Frank Baumgartner of UNC-Chapel Hill on policy dynamics, lobbying, and issue framing

“In my career, one of the things that I’ve focused on the most is developing the theory of punctuated equilibrium. And I think recognising that things occasionally go through real transformations with radical change has changed people’s understanding of what we can expect out of government. It’s a much more fruitful way to think about how policy changes within government. It is true that for the most part, governments are very status quo oriented. But every once in a while, that’s thrown out and people recognise that there’s a crisis or a certain set of policy actors are discredited and other people come in and follow a different paradigm. And I think those events are relatively rare compared to the periods of stability, but if we don’t understand them then we can’t understand long periods of policy history in any domain.”
- Frank Baumgartner

Governmental policies are not fixed indefinitely; social change is possible. But does change happen incrementally or dramatically and suddenly? And how can individuals or social movements best use their time and resources to encourage positive social change?

Frank Baumgartner is a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is an author of many books, including Agendas and Instability in American Politics, Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why, and The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• The role that financial resources play in efforts to encourage policy change (1:51)
• The methodology used in Agendas and Instability and the research priorities for political science as a field (11:26)
• The theory of “punctuated equilibrium” as a representation of how policy changes (15:23)
• The implications of the theory of punctuated equilibrium for seeking radical policy change rather than smaller incremental policy changes (21:13)
• The importance of public support for policy change (29:30)
• The importance of framing for determining policy outcomes (33:56)
• The importance of the tone of the media coverage of specific sub-topics of social issues and what this implies for social movement strategy (40:46)
• The value of linking policy reforms to underlying problems that people would like to see solved (56:18)
• The importance of having credible professional communities that can develop workable policy solutions (1:03:25)
• Critiques of Frank Baumgartner’s work plus alternative theories and methodologies (1:08:06)
• The relevance of Frank Baumgartner’s work for the question of “How tractable is changing the course of history?” (1:11:11)
• The extent to which Frank Baumgartner’s various findings apply outside the US and the differences between countries (1:14:16)
• How you can use your career to most effectively encourage policy change (1:28:28)
• How Frank Baumgartner’s own career has developed, how his work relates to “advocacy,” and his recommendations for other researchers (1:34:12)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

Support the show