(1993) punctuated equilibrium model, to explain the success of the pesticides bylaws movement.
Issue definition strategies are aimed at shifting the public and policymaker’s understandings of
an issue in order to encourage agenda and policy change (or prevent them, as the case may be).
Venue shopping refers to policy entrepreneurs’ search for alternative policy arenas and their
efforts to move decision making authority to new venues. Successful issue definition and venue
shifting strategies can lead to dramatic changes in agendas and policy.
Anti-pesticide activists were successful in changing the image of one subset of pesticides
—those used on lawns and gardens—from useful and seemingly harmless to unnecessary and
dangerous. But their rhetorical strategies went beyond simple issue redefinition: they also
advocated for new principles to guide public policy. More generally, I argue that policy
entrepreneurs not only try to redefine policy issues, but advocate for new policy principles,
especially when multiple images of a complex issue exist. Policy principles are the core values
and beliefs attached to policies which serve to guide decision making. The emergence and
acceptance of new principles by the public and policymakers can be a vital source of policy
change, at times having far greater consequences for policy than redefining an issue. In this case,
environmental activists benefited from the rise of the “precautionary principle” as an alternative
to a risk-management perspective in environmental regulation.
The increasing popularity and
growing legitimacy of the precautionary principle in the 1990s justified the regulatory actions of
local city councils in Canada, most of whom were ill-equipped to make accurate assessments
about the relative risks of lawn care chemicals.
Anti-pesticide activists were also successful in activating a new political arena for
pesticides action: local city councils. Before the pesticide bylaw campaign, pesticide regulation
2
A popular definition of the precautionary principle states that “When an activity raises threats of harm to human
health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are
not fully established scientifically.” Quoted in David Appell, “The New Uncertainty Principle,” Scientific American,
January 2001.
4
Convention