Month: November 2023

The Executive Lawmaking Agenda: Political Parties, Prime Ministers, and Policy Change in Australia

by Andrew Gibbons & Rhonda Evans

Governments can pursue their public policy objectives through various means. What do they seek to accomplish through the lawmaking process? The executive’s role in the legislative process varies widely across political systems. In Westminster systems, like Australia’s, institutional rules allow executives to dominate the legislative agenda, though governments do face constraints, such as the need to balance competing interests, contend with bureaucratic processes, and attend to unforeseen events. 

Drawing from the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) and analyzing a data set of government bills in Australia, our research offers a new perspective on agenda-setting in Westminster systems, shedding light on the distinct agenda space we call the executive lawmaking agenda.

We addressed four research questions:

RQ1: What policy areas comprise the executive lawmaking agenda?

RQ2: How stable is the executive lawmaking agenda?

RQ3: Do the major political parties pursue different lawmaking agendas when in government? 

RQ4: Does a change in prime minister affect which issues receive executive lawmaking attention? 

Our study utilized an original dataset of 3,982 bills introduced into the Australian Federal Parliament between 2000 and 2017, focusing on government bills introduced by ministers. We coded each bill based on its policy content using the Australian Policy Agendas Codebook (APAP), measuring policy attention by counting the number of bills devoted to specific policy areas. We assessed agenda stability by using Sigelman and Buell’s measure of issue convergence, which calculates the degree of overlap in legislative attention distribution between different years. 

The results, illustrated in Figure 1, show that government operations and macroeconomics were the two largest policy areas on the executive lawmaking agenda, accounting for nearly 10% and over 8% of the agenda, respectively. Health, banking, and labor policy rounded out the top five policy areas, collectively making up over 40% of the entire executive lawmaking agenda. On the other hand, issues related to civil rights, minority concerns, civil liberties, housing, and community development, and cultural matters received limited attention. We also found a high degree of stability in the executive lawmaking agenda over time, with around 78% of the agenda overlapping from one year to the next.

Our analysis suggests that this stability persists even after power is shifted between political parties, as indicated in Figure 2. We also find that a change in prime minister is statistically related to a change in policy attention, but more work needs to be done to understand why. These findings seem to align with existing CAP research.

Further research needs to be done on executive policy agendas. Though we primarily looked at legislation, it is not the only kind of policy. Many executives have the ability to enact laws outside of the typical legislative process. Future research should focus on executive power in different stages of the policy process, non-legislative executive policy agendas, and examining alternative agenda spaces to deepen our understanding of executive lawmaking power.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Gibbons, A., and Evans, R.. 2023. “The executive lawmaking agenda: Political parties, prime ministers, and policy change in Australia”. Policy Studies Journal, 51, 307–325. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12503

About the Authors

Dr. Andrew Gibbons holds a PhD in political science from the University of Melbourne. His published research focuses on political communication and public policy, including policy responses to mis/disinformation, policy agendas, and the communication of policy ideas. 

Dr Rhonda Evans is an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Department of Government and Director of the Edward A. Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a J.D. and a Ph.D. in Government and studies agenda-setting politics, focusing on the Australian Human Rights Commission and Federal Parliament of Australia, as well as judicial politics in Australia and New Zealand. She is co-author of Legislating Equality: The Politics of Antidiscrimination Policy In Europe with Oxford University Press. 
Find her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhonda-evans-305aa4105/

, , , , ,

Buzzworthy Updates from the PSJ Editorial Team

Greetings! As the year draws to a close, the Policy Studies Journal (PSJ) is excited to announce the upcoming release of its final issue of the year, PSJ 51(4). This November issue will feature ten exceptional articles that explore a wide range of themes within policy theory and substantive policy domains. We are confident that these articles will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in policy process research.

In addition to the exceptional contributions in this PSJ issue, we would like to take this opportunity to announce some significant developments and updates in PSJ’s operations. Firstly, we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Saba Siddiki from Syracuse University as our new Associate Editor. Dr. Siddiki is an accomplished scholar with expertise in policy theory and institutional analysis. We are confident that she will bring a wealth of experience to our editorial team and contribute to maintaining PSJ’s reputation as a leading publication outlet in the field.

We are also proud to have Drs. Heasun Choi from the University of Arkansas, Briana Huett from Drexel University, and Davor Mondom from Syracuse University join us as Managing Editors. Their diverse experiences and expertise will play a crucial role in shaping the course of the journal and ensuring that we keep up with emerging trends in policy research.

Aligned with our commitment to nurturing a vibrant community of policy scholars, practitioners, and citizens, we are excited to announce the launch of the PSJ Blog. Led by Dr. Melissa Merry, our Associate Editor, the PSJ Blog provides a platform for authors to extend the reach and impact of their research and encourages dialogue between policy researchers and practitioners. 

To facilitate meaningful conversations within the policy community, we are now accepting short article manuscripts (3,000-5,000 words) that meet the same rigorous standards for theoretical depth and methodological sophistication as full PSJ articles. This initiative is led by Dr. Gwen Arnold, our Associate Editor and PSJ Short Article Editor. We invite policy scholars to submit their innovative research on policy issues in concise and impactful ways.

Finally, we are pleased to announce that we will be publishing a PSJ special issue on homelessness in the coming year. Homelessness presents one of the most pressing social problems of our time and requires innovative and resolute policy solutions. We are eagerly looking forward to receiving impactful policy research that contributes to the policymaking process in this area.

We are proud of the exceptional contributions that have made PSJ a leading publication outlet in the field. We would like to express our gratitude to our contributors, reviewers, and readers for their support and involvement in making our journal a success. We look forward to continuing to promote high-quality policy research and providing a platform for valuable discussions on policy issues. Thank you!

Political Institutions, Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, and Policy Disasters

by E.J. Fagan

The classic authoritarian promise is to impose order on a disorderly society.  Benito promised to make the trains run on time. Donald Trump promised that he alone could save the country. The Chinese Communist Party promises record economic growth. All authoritarians ask that, in return, societies give up their political freedoms. If they can just push through all the noise and enact their vision for public policy without friction, they will make your life better. It is a tempting bargain for many people.

However, these promises are false. The political institutions of liberal democracies–such as free speech, rule of law, a vibrant political society, and an egalitarian democratic system–also make it better off. Liberal democracies are not only freer societies, but also have higher economic growth and human development indices.

In “Political institutions, punctuated equilibrium theory and policy disasters,” I add to that literature, using punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) to examine why some countries experience more of the most extreme policy failures than others. Briefly, PET posits that governments show a pattern of policy change where very little happens for a long period of time followed by short periods of explosive change. Governments that ignore problems for longer tend to have more pronounced policy punctuations to make up for lost time, while governments that address problems sooner tend to enact smaller changes. Authoritarian countries tend to have an even more punctuated pattern of change: they ignore problems for longer, then pass very large changes when they finally get around to doing something about it.

I study two very different types of policy disasters in this article. First, I use data on financial crises, such as sovereign debt defaults, hyperinflation, and major bank failures. Second, I use data on high-casualty natural and technological disasters. Each dataset contains observations beginning in the 1960s.

Figure 1 shows the relative frequency of both types of disaster in governing systems, compared to liberal democracies. Notably, authoritarian countries experience nearly twice as many financial crises. Closed autocracies, such as China or North Korea, experience more natural and technological disasters, but the result is not statistically significant. Electoral autocracy, which hold non-competitive single-party elections, are even worse.

Electoral democracies, which hold competitive elections but lack the free speech, press, civil society, and rule of law of liberal democracies, perform just as poorly, or even worse, as authoritarian systems. This result suggests that democracy needs these liberal institutions to function. Without them, countries like Turkey and Nigeria struggle to detect and solve problems before they become disasters.

Figure 1: Regime Types and the Frequency of Policy Disasters

Figure 2 examines the relationship between policy disasters and political institutions. The results suggest that countries with political institutions that are more inclusive and allow for free society have fewer policy disasters. Further, countries with more streamlined institutions, such as unitary systems and parliamentary systems, are better at solving problems before they become disasters.

Figure 2: Policy Disasters and Political Institutions

In conclusion, authoritarians make far more mistakes than their liberal democratic counterparts.  Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen once observed that every famine in world history occurred under an authoritarian government. These results suggest that authoritarian mistakes are broader than just famines; detecting problems before they become severe is authoritarianism’s biggest weakness.

At the same time, these results are a warning for backsliding democracies. Some leaders may want to maintain some semblance of a democracy, but eliminate the annoying problems created by a free press, independent judiciary or empowered civil society. But, democracy can’t function without these institutions. Without them, leaders in weak democracies are flying blind.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Fagan, E. J.(2023). Political institutions, punctuated equilibrium theory, and policy disasters. Policy Studies Journal, 51: 243–263. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12460

About the Author

E.J. Fagan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois Chicago. He studies agenda setting, think tanks, political parties and policymaking in the U.S. Congress.




, , ,