Ideas and Interests; Agendas and Implementation: An Evolutionary Explanation of Policy Change in British Local Government Finance

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 examines 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.