How Information Scarcity Influences the Policy Agenda: Evidence from UK Immigration Policy

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Boswell, Christina
• 署名单位: University of Edinburgh
• 刊物名称: GOVERNANCE-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLICY ADMINISTRATION AND INSTITUTIONS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0952-1895
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0491.2012.01570.x
• 发表日期: 2012
• 关键词: science

摘要

This article explores how patterns of information supply on policy problems influence political attention. It advances two central claims. First, different policy areas are associated with distinct practices in monitoring policy problems: Some produce abundant, ongoing, and reliable information, while others yield scarce, sporadic, and/or unreliable data. Second, these variations in information supply are likely to influence political attention, with information-rich areas associated with a more proportionate distribution of attention, and information-poor areas yielding punctuated attention. The article tests these claims through comparing U.K. political attention to asylum and illegal immigration. Asylum is observed on an ongoing basis through bureaucratic data, court hearings, and lay observations, producing more constant and proportiate political attention. Illegal immigration is observed sporadically through focusing events, usually police operations, eliciting more punctuated attention. These insights about political attention may also help explain why policy responses may be punctuated or incremental.