Policy punctuations in the UK: Fluctuations and equilibria in Central government expenditure since 1951

Jones and Baumgartner's punctuated equilibrium model of agenda change has reinvigorated decision-making theory; moreover their US budget project offers a set of techniques to apply to UK data. We replicate the method by plotting percentage budget changes in central government budgets to see whether the distribution is normally distributed as predicted by the incrementalist account or leutokurtic as create 405 data points from budget changes from the National Income Accounts ('Blue law order and Book') on agriculture, defence, social security, educetion, heath, housing, industry, law and order transport, all adjusted using the GDP deflentor at factor cost. We find that the budget changes form a leptokurtic distribution. Such a pattern appears in most policy sectors.