Abstract
Some policy scholars insist that any policy change is difficult to achieve, while others argue that large change occurs more frequently than we imagine. The work of Baumgartner and Jones reconciles these arguments, suggesting that the extent to which large public policy changes can take place depends on the ability of decision makers to conduct wide-ranging and varied information searches. The more open policy makers are to a diversity of information, the more likely it is that profound change will occur. Given human limitations in cognitive capacity, policy makers cannot simultaneously undertake multiple broad information searches. At any given time, however, such searches occur on a small number of policy topics, and produce significant changes on those topics, while the status quo prevails on the others. As important as this hypothesis is for policy studies, it has not been the object of significant empirical testing, especially outside the US Congress. This article fills this gap through a comprehensive analysis of Canadian federal government regulatory change from 1998 to 2019. We find that Baumgartner and Jones theory is largely corroborated in the Canadian context.
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Acknowledgement
The authors would like to express their sincere appreciation to Bryan D. Jones, Frank R. Baumgartner, Marc Tremblay-Faulkner and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable contributions to this work. Their comments and suggestions have greatly enhanced the quality and rigor of this research, and have been instrumental in shaping its final form.
Funding
The funding was provided by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Fonds de Recherche du Québec-Société et Culture.
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Appendices
Appendix A
See Fig. 5.
Rule change length by sponsor, by year. The variation on the y-axis for a single sponsor does not bear any meaning, and its only purpose is to improve the readability of the figure
Appendix B
See Fig. 6.
Amendments and new rules distribution by sponsor, by year
Appendix C
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Beaulieu-Guay, LR., Costa, M.A. & Montpetit, É. Policy change and information search: a test of the politics of information using regulatory data. Policy Sci 56, 377–418 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-023-09497-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-023-09497-3