Journal of Politics,1997
Baumgartner and Jones (1993) described a process
of punctuated equilibrium in their study of policymaking in the United States
since World War Two. Evidence was drawn from a series of particular issue-areas,
but the model has implications for all areas of policymaking. In this paper,
we explore the validity of this approach with a new dataset which tabulates
Congressional budget authority at the Office of Management and Budget subfunction
level across all areas of the federal budget for the entire post-war period.
We find that government spending is characterized by much greater change
than is typically portrayed in the literature, even if there is great stability
for most categories most of the time. In addition, overall patterns of spending
have been affected by two large-scale punctuations. These punctuations divide
national spending into three epochs: one of postwar adjustment, lasting
until FY 1956; one of robust growth, lasting from 1956 through 1974, and
one of restrained growth, beginning in FY 1976. We test the epoch hypothesis
against three plausible rival hypotheses: changes in the robustness of the
post-war economy; partisan divisions; and public opinion. The epoch hypothesis
survives all of these rivals whether modeled individually or together. This
paper provides empirical evidence that punctuations occur, not just in some
programs or subsystems, but also throughout government.