Policy change is episodic: long stasis punctuated by rapid shifts.
Baumgartner and Jones showed policy areas sit still for decades and then move enormously in one or two years. It explains why crisis windows matter more than steady advocacy.
In practice
- Building regulations sit unchanged for thirty years and are rewritten in eighteen months after one fire.
- A company's expenses policy is untouched for a decade, then rewritten entirely after one contested claim reaches the board.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works