Paradigm Shifts and Policy Networks: Cumulative Change in Agriculture

TLDR

The article proposes a cumulative route to policy paradigm change, where state actors negotiate with group representatives using policy feedback and network concepts, illustrated through agricultural policy in the United States, Canada, and Australia. The authors employ policy feedback and policy network theory to show how negotiated interactions between state actors and group representatives drive the cumulative shift, as demonstrated in the three countries. The contested discussions within sectoral policy networks produce a managed series of changes that culminate in a new policy paradigm.

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article presents an alternative trajectory to policy paradigm change to that outlined by Peter A. Hall's social learning model, in which unsuccessful efforts by state officials to respond to policy failures and anomalies in the existing paradigm eventually trigger a broader, societal, political partisan debate about policy principles. From this society-wide contestation over policy goals, problems, and solutions, a new policy paradigm emerges. Drawing on the conceptual tools of policy feedback and policy networks, this article describes an alternative route to paradigm shift in which change is negotiated between state actors and group representatives. Discussions of change are largely confined to sectoral policy networks and the result is a more managed series of policy changes that culminate in a paradigm shift. This argument for a second, cumulative trajectory to paradigm shift is developed by examining agricultural policy change in three countries: the United States, Canada, and Australia.