CULTURAL CHANGE AND POLICY IMAGES IN POLICY SUBSYSTEMS
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| Author | ROBERT R. ROBINSON |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12215 |
doi: 10.1111/padm.12215
CULTURAL CHANGE AND POLICY IMAGES IN POLICY
SUBSYSTEMS
ROBERT R. ROBINSON
Baumgartner and Jones’ theory of conict expansion highlights the importance of policy imagery
in the maintenance of policy subsystems, as a sharp increase in negative imagery can drive conict
expansion and subsystem dissolution. However, we still know relatively little about what drives
rapid shifts in image valence. In this study, I examine how cultural change affects receptiveness to
policy images, drawing on the cultural theory (CT) developed by Douglas and Wildavsky. Affecting
both perception and risk assessment, cultural commitments impact how policy images are received.
Returning to the policy subsystem anchored in the Atomic Energy Commission, I nd that its
imagery – well suited for an earlier cultural milieu –created negative associations for egalitarians,
who were increasingly prevalent during this time frame. As my study shows, CT can add to the
study of administration by helping us better understand, categorize, and predict which images and
institutions may be endangered by specic cultural changes.
By denition, democracies should be responsive to the voting public. In practice, how-
ever, there are multiple places within the administrative state where a small number of
political actors effectively control policy outcomes, belying democratic control. Referred
to as sub-governments or policy subsystems, these networks are highly resistant to out-
side inuence, relying on close relationships between executive agencies, key members of
Congress, and interest groups to maintain the policy status quo (Thurber 1996).
While subsystems challenge the premise of democratic control, they are neither immor-
tal nor invulnerable. In a key contribution to the policy and public administration litera-
ture, Baumgartner and Jones examined the case of nuclear power, specically the policy
subsystem anchored in the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which controlled nuclear
policy in the United States from 1947 to 1974 (Baumgartner and Jones 1991). Building
on Schattschneider’s observations that opponents of a particular policy seek to disrupt
the status quo by broadening the scope of debate (Schattschneider 1960), Baumgartner
and Jones proffered a theory of conict expansion, in which policy entrepreneurs success-
fully exploit subsystem weaknesses to create a feedback cycle of polarization and salience,
drawing in additional actors to destabilize existing arrangements. Importantly,they found
that conict expansion was preceded by a shift in the valence of policy images: the mix of
messages and values that colour policy perception. In the case of the AEC, a rapid growth
in negative perceptions of nuclear power thus played a key role in catalysing the expansion
of conict.
Conict expansion remains a persuasive explanation of how subsystems can be altered
or undone, as well as an important component of punctuated equilibrium theory (PET),
a theory of change in which policy or institutional adjustments are generally incremen-
tal but occasionally dramatic (Baumgartner and Jones 1991, 2009; Jones and Baumgartner
2012). However, there remains considerable uncertainty as to what drives theincreases in
negative policy imagery that often precede conict expansion. While these shifts are often
discussed in light of exogenous shocks that draw the attention of policy actors – such as
Robert R. Robinson is at the Division of Politics, Administration, and Justice, California State University,Fullerton, USA.
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 4, 2016 (953–969)
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
954 ROBERT R. ROBINSON
the collapse of Enron or Hurricane Katrina – more systematic factors may also play a role.
Baumgartner and Jones give a clue to one such factor – the importance of risk perception
and cultural worldviews – when they note that a host of ‘policy subsystems relating to
tobacco, pesticides, air and water pollution, trucking, telecommunications, and nuclear
power were all destroyed or radically altered’ in the mid-1970s (1991, p. 1045). That sev-
eral such systems not only collapsed over the same time frame but also involved issues
of importance to the emerging environmental movement suggests a common systematic
factor that reduced the efcacy of their policy images.
In this analysis, I build on this observation by examining how ideational shifts impact
receptiveness to existing policy images, drawing on the cultural theory (CT) developed
by Douglas and Wildavsky (1983), as well as its offshoot, cultural cognition theory (CCT)
(e.g. Kahan et al. 2011). CT posits that individuals have afnities for particular cultural
worldviews; CCT provides strong evidence that for some issues, cultural attachments
impact perception and cognition, affecting risk assessment and the consideration of
evidence. Using CT to operationalize culture, I argue that cultural change serves as a
systematic driver of shifts in policy image valence. Furthermore, given that CT makes
predictions about what sorts of images particular cultural types prefer, by tracking cul-
tural change over time, we can better understand, categorize, and predict what imagery
and subsystems are vulnerable to specic shifts at particular points in time, improving
PET.
To demonstrate CT’s utility, I revisit the AEC. I nd that negative policy images of
nuclear power increased alongside a growth in what CT labels egalitarianism, a world-
view whose adherents are suspicious of capitalism, big government, and unfettered
growth (Thompson et al. 1990; Grendstad and Selle 1999). Nuclear policy images tied
to economic growth, technological optimism, and effective national defence – viewed
positively by other cultural worldviews – were rejected by egalitarians, who instead
successfully linked nuclear power to safety, health, and environmental risks (Douglas
and Wildavsky 1983; Wildavsky 1991). As egalitarianism took root in the late 1960s, the
subsystem’s proffered images could no longer monopolize policy discourse, increasing
the likelihood of conict expansion.
POLICY SUBSYSTEMS, POLICY IMAGES, AND CULTURAL THEORY
As Baumgartner and Jones reiterate, even in a pluralist democratic government, powerful
interests can sometimes ‘insulate themselves …through the creation of relatively inde-
pendent depoliticized subgovernments’ (Baumgartner and Jones 1991, p. 1045). These sub-
governments, often referred to as policy subsystems, can be viewed as ‘structure-induced
equilibria’ in which a small set of actors control policy outcomes on a particular issue
(Thurber 1996; Weible 2008). Importantly, policy subsystems not only control outcomes,
but also ‘collectively control a policy discourse within a “policy community”’, maintain-
ing a dominant idea set that portrays them in a favourable light (Howlett and Ramesh
1998, pp. 470–71).
Maintaining a policy subsystem thus requires managing the images, associations, and
messages characterizing the policy status quo. The perceptions of the ‘interaction of beliefs
and values concerning a particularly policy’ are generally referred to as policy images
(Baumgartner and Jones 1991, pp. 1046, 1047). Successful propagation of positive images
reassures the public, media, and other political actors that all is well, encouraging focus
elsewhere. A sudden cascade of negative policy images, by contrast, can lead to a positive
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 4, 2016 (953–969)
© 2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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