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We explore the impact of institutional design on the distribution of changes in outputs of governmental processes in the United States, Belgium, and Denmark. Using comprehensive indicators of governmental actions over several decades, we show that in each country the level of institutional friction increases as we look at processes further along the policy cycle. Assessing multiple policymaking institutions in each country allows us to control for the nature of the policy inputs, as all the institutions we consider cover the full range of social and political issues in the country. We find that all distributions exhibit high kurtosis values, significantly higher than the Normal distribution which would be expected if changes in government attention and activities were proportionate to changes in social inputs. Further, in each country, those institutions that impose higher decision‐making costs show progressively higher kurtosis values. The results suggest general patterns that we hypothesize to be related to boundedly rational behavior in a complex social environment.

The Comparative Agendas Project brings together researchers who are developing systematic indicators of the attention given to political problems in their own national political systems. The main objective of the project is to build up a standardized taxonomy in order to compare activities linked to these problems over time and space. The construction and application of a reliable thematic classification, which covers the political agendas of many countries, is an arduous and complex task. However, it has considerable potential for the comparative study of policy. In this paper, we focus on the objectives, the challenges and the future of this new approach. ; Le Projet Agendas Comparés rassemble des chercheurs qui développent des indicateurs systématiques de l'attention portée aux problèmes politiques dans chacun de leur système politique national. L'objectif central du projet est de construire une taxinomie standardisée, afin de comparer à travers le temps et l'espace les activités liées à ces problèmes. La construction et l'application d'un système fiable de classification des thèmes, qui englobe les agendas politiques de nombreux pays, est une tâche complexe ardue, mais elle possède un potentiel considérable pour l'étude de la politique comparée. Dans cet article, nous faisons le point sur les objectifs, les défis et l'avenir de cette nouvelle approche.

The Comparative Agendas Project brings together researchers who are developing systematic indicators of the attention given to political problems in their own national political systems. The main objective of the project is to build up a standardized taxonomy in order to compare activities linked to these problems over time and space. The construction and application of a reliable thematic classification, which covers the political agendas of many countries, is an arduous and complex task. However, it has considerable potential for the comparative study of policy. In this paper, we focus on the objectives, the challenges and the future of this new approach. ; Le Projet Agendas Comparés rassemble des chercheurs qui développent des indicateurs systématiques de l'attention portée aux problèmes politiques dans chacun de leur système politique national. L'objectif central du projet est de construire une taxinomie standardisée, afin de comparer à travers le temps et l'espace les activités liées à ces problèmes. La construction et l'application d'un système fiable de classification des thèmes, qui englobe les agendas politiques de nombreux pays, est une tâche complexe ardue, mais elle possède un potentiel considérable pour l'étude de la politique comparée. Dans cet article, nous faisons le point sur les objectifs, les défis et l'avenir de cette nouvelle approche.

We examine regularities and differences in public budgeting in comparative perspective. Budgets quantify collective political decisions made in response to incoming information, the preferences of decision makers, and the institutions that structure how decisions are made. We first establish that the distribution of budget changes in many Western democracies follows a non-Gaussian distribution, the power function. This implies that budgets are highly incremental, yet occasionally are punctuated by large changes. This pattern holds regardless of the type of political system—parliamentary or presidential—and for level of government. By studying the power function's exponents we find systematic differences for budgetary increases versus decreases (the former are more punctuated) in most systems, and for levels of government (local governments are less punctuated). Finally, we show that differences among countries in the coefficients of the general budget law correspond to differences in formal institutional structures. While the general form of the law is probably dictated by the fundamental operations of human and organizational information processing, differences in the magnitudes of the law's basic parameters are country- and institution-specific.

We examine regularities and differences in public budgeting in comparative perspective. Budgets quantify collective political decisions made in response to incoming information, the preferences of decision makers, and the institutions that structure how decisions are made. We first establish that the distribution of budget changes in many Western democracies follows a non-Gaussian distribution, the power function. This implies that budgets are highly incremental, yet occasionally are punctuated by large changes. This pattern holds regardless of the type of political system—parliamentary or presidential—and for level of government. By studying the power function's exponents we find systematic differences for budgetary increases versus decreases (the former are more punctuated) in most systems, and for levels of government (local governments are less punctuated). Finally, we show that differences among countries in the coefficients of the general budget law correspond to differences in formal institutional structures. While the general form of the law is probably dictated by the fundamental operations of human and organizational information processing, differences in the magnitudes of the law's basic parameters are country- and institution-specific.

We examine regularities and differences in public budgeting in comparative perspective. Budgets quantify collective political decisions made in response to incoming information, the preferences of decision makers, and the institutions that structure how decisions are made. We first establish that the distribution of budget changes in many Western democracies follows a non‐Gaussian distribution, the power function. This implies that budgets are highly incremental, yet occasionally are punctuated by large changes. This pattern holds regardless of the type of political system—parliamentary or presidential—and for level of government. By studying the power function's exponents we find systematic differences for budgetary increases versus decreases (the former are more punctuated) in most systems, and for levels of government (local governments are less punctuated). Finally, we show that differences among countries in the coefficients of the general budget law correspond to differences in formal institutional structures. While the general form of the law is probably dictated by the fundamental operations of human and organizational information processing, differences in the magnitudes of the law's basic parameters are country‐ and institution‐specific.