by Clare Brock & Daniel Mallinson
Gridlock and partisan polarization are popularly blamed for every American social and political ill–from the inability of Congress to pass much needed policy reform on a variety of issues, to the inefficacy of bureaucracy, to the divisive rhetoric espoused in presidential debates. The headlines are not inaccurate in their assessment of the division and dysfunction that currently plagues American politics; however, they do not tell the entire story either.
Partisan polarization and gridlock are always high salience, high attention problems. But they do not operate the same way across all policy areas, nor is it appropriate to explain all outcomes (or lack thereof) in terms of these two phenomena. Total gridlock as a result of polarization, for example, is simply not an accurate way to describe American governance. Congress does pass important legislation, including, but not limited to, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and the 2010 Affordable Care Act. In short, Congress can legislate. The question is then, when and on what issues can Congress act, and why does it seem so incapable of moving forward on so many other issues?
In “Measuring the stasis: Punctuated equilibrium theory and partisan polarization,” we use punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) to explore the role of partisan polarization in a stop-and-go policy process. PET predicts that the policy process is characterized by long periods of stability (gridlock), interspersed with brief periods of drastic change. In other words, the policy process is neither completely gridlocked, nor is it incremental; rather, policymaking tends to be alternatively highly stable and highly volatile. The degree of volatility is, in part, a function of how much friction is built into the governing system. Higher levels of friction will mean a more extreme pattern of punctuation – longer periods of stasis, but also, larger policy changes when sufficient pressure does build up to generate change.
We look at partisan polarization as a source of increasing friction in the political system, relying on annual data from federal budget authority and the passage of public laws from the Comparative Agendas Project to capture policy change, and NOMINATE scores that measure partisan polarization. These data stretch from 1948 to 2020 and allow us to evaluate how partisan polarization has affected budget-making and public law passage across multiple policy areas over the years.
Figure 1 shows the trends over time in partisan polarization (it is increasing) and budgetary and public law kurtosis. Kurtosis is a common way to measure the degree of policy punctuation. When it is high, there are long periods of incremental changes (i.e., stasis) that are punctuated by large policy changes. The higher the kurtosis, the more extreme the pattern of stasis and punctuation. As indicated by the trend lines, partisan polarization has been steadily rising since the 1960s, but underwent a considerable jump during the mid-1990s and again in the early-2000s. Likewise, while budget kurtosis was high in the 1950s and 60s, it dropped for the next two decades before a large and rapid increase between 1996 and 2012. Public law kurtosis remained steady until the 199s when it increased and then became more volatile. Notably, these dynamics settled back down after 2012.
Figure 1: Changes in U.S. National Government budget kurtosis and congressional polarization, 1957–2020.
Much like the increased budgetary kurtosis and declining passage of public laws illustrated in Figure 1, the same results were found when controlling for the presence of divided government (i.e., when one party controls the Presidency and the other controls at least one chamber of Congress). In other words, the observed effects were most likely caused by the increase in polarization and not by other political factors expected to cause gridlock. This suggests that polarization has contributed to a more volatile policy process, with prolonged periods of stasis and reactively large moments of change.
It is worth noting that there were differences in these effects depending on the policy area. For example, polarization seemed to increase volatility more in energy policy than in transportation policy. Future research could do more to investigate the nuances uncovered in our analysis, and we hope that scholars will continue examining how polarization impacts our society.
You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at
Brock, Clare and Mallinson, Daniel. 2023. “Measuring the Stasis: Punctuated Equilibrium Theory and Partisan Polarization.” Policy Studies Journal 00(0): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12519.
About the Authors
Clare Brock is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Colorado State University. Her research interests include public policy process, interest groups and advocacy, food politics, and the impact of polarization on policymaking.
Daniel J. Mallinson is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration at Penn State Harrisburg. His research interests include policy process theory (particularly policy diffusion and punctuated equilibrium theory), cannabis policy, energy policy, and the science of teaching and learning.
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