Punctuated equilibrium in China: A text reuse approach to measuring policy change

The Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) holds that long periods of relative policy stability alternate with abrupt policy change. However, this theory is largely based on research conducted in democracies. It is therefore unclear whether policy change in nondemocracies also follows this pattern. In response, this paper measures policy change in China, the world’s largest nondemocracy. In the absence of long-term, national-level reliable budget data, we apply a text reuse approach that compares the textual difference between successive versions of the same law, which results in a change index for all national level laws amended by the National People’s Congress during 1954-2016. We find that policy change in China is mostly incremental as most laws score low on the change index. Only a small number of laws show a high change index, which reflects punctuations. We also find that (a) the more amendments a law goes through, the bigger the chance that change is incremental; and (b) the longer period of time a law is unchanged, the larger the chance of punctuated change. Although our focus is on measuring amendments in national level laws in China, the same computational tools can be used to study contradictions between central and local level laws, change in draft laws during deliberation by the National People’s Congress, and the evolution of lower-level legislation.