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"The book develops a new theoretical perspective on bureaucratic influence and congressional agenda setting based on limited attention and government information processing. Using a comprehensive new data set on regulatory policymaking across the entire federal bureaucracy, the book develops the theory of the dual dynamics of congressional agenda setting and bureaucratic problem solving as a way to understand how the U.S. government generates information about, and addresses, important policy problems. Key to the perspective is a communications framework for understanding the nature of information and signaling between the bureaucracy and Congress concerning the nature of policy problems. The book finds that congressional influence is innate to the process of issue shuffling, issue bundling, and the fostering of bureaucratic competition. In turn, bureaucracy influences the congressional agenda through problem monitoring, problem definition, and providing information that serves as important feedback in the development of an agenda"--

Political organisations and policymakers contend with an ever-deepening sea of information regarding policy problems, constituent demands and solutions. Moreover, the problems confronted by modern governments are complex, multi-dimensional and boundary-spanning. This article leverages studies of national and subnational information processing and policy change to identify potential bottlenecks of information and patterns of policy feedback. We identify five lessons from this literature: two cautions and three suggestions. We caution that (1) centralisation does not solve problems of information search, instead, centralisation creates bottlenecks and (2) multiple venues offer more representation and opportunities for citizen influence, but suffer from attention limitations. Given these cautions, we suggest that (3) institutions be explicitly designed to be information-seeking, (4) issue bundling (grouping similar, interdependent issues together for the purpose of capturing attention) can prompt more holistic information searches, and (5) governments consider the correlation of information from subgovernments as policy information.

"The increasingly global study of policy processes faces challenges with scholars applying theories in radically different national and cultural contexts. Questions frequently arise about how to conduct policy process research comparatively and among this global community of scholars. Methods of the Policy Process is the first book to remedy this situation, not by establishing an orthodoxy or imposing upon the policy process community a rigid way of conducting research, but instead, by allowing the leading researchers in the different theoretical traditions a space to share the means by which they put their research into action. This edited volume serves as a companion volume and supplemental guide to the well-established Theories of the Policy Process, 4th Edition. Methods of the Policy Process acknowledges that growth and advancement in the study of the policy process is dependent not merely on conceptual and theoretical development, but also on developing and systematizing better methodological approaches to measurement and analysis. To maximize student engagement with the material, each chapter follows a similar framework: introduction of a given theory of the policy process, application of that theory (including best practices for research design, conceptualization, major data sources, data collection, and methodological approaches), critical assessment, future directions, and online resources (including datasets, survey instruments, and interview and coding protocols). While the structure and focus of each chapter varies slightly according to the theoretical tradition being discussed, each chapter's central aim is to prepare readers to confidently undertake common methodological strategies themselves. Methods of the Policy Process is especially beneficial to people new to the field, including students enrolled in policy process courses, as well as those without access to formal training. For scholars experienced in applying theories, this edited volume is a helpful reference to clarify best practices in research methods"--

This research note synthesizes the main theoretical frameworks in public policy. The concept of policy knots ties policy cycles, multiple streams, punctuated equilibrium, and other frameworks into one useful analytical tool. We introduce two particular policy knots—the granny knot and the clinch knot—to demonstrate the utility of the concept. As an illustration, we examine climate change policy in the United States in order to show the challenges of tying and securing a policy knot.

We examine the shape of policy change in the US federal bureaucracy. Punctuated equilibrium suggests institutional friction and limited attention as prime influences on policy change. We build on this literature by exploring how organisational forms shape policy change. We also conceptualise the key difference between budgets and laws as measures and use this distinction to motivate our new approach to modelling the shape of policy change. We use the considerable organisational variation in the US federal bureaucracy as the empirical foundation for the analysis, collecting a new data set on the regulatory agenda containing 63,289 items from 2008 to 2016. We use an innovative points-over-threshold approach to show how to move from typical descriptive analysis of policy change distributions to models of tail behaviour. This approach is more amenable to textual data than previous approaches based on percentage change distributions. The findings suggest that departmental bureaucracies, independent boards and commissions, and government corporations experience different patterns of policy change. We relate organisation and delegation to adaptability and resiliency in institutional and policy-system design. Larger organisations exhibit smoother, less disjointed policy dynamics, while smaller organisational forms exhibit fatter tails and less adaptive policy change. Our findings suggest that larger bureaucracies may handle change in task environments and problem definitions more easily than smaller organisations. The findings challenge the typical view that smaller, nimble organisations handle change better.

We address theoretical and empirical aspects of policy disruptions that affect multiple areas of policymaking. Our theorizing leads us to consider the effects of widespread disruptions in gaining the attention of elected officials, in affecting policymaking, and in reshaping the involvement of federal agencies. Our empirical analyses concern the threat of terrorism in the United States and its implications for public risk subsystems over the past 25 years. Our analyses of the attention of policymakers and resultant policymaking volatility show selective patterns of subsystem disruption related to the threat of terrorism. We show that capturing the attention of policymakers in multiple subsystems is insufficient to motivate heightened levels of policymaking across the board. In addition, we find more muted impacts for federal agency involvement than might have been expected from the massive reorganization that created the Department of Homeland Security. More generally, the disjunctions we observe show the powerful influence of policy subsystems in buffering against widespread policy disruptions.

We consider the involvement of different interests in policymaking following disruptions that affect the agendas of multiple subsystems. The policy process literature suggests that increased policy uncertainty and jurisdictional ambiguity could lead to substantial upheavals in interest involvement. We address these possibilities in studying the mobilization of different interests after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, for eight disrupted policy subsystems. Contrary to expectations derived from the literature, we find limited evidence of interest upheaval or cross‐subsystem spillovers in interest involvement. We suggest this is because policymakers sought to reduce policy uncertainty by calling upon those interests that were best equipped to help craft and implement policy solutions. These findings point to the stabilizing influence of policy subsystems in buffering against the effects of widespread disruptions.