Ideas and Interests; Agendas and Implementation: An Evolutionary Explanation of Policy Change in British Local Government Finance
| Author | Peter John |
| Published date | 01 April 1999 |
| Date | 01 April 1999 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-856X.00003 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
British Journal of Politics and International Relations,
Vol. 1, No. 1, April 1999, pp. 39–62
Ideas and interests; agendas and
implementation: an evolutionary
explanation of policy change in
British local government finance1
PETER JOHN
Abstract
This article develops an evolutionary theory to account for how policies change. As an
extension of Kingdon’s policy streams approach and Baumgartner and Jones’ punctuated
equilibrium model, the article sets out the mechanisms which select certain ideas as policy
choices, both in the policy formulation and implementation stages of public decision-making.
After responding to the likely criticisms of the uses of evolutionary models in politics, the
article sets out five conditions for the theory to apply in practice. The empirical section exam-
ines the turbulent period of policy for British local government finance, which culminated
in the selection in 1990, and then abolition in 1993, of the community charge or poll tax.
The conclusion is that evolutionary theory offers more of an understanding of policy change
in the poll tax case than other explanations and that researchers may wish to extend these
insights to other examples.
Because so much of contemporary politics seems to be driven by argument,
the deliberations of ‘think tanks’ and the findings of research, ideas have
come to occupy a central place in explanations of policy change. Whether
it is the policy revolution introduced by the ‘New Right’ in the 1980s or
the reformulation of social democracy in the 1990s, many recent reforms
did not just emerge from the concerns of traditional interest groups and
from within the political parties; they arose from the transmission of ideas
© Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA 39
and argument in elite circles and in the media. As Majone argues: ‘We miss
a great deal if we try to understand policy-making solely in terms of power,
influence, and bargaining, to the exclusion of debate and argument’ (1989, 2).
Partly in reaction to the ‘new’ politics, many scholars of public policy now
believe that ideation and advocacy are causal factors over and above the
effects of political institutions and interests (Stone 1988, 1989; Fischer and
Forester 1993; Yanow 1996).
While contemporary policy analysts describe a world which is con-
sonant with the fluid and ideological politics of the 1980s and 1990s, they
find it difficult to explain why some ideas are successful and others are not
and what causes policies to change. Sometimes, an idea becomes a policy
and is adopted and implemented by politicians and bureaucrats. Other
ideas, on the other hand, remain as the proposals of interest groups and
individual advocates, occupying a half-life on the margins of politics. The
lack of an obvious causal factor challenges researchers to find the mechan-
isms which select some ideas while allowing others to fail.
This article explores the influence of ideas through their relation, over
time, to political interests. The concern is not to produce attractive meta-
phors of the decision-making process, but to propose a theory which can
both take account of the complexity of the political world and explain why
an idea can suddenly take hold and become implemented as a policy choice.
To this end, the article sets out an evolutionary theory of policy change in
a manner which both complements and extends contemporary public policy
theory and applies to both the policy formation and the implementation
stages of decision-making. To specify the theory precisely and to facilitate
empirical investigation, the article sets out the necessary and sufficient con-
ditions for evolution in public policy and addresses the criticisms researchers
are likely to make. To explore these conditions and to see if evolutionary
mechanisms work in practice, the article examines a case study of radical
policy change in Britain: the adoption in 1990, and then the abolition in
1993, of the much hated single person local levy, the community charge or
poll tax, within the context of the previous twenty-five year period of stasis
and reform in local government finance. By bringing together theory and
practice, the article aims to discover the role the evolution of policies plays
in contemporary western democracies. But before setting out the theory,
the article begins by examining recent studies of agenda change, a form of
analysis that lays the ground for an evolutionary explanation.
Peter John
40 © Political Studies Association 1999.
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