Punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) describes policy change as occurring mostly through incremental movements with infrequent periods of dramatic change. An impressive body of empirical literature relating to budgeting supports this view, but virtually all empirical tests have focused on examining distributions of annual changes, thus nullifying chronology. In this article, we focus on the time element. Using the same databases as previously used in canonical PET studies, we explore multi-year trends, not only annual observations. For our analyses, we identify directional series of changes (while allowing for one-year changes in direction if these are immediately offset in the following year) on a U.S. budget distribution dataset covering the period of 1947 through 2014, with 60 categories of spending consistently defined over time and adjusted for inflation. We then assess the robustness of the PET findings when incorporating a longer time units of trending series of annual changes into the analysis. We find that almost 65% of changes occur in series of 4 years or more. Nonetheless, the signature PET literature pattern of high kurtosis is equally present in these series as well as in shorter series. Moreover, within growing and trending series, we find that 21% of these series generate 80% of positive budget change. Within these series, we identify a small group of “super-trends” that account for a large share of the overall change. We conclude that expanding methodologies for the study of budgetary change to incorporate longer-term dynamics helps to better understand policy change, but such findings remain consistent with the PET perspective.

间断均衡理论 (PET) 将政策变化描述为主要通过渐进运动发生，很少出现剧烈变化。大量与预算相关的实证文献支持了这一观点，但实际上所有实证检验都集中在检查年度变化的分布上，从而使年表失效。在本文中，我们重点关注时间因素。我们使用与之前规范 PET 研究中使用的相同数据库，探索多年趋势，而不仅仅是年度观察结果。在我们的分析中，我们在涵盖 1947 年至 2014 年期间的美国预算分配数据集上确定了一系列方向性变化（同时允许一年内的方向变化，如果这些变化在下一年立即抵消），其中 60 类支出始终一致随着时间的推移定义并根据通货膨胀进行调整。然后，我们将较长时间单位的年度变化趋势系列纳入分析时，评估 PET 结果的稳健性。我们发现，近 65% 的变化发生在 4 年或更长时间的系列中。尽管如此，标志性的高峰度 PET 文献模式同样存在于这些系列以及较短的系列中。此外，在增长和趋势系列中，我们发现这些系列中的 21% 产生了 80% 的正预算变化。在这些系列中，我们确定了一小部分“超级趋势”，它们在整体变化中占据了很大一部分。我们的结论是，扩大预算变化研究方法以纳入长期动态有助于更好地理解政策变化，但这些发现仍然与 PET 观点一致。