The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems

The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems. By Bryan D. Jones and Frank R. Baumgartner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 304p. $70.00 cloth, $25.00 paper. This book is about policy change in the U.S. national government. Drawing on their exhaustive collection of policy data for the last three decades, Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner make a very persuasive argument for their “punctuated equilibrium” theory of public policy. The authors detail a catalog of reasons why policy changes are typically small, including (among other things) individual-level “bounded rationality” and institutional properties like “friction.” These many factors combine to produce policy that appears to…