Dear Prime Minister” – A Punctuated Equilibrium Approach to the Study of Letters from the Public to the Executive

• In Event: Comparative Agenda Setting: Messaging, Communicating and Legislating

Abstract

While extensive research has shown that policy agendas are high punctuated, there is a paucity of research about the punctuation of public opinion and the political participation to express that opinion. If the public opinion input into the policy development process is already punctuated, this partially explains the previously observed punctuations in the early stages of policy process. I start to close this gap by developing a new dataset on the volume and topic of letters from the public to Australian Prime Ministers. I analyse the distribution of changes in both the volume and the topics of the letters and find clear evidence that that the expression of public opinion is punctuated, but not as punctuated as policy processes or policy outputs. This supports theories of increasing friction as we move along the policy process. I also find that those topics with a high volume of letters have a higher level of punctuation, supporting the theory that punctuations can occur when the conflict is expanded, and public is drawn into the conflict. These results allow us to extend punctuated equilibrium further up the policy process chain than has previously been done. It also raises questions for political responsiveness. Given leaders can only be responsive to public opinion that has been expressed, these findings indicate that expressed opinion may not necessarily reflect underlying public opinion.

Author

• Daniel K. Casey