The Molitor Model of Change

Stage I: Framing Issues

The ability to identify and track emerging issues starts with this stage. Signatures of change associated with framing or initiating change include five basic steps:

Situational contexts entail the intrinsic advantages and shortcomings that limit or facilitate prospective undertakings: I. Natural resources (minerals, climate, water, arable land, etc.). II. Human resources (population demographics—density, age distribution, healthcare status); educational status (literacy, number of scientists); social setting (urban–rural, affluence, time use—70–80 vs. 24–40 hour workweek); economic system (postindustrial–lesser developed economies, capitalism–socialism); political climate (democratic–totalitarian, liberal–conservative); technological capabilities (hi-tech–primitive, R&D, patent activity); institutional infrastructure (global giant companies, transportation systems, utilities); and unusual factors (wars/hostilities, mind reading, and privacy invasion). Policy-maker response is circumscribed by available resources—doing with what’s on hand (McHale 1969; Lapp 1973).

Creativity is the wellspring of public policy. Initially, facts are few and ill-defined, descriptions are fragmentary and tentative. Ongoing discussion refines and tempers concepts. Ideas evolve from abstract, to general, to specific, to detailed refinements (exceptions, limitations, special circumstances). Hypothesis are proposed and tempered by peer review and social examination. Sound ideas survive, and formal theories emerge. Following testing, verification, and replication, consensus forms and widespread acceptance ensues. Each step takes time to run its course.

Technological advances usually originate with scientific and technological elites. Practical experience based on commonsense everyday problem solving adds other inputs. Experimental trials prompt a flood of related efforts and may lead to coordinated efforts. Doing anything better is a virtually limitless undertaking. Change is incessant, never fully or finally finished. Constant improvements and refinements occur along the way. Adoption and use settles upon the most effective, least costly, and best approach (Conger 1970).

Event patterns are revealed by cumulative development involving unique occurrences (surrogate “moms for hire,” quintuple parenting—donor sperm and egg, surrogate mother, contracting mom, adopting parent; cloned babies), abuses and excesses (dangerous thrill seeking, ear-shattering car audio systems, toy lawn dart deaths), increased magnitude (hi-speed roller coaster deaths), disparities (126- vs. 50-year life expectancies), subtle or latent impacts (controls based on quadrillionth criteria), unforeseen (indoor pollution caused by “tight building” energy conservation), random phenomena (packaged product tampering/poisoning, copycat crimes), long-term development (up to 46-year lag from exposure to asbestosis manifestation), preventive undertakings (war toy and spanking bans to discourage violent behavior), and so on. Initial impacts are novel and few. Public awareness of these event patterns is sparse and dim at first. As impacts mount, incidences are aggregated. Amassed data lead to comprehensive quantification. A sense of urgency may develop as the severity of impacts mounts. After measures contending with objectionable events have eliminated or minimized excesses, demands for change wane.

Issues based on event patterns complete this initial phase. At the outset, characterization of issues is incomplete. Basic principles may be uncertain or unclear. As more pieces of the puzzle are pieced together, new patterns are discerned, and elaboration of specifics follows. At the final stages, issue descriptions are complete and the evidence becomes clear and convincing. Postadoption developments may involve elaboration and extension of concepts, updating and upgrading, loophole closing, and occasionally, repeal.

Stage II: Advancing Issues

Once issues have emerged, a succession of sociopolitical responses converge to sustain discussion to advance or impede further development. This can be observed through seven additional timelines.

Occasionally, “bolts out of the blue”—unusual phenomena—may emerge and galvanize scrambling for accommodating solutions, for example, prostitution legalization (The Netherlands) and unexpected (but possible) catastrophes in earthquake fault zones or flood plains triggering remuneration demands.

Most public policy developments unfold in a step-by-step linear mode. Progression is not mechanical-like and smooth; it may develop by fits or short bursts. Other undercurrents—cyclic, periodic, and oscillatory patterns, among the many others—also may play a role. Generic issue categories—social-welfare reforms, environmentalism, consumerism, communication/advertising regulation, and so on—often include hundreds of related issues that receive attention in cyclic waves. Cyclic periods of sociopolitical activism and reforms in the United States average twenty-one to thirty years. Undergirding patterns are akin to those used by economic forecasters that carry change along. The Kondratieff long-wave analysis of socioeconomic change patterns provides a familiar example (Shuman and Rosenau 1972).

Change agents, ranging from victims who emote problems to scientists who explicitly describe them, emerge as focal points of discussion and debate (Vago 1980). Leading experts, scholars, institutional leaders, influential voices, and scientific/technological elites provide factual commentary upon which public policy is founded. Occasionally, victims (or their survivors) become leading spokesperson(s). When controversy develops, critics and crusaders with varying viewpoints take up the cause. As issue development matures, popularizers, spokespersons, and institutional leaders sustain deliberations. Rarely, splinter parties may emerge to spearhead causes (Prohibitionists, “Greens.”)

Printed materials document available research. Scientific, technical, and professional journals provide the primary research foundation. While cumulative counts indicate the verve of matters, many scientific articles involve a preponderance of writers with only one to two articles on a topic. Such commentaries may be interesting, but seldom are seminal. Limiting bibliometric counts to leading authorities—often only six to twelve experts addressing highly specific matters—further simplifies research tasks. Written materials flow from highly specific scientific journals to mass media coverage, from the prolix to the popular. Piecing together inputs from related fields of knowledge and synthesizing disparate parts sharpens details and perspectives. Books, integrating and summarizing accumulated findings, emerge—best sellers may swell popular interest. Artistic and visionary works (science fiction, poetry, novels, posters, protest signs, rap music, etc.), uninhibited by peer constraints or political correctness, may elucidate plausible ideas prior to public policy makers taking them up. Chronicles of change are not limited to printed materials. The powerful impact of television and the Internet cannot be underestimated. Photo-journalism, theatrical productions, motion pictures, jokes, cartoons, rallies and demonstrations, anarchy and terrorism, and virtually every imaginable form of communication contribute to the exposition of ideas and viewpoints that moves issues along. Actions may speak louder than words.

As ideas emerge, established organizations are joined by newly formed institutions and public interest groups that address causes and issues. The existence of activist groups attracts interested parties, provides a rallying point, maintains continuity, and provides leadership. Growing backing for causes—measured by tabulating the number of organizations, persons involved, or resources committed—increases pressures for change. Starting out in local areas, organizations may expand to regions, and nations, sometimes becoming global in scope. Government advisory committee and commission reports—especially those in Sweden, Great Britain, and the United States—should not be overlooked as their findings often play prominent roles (Linstone and Mitroff 1994).

Accumulating forces pierce veils of apathy and indifference. Growing public awareness shapes the psychological climate and public opinion polls track attitudes toward impending change. Swelling public opinion influences attitudes and powerfully influences outcomes. For example, negative mindsets toward nuclear power rose swiftly in response to the Three Mile Island meltdown and the Chernobyl reactor accident and responses—including phase-outs—followed.

Calamities that galvanize public opinion spike uproars for corrective responses. The more shocking the revelations, the greater and more voluble the public clamor. Or, in the instance of beneficial new opportunities, urgings for “getting on with it” are ratcheted along. Titanic sinking losses led to upgrading safety measures. Thalidomide’s hideous deformity of unborn baby limbs (phocomelia) resulted in swift upgrading of drug laws. Accidental release of toxic chemicals at a Union Carbide plant in India prompted stricter hazardous substance control laws.

Stage III: Resolving the Issues

Up to this point, the change pattern has progressed beyond intellectual development and proving of ideas that introduced innovations which caused events to unfold—Framing the issues. Discussions dealing with events, carried on by champions of change and their organizations sustained deliberations that shaped public opinion (sometimes accompanied by catalytic phenomena carried along by cyclic undercurrents) have exerted their influences—Advancing the issues. Finally, arrays of informal and formal public policy solutions now are brought into play to accommodate change—Resolving the issues. There are thirteen additional timelines that can be documented in this stage.

Informal principles and practices—without the sanctions and enforceability of written codes—often guide behavior. Generally implicit and left unspoken, these fundamental rules—ideological, philosophical, ethical, and moral concepts—predispose and shape human actions. At another level, cultural influences tempering human responses include folklore, legends, ballads, fables, proverbs, parables, and all other forms of practical wisdom. When such informal constraints fail—for example, when social etiquette and disgust no longer discourage chewing and spitting tobacco or smoking tobacco in public places that jeopardizes health—formal controls often may be imposed.

Some informal rules involve more explicit and formalized procedures, sometimes including institutional frameworks for enforcement. Grievance settlements involving arbitration, mediation, and conciliation are not legally enforceable (unless specified otherwise). Less obvious approaches include labor union agreements based on “cajoling and wheedling” and “gentlemen’s accords” that are morally but not legally binding. When mere words or oral agreements fail, resort typically escalates to formal contractual and legalistic approaches. More formal avenues of pursuit include grievance complaints, letters of understanding, and a host of contractually binding steps. Many of these approaches responding to newsroom union member exposure to harmful radiation from early video monitors led to design modifications as well as strict safety laws.

Judicial decisions rigorously build upon and adhere to past decisions. “Landmark” decisions in leading jurisdictions (California, New York, Massachusetts, and others) usually are followed by other domestic courts. This incremental approach and cross-jurisdictional adoption pattern provides long and linear patterns with predictable outcomes—the critical building blocks of forecasting. Courts provide early warning of problems individuals encounter because courts are duty-bound to respond, whereas legislatures need not take up individual complaints. Swelling caseloads involving self-same issues often reveal utility of across-the-board statutory relief.

Politicians sometimes are reluctant to openly commit themselves on nettlesome and contentious issues. Instead, they may defer difficult issues to voters. Time-consuming steps entail instigation, drafting, preliminary filing, circulation and signing petitions, formal filing, educational campaigns, and voting. Issues currently referred directly to U.S. voters include controversial measures such as medical use of marijuana, gambling, and euthanasia (right to die). Occasionally, formal recalls of government officials may pinpoint substantive concerns.

Facing likelihood of heavy-handed formal regulation, affected interests often devise self-regulatory measures to ameliorate, if not eliminate, difficulties and avoid burdensome governmental controls. The process begins with discussion, leading to varied experimental approaches. Shared experiences and information settles on the “best” solution. Voluntary undertakings—including self-regulation, codes of behavior, ethical practices, guidelines, and other self-help measures—are not compulsory and do not have the force and effect of law. Widespread noncompliance may prompt formal mandates. Self-policing often becomes a mere way station prior to statutory mandated solutions (vehicular seat belts, smoke/flame detectors, smoking in public places).

Contractual arrangements that secure enforceable rights and “contract away” potential problems may elucidate widespread problems deserving public policy attention. Consider, for example, concerns involving supposed hazards emanating from powerful electromagnetic fields (EMF). Home sales near electric transmission lines were among the first to grapple with suspected hazards. Affected parties—home buyers/sellers, realtors, mortgagers, insurers, among others—dealt with such situations by contracting away potential liabilities and downscaling property values. These patterns and practices led to right of way adjustment and zoning setback laws contending with such hazards.

Probably the most widely used indicator of public policy action involves formal legislative activity. Although it is easiest to monitor, it comes relatively late in the overall development of most issues. Drafting, introducing, debating, and moving legislative proposals through a labyrinth of consideration is fraught with numerous intervention opportunities imposing time-consuming delays. Moving legislation from introduction to enactment, on first impression in the United States, varies by jurisdictional level and topic. Federal laws, on first impression, require at least six to eight years, and often decades, before becoming law (if ever). Emergency situations may speed up the process. Economic decline or wartime footing may slow things down.

Decision patterns of specialized regulatory units—worker compensation boards, labor relations boards, and occupational health and safety commissions, to mention a few—may trigger demands for statutory solutions. As abuses amass, corrective regulatory mandates follow. Close, continuous, and massive exposures to dangerous situations and substances often provide first inklings of dangers. New York’s Worker Compensation tribunal, for example, awarded the first worker injury claim involving massive exposure to microwave radiation—predictably followed by regulations and laws. In similar manner, asbestos injury worker compensation board awards dating back to the 1870s in England preceded the rash of U.S. class action suits almost one hundred years later that bankrupted numerous U.S. companies and gave rise to statutory relief. Had affected parties been aware of this century-old pattern, untold grief could have been spared.

Jurisdictions consistently among the first to adopt novel laws are termed bellwethers, precursors, or early adopters. Adoption and actual experience establishes the merit—and shortcomings—of new laws. Proven successes are emulated, and mistakes are avoided elsewhere. Listing enactments chronologically by adoption dates (not effective dates) indicates relative patterns and timing sequences—“diffusion patterns.” Diffusion from one jurisdiction to another begins with initial innovators closely followed by a second tier of early adopters. Next, a surge of followers responds and diffusion winds up with the laggards (including a few holdouts). Diffusion among the fifty U.S. states (let alone thousands of local jurisdictions), takes time—at least five to ten years, and up to fifteen to twenty-five years or longer for most state issues. Currently, the U.S. vanguard includes four to six, perhaps ten states. Precursors vary by issue. Not unexpectedly, major agricultural states enact the earliest and toughest pesticide controls. In federated systems, state and local jurisdictions usually precede central government response. From Colonial times to the 1880s, this lapse typically spanned up to one hundred years in the United States; beginning in the early 1900s, fifteen to forty-five years; and from the 1920s to current times, five to fifteen years. Since the 1930s, the U.S. federal government has become much more interventionist and the timeframe has diminished.

Globally, a tier of four to eight precursor nations constitute the wedge of change that “field tests” new laws. Principles proven by one nation spread from one country to the next. These “patterns of change” commence in Scandinavian and Western European nations. Sweden and California, for many years usually the “first by whom the new is tried,” provide a forecasting shortcut. These two jurisdictions typically indicate developments likely to be undertaken in later-adopting jurisdictions. Diffusion patterns—the lead–lag relationships between tiers of leading, following, and lagging jurisdictions—provide a telltale indicator of response time that late-adopting jurisdictions can capitalize upon. The United States is an early adopter but rarely among the earliest adopters. Social welfare reforms in the United States, for example, lag thirty to forty years behind the wedge initial adopters. “What goes around, come around.”

Following enactment of new laws, implementation involves time-consuming administrative undertakings that can delay the force and effect of new laws. The wheels of bureaucracy often grind slowly. Following enactment, data acquisition usually requires one to three months. Analysis and drafting regulations, typically proceeding through many time-consuming drafts, may take an additional one to three months (longer for new and novel matters, as well as for complicated and contentious issues). Promulga-tion and submission for comments, including possible formal hearings, can be protracted by due process rigors and numerous time-consuming formalities. Filling in details may require two to three years, and up to six to eight years when time-delaying gambits are interposed. In a few instances, up to twenty-six years of delay may be interposed when all opportunities for judicial appeals are relentlessly pursued.

Judicial reviews, not infrequently, may be diligently pursued to contest (or to speed up and ensure) desired outcomes of contested issues. In the United States, three levels of federal recourse and review may be interposed. In some jurisdictions, as many as five levels of time-consuming appeal may take up many decades.

Revising fundamental constitutional documents is rare. Pursuits of constitutional proposals often linger over long periods. Few proceed beyond the proposal stage. Formal methods of constitutional revisions entail time-consuming efforts, such as calling constitutional conventions and submitting propositions to ratification among the states. These undertakings often span many decades—and usually are unsuccessful.

Conclusions

The Molitor Model of Change renders into quantitative timelines what persons interested in public policy change often intuit. Change patterns unfold in an evolutionary manner that course through strongly deterministic and identifiable stages. These telltale patterns of change foreshadow eventual public policy outcomes. What comes next amounts to little more than continuations of multiple and mutually reinforcing chronologies that delineate pressures prompting change. The longer the timescale and more complete the rendition of details, the more self-evident the outcome becomes (Galtung and Inayatullah 1997).

“Patterns of change” comprising the Molitor Model describe templates that explicate the cumulative force and effect of forces driving change. The starting point requires thorough familiarity with the external environment encompassing the natural and human resources peculiar to specific jurisdictions. Particularly important is the stage of economic development—literally a “world apart” comparing progressive postindustrial nations to laggard lesser developed nations. Public policy commences with ideas. Practical application of abstract thoughts—innovations—imposes telltale event patterns that measure positive or negative impacts. Leading authorities, intellectual elites, victims, and hordes of interested parties, and organizational institutions they represent, generate public awareness and debate. The written word and expression of all kinds copiously document the verve of change. Gathering force and effects of those cumulative forces generate climates of public opinion that prompt informal (private) and public policy responses. First responses by initial adopters—a vanguard of precursor jurisdictions that spearhead change—is picked up by early adopters, spreads to more followers and eventually to laggards. Finally, judicial intervention and constitutional revision efforts, if they fail, may lead to going back and starting legislative reconsideration anew.