incompetence, Labour Responsibility and the Feelgood Factor: Why the Economy Failed to Save the Conservatives in 1997', Electoral Studies, 18 (1999), 251-70.
123. George E. P. Box and George C. Tiao, 'Intervention Analysis with Applications to Economic and Environmental Problems', Journal of the American Statistical Association, 70 (1975), 70-9.
124. j.
125. E.g., Jones, Sulkin and Larsen, 'Policy Punctuations in American Political Institutions'.
126. Other venues feature as part of the research project, Legislative Policy Agendas in the UK, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC Reference RES-062-23-0872) as part of a European Science Foundation (ESF) EUROCORES European Collaborative Research Project, 'The Politics of Attention: West European Politics and Agenda-setting in Times of Change'.