PAVLOVIAN POLICY RESPONSES TO MEDIA FEEDING FRENZIES?

Pavlovian Policy Responses to Media

Feeding Frenzies? Dangerous Dogs
Regulation in Comparative Perspective
Martin Lodge* and Christopher Hood**

The first part of this article, based on a comparative analysis of recent policies on dangerous dogs
among a set of Western European states, shows that small-scale events like one dog-bite can
produce circumstances that confront policy-makers with a type of `forced choice', given a
particular set of political conditions. The second part, based on a more in-depth comparison of
German and UK approaches, probes beyond the `Pavlovian' level of political response to dog-bite
crises to explore how institutions mediate responses to `forced choices'. Dog-bite crises may
temporarily remove normal blockages and constraints on policy development, but this article
shows how institutions can still shape policy responses in at least three different ways.

Forced Choices and Small Events with
Big Political Consequences
The threat posed by dangerous dogs presents
contemporary governments with a special kind
of `forced choice'. Dog attacks do not, of course,
constitute large-scale catastrophes of the kind
focused on by much of the writing on forced
choices and responses to crisis for example,
wars and invasions, riots and revolutions, natural
disasters and environmental catastrophes,
economic and industrial collapses.1 They hardly
threaten the viability of states and statistically
they present only a modest threat to life and
limb. Indeed, it is unlikely that dog attacks claim
more than half-a-dozen lives in a normal year in
the five biggest EU states put together (though
injuries serious enough to need major hospital
treatment probably amount to more than ten
thousand in a normal year in those states). That
kill-rate puts dog attacks decidedly at the low
end of the scale of risks with which public
policy-makers have to deal in modern societies.
Nor is dog attack even the sort of high-tech risk
produced by modern science and production
processes that so fascinates analysts of the `risk
society' (see Beck 1992). In fact, it is the sort of
risk that harks back to very traditional fears of
monsters and dragons and could be considered
as a classic sphere of `low politics'.
Nevertheless, dog attacks are small events that
can have big political consequences. Though
they appear minor on any objective scale of
catastrophes, they can still face policy-makers
with a type of forced choice, if forced choice is
defined as the condition of having to respond to
an immediate or anticipated crisis. Indeed, sev-
eral European governments have faced precisely
that kind of forced choice over dangerous dog
risks over the past decade or so. Rather than the
sort of forced choices that spring from unam-
biguous macro-events, this type of forced choice
originates in micro-events that blow up major
political crises. For micro-events to have such an
effect, they need to attract high public attention,
sustained by media pressure that requests
demands for immediate action by government.
That in turn seems to require particular pre-
conditions, notably unprovoked attacks in public
on apparently innocent victims (particularly
children), coming in the wake of earlier
attention-grabbing events of a similar type and
occurring at a time when media attention is not
focused on other crises or political issues.
The next section looks at responses made by
governments in Western Europe to `forced
choices' over dog attack risks, showing how
policy-makers responded to perceived crises
over dangerous dogs in two different `waves'.
The following sections look at two different
cases (that of Germany and the UK) in more
detail. The aim is to explore how the various
institutions in the regime for regulating
dangerous dogs responded to the `shocks'
presented by dog-attack crises. Critics of risk * Martin Lodge, ESRC, Centre
regulation (such as Breyer, 1993) often portray for Analysis of Risk and
government responses to crises as `Pavlovian Regulation, London School of
Economics, Houghton Street,
politics', constituting `knee-jerk' responses to the WC2A 2AE London, United
last tragedy that leaves cumbersome and Kingdom. Email:
inappropriate regulatory tombstones after public M.Lodge@lse.ac.uk
concern has faded. But against that idea, ** Christopher Hood, All Souls
institutionalists of various stripes insist that College, University of Oxford,
OX1 4AL Oxford, United
governmental organizations and agencies are Kingdom. Email: Christopher.
not weathervanes that respond to any public hood@all-souls.oxford.ac.uk

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350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Volume 10 Number 1 March 2002
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pressure in an automatic way. Rather, such
institutions are held to deal with external shocks
in ways that fit with imperatives of their own,
even when `forced' to respond by their
environment. Responses to dangerous dog
`shocks' offer a chance to explore how the
`knee-jerk' perspective can be reconciled with the
idea of institutions as filters rather than
weathervanes in the face of environmental
shocks.
A Pattern of Regulatory Response:
Two Waves of Policy Change over
Dangerous Dogs in Western Europe
during the 1990s
Across Western Europe an increasing political
concern with the regulation of particular dog
breeds and types is observable over the past
decade. This rising concern has cut across party
lines, though it has not yet produced action at
the EU level, and responsibility for regulation of
dangerous dogs (and other dog-related issues)
remains firmly at or below national-government
level.
Three interlocking developments form the
background to European policy responses to
dangerous dog risks over the past decade. One is
the increasing introduction since the 1980s of
the American pit bull terrier, widely regarded as
suitable for a family pet in the USA but in
Europe commonly associated with criminals
(particularly in drug dealing and prostitution)
and neo-fascist subcultures. A second is the
absence, in the main, of a highly developed `gun
culture' in Europe as compared to the USA,
meaning that dangerous dogs have more
significance as weapons of offence and defence.
(Furthermore, the absence of a constitutional
right for citizens to bear arms in the European
states as contrasted to the US cannot spill over
into equivalent claims for rights to own killer
dogs.) Third, there is an established canine `class
system', reflecting traditional patterns of dog
ownership that tend to be associated with social
class. The structure of kennel clubs that insti-
tutionalises canine status tends to discriminate
against non-recognized or `lower class' dog
types like the pit bull terrier just as class bias
was built into nineteenth century animal cruelty
laws.
These interlinked features of the European
context help to explain why dog attack risks,
particularly from new `foreign' dogs, should be
politically salient in many European countries
and why pit bulls and other non-established dog
types tended to be marked out for special
treatment during political crises sparked by
severe dog-bite incidents. Nevertheless, policy
responses were by no means uniform, either in
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content or timing, and in particular there was a
`first wave' of responses to dangerous dog risks
by some European states in the early 1990s and
a `second wave' (largely involving other states)
at the end of the decade.
The first wave responses, by the UK, the
Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland, marked the
beginning of a new breed-based approach to dog
regulation. For the most part these responses
followed strong media pressure after high
visibility incidents, and involved measures
targeted largely at the elimination of dogs of
the pit bull terrier type (and also the very rare
Tosa Inu). The responses also aimed for a more
risk-based approach to dog regulation than the
immemorial practice, found across much of
Europe, of broadly giving every dog `one free
bite' before the hand of justice descended on it.
The second wave of regulatory responses
involved countries where public pressure after
repeated incidents led to calls for more extensive
regulation (the Netherlands) or where initial
opposition by kennel clubs against breed-based
approaches was finally overcome following a
massive increase in numbers of incidents
(France). At the same time, there was increasing
interest by scientists in producing risk ratings of
dogs (that is, those most likely to attack, see
Netto and Planta, 1997). This second wave of
dangerous dogs regulation was characterised by
the inclusion of a larger number of dog types
and breeds, the application of different categories
of treatment, and consideration of the intro-
duction of examinations of every dog to assess its
individual risk. To indicate some of the different
patterns, we briefly sketch out some of the
features of the Dutch and French responses below.
In the early 1990s, Dutch government pro-
posals for an immediate destruction of all pit
bulls, Dogo Argentinos, Fila Brasileiros and
American Staffordshire Terriers were abandoned
following opposition from dog owners that
provoked ministerial fears about public accept-
ability and enforceability. Instead, the legislation
that eventually emerged in 1993 targeted pit
bulls alone and aimed for long-term elimination
via compulsory sterilization rather than mass
execution. A fatal attack on a five year old girl
by a Mastino Napolitano in 1998 led to a second
wave response, following criticism that the 1993
law on pit bulls simply encouraged owners that
wanted fierce dogs to switch to or breed other
types (De Volkskrant, 24 October 1998). The
government proposed to extend the 1993 law to
include American Staffordshire Terriers, Fila
Brasileiros, Dogo Argentinos and Mastino
Napolitanos, but also proposed exemptions from
compulsory sterilization on the basis of dog
character examinations, following government-
sponsored research into evaluating the level of
aggressiveness of individual dogs (Netto, Vinke
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PAVLOVIAN POLICY RESPONSES TO MEDIA FEEDING FRENZIES?
and Bruinsma, 1995; Netto and Planta, 1997).
However, these proposals did not reach the
statute book. Though animal associations
favoured the dog character test (Platform
Preventie Hondenbeten, 1999), the government
later abandoned it on grounds of cost and
effectiveness, and simply proposed to extend the
1993 compulsory sterilisation provisions to the
dog types above, with exemptions applying to
Rottweilers. The influence of the animal associ-
ations in the Dutch Parliament led the Parliament
to reject these proposals in March 2001, on the
grounds that such data as were available on dog
attacks did not suggest the types selected were
the most dangerous.
The French response was `forced' after a rise in
criminal activity and a substantial increase in the
population of fighting dogs. Throughout the
mid-to-late 1990s, Paris was plagued by `armed
robberies' of shops using such dogs as principal
weapon. This phenomenon was paralleled by an
estimated increase in chiens dangereux, mainly pit
bull terriers, from approximately 23000 in 1993
to 2040,000 in 1998, particularly in the
suburbs. Highly publicised incidents, notably a
pit bull attack on young African immigrants in
1995 that was deliberately unleashed by the
dog's owner and resulted in horrific injuries,
strengthened demands for regulatory action (Le
Monde, 31 January 1996). The initial response in
1996 was to strengthen the penal code, to
criminalise `unlawful use of dog ownership'.
Existing measures in the `code rural' and health
and safety regulations meant that `negligent'
behaviour by dog owners could be penalised
under civil law but the penalties were moderate
and legal uncertainties about the array of laws,
regulations and decrees meant that decisions by
local authorities were regularly reversed by the
Conseil d'Etat (Le Monde, 30 November 1996; 12
March 1998).
New dangerous-dogs legislation was intro-
duced in 1999, based on two categories, fighting
and guard and defence dogs, and applied new
requirements, notably compulsory registration,
insurance and sterilisation, for the lawful owner-
ship of specified types of dogs. The dog types
involved were specified by ministerial decree by
the Interior and Agriculture ministries, and the
decree targeted cross-breeds and dog types that
had not been officially recognised as breeds. The
proscribed list for compulsory sterilisation
reflected an expert view that particular breeding
lines rather than whole breeds are potentially
dangerous, and signalled a victory for the French
kennel association. Those kennel association
breeds that appeared in the ministerial decree
(principally Staffordshire Bullterriers and Rott-
weilers) were excluded from compulsory sterilis-
ation and notably excluded German Shepherds.
Even so, implementation encountered numerous
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3
difficulties, ranging from open non-compliance,
and a lack of police and local authority resources
to breed-switching and changing `animal
fashions'.
These two cases show how dog-attack
dangers can present policy-makers with a kind
of `forced choice', as a result of media and public
attention that dog-bite incidents can generate in
particular circumstances, obliging legislators to
introduce extra regulation. But the two cases
also show that those responses were far from
uniform and that they were heavily shaped by
institutional responses, particularly in the selec-
tion of particular dog breeds and types for
special controls. Accordingly, the remainder of
this article probes further into the way that
institutions mediate forced choice responses. The
next section briefly outlines three ways of
understanding how institutions seek to filter or
shape environmental pressures, and the follow-
ing section investigates those approaches in a
more detailed account of the development of
dangerous dogs regulation in the UK and
Germany cases that allow us to see how very
different institutional structures respond to the
same sort of `forced choice' crisis.
Mediating Forced Choices: Three
Themes in the Analysis of
Institutional Responses to
Environmental Pressures
How might we expect institutions to mediate
responses to `forced choices'? The diverse
literature on institutional adaptation to environ-
mental change and pressure for policy change
suggests several possible institutional responses,
but what those diverse institutional approaches
tend to have in common is the expectation of
selective responses to outside shocks. Selective
adaptation means that institutions function less
as weathervanes than as filters or distorting
lenses for outside pressures, seeking to pursue
their own purposes and imperatives. Three types
of selective adaptation that are commonly
identified in the institutional literature are:
entrepreneurial exploitation of `windows of
opportunity' to launch incubated proposals,
dynamic conservatism or system-maintenance
approaches, and institutional biases colouring
response.2
In a `window of opportunity' response, policy
entrepreneurs take advantage of `policy
windows' to produce pre-cooked policy pro-
posals or initiatives (Kingdon 1995; McFarland
1991). Such processes resemble the notion of
`crisis reform', which characterises turning points
that lead to institutional renewal (Boin and `t
Hart, 2000: 3; also Alink, Boin and `t Hart, 2001:
287). To the extent that such processes are at
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work, we would expect to find that the policy
ideas that emerge from government or interest
groups during dog-bite crises are not simple
`knee jerk responses', but solutions that have
been waiting for a problem or that have been
rejected earlier.
In contrast to the `windows of opportunities'
response, we distinguish between two
conservative types of institutional responses,
`system maintenance' and `partial re-engineering'.
In a system-maintenance response, institutions
respond to disturbances in their environment in
ways that seek to maintain their borders and
established modes of operation (see Thompson,
1967; Weick, 1979; Maturana and Varela, 1980;
Brans and Rossbach, 1997). Here the expectation
is that bureaucracies and other institutions
constituted as `discourse communities' adopt
strategies for survival in the face of environ-
mental shocks like dog-bite crises, preserving as
much as they can of their pre-existing ways of
life. For example, the last section showed that
the activity of established breed associations and
kennel clubs in France and the Netherlands
reproduced the pre-existing canine `class system'
in the regulatory regimes.
But `system maintenance' can be conceived in
more than one way. At one extreme is the pure
idea of `autopoiesis' (cf. Luhmann, 1975 and
1980) as closed self-reproducing patterns of
discourse. At the other are ideas of `staged
retreat', in which institutions fight a rearguard
action against pressures for change, adopting
new responses only when existing positions
have become indefensible. The pattern of staged
retreat is sometimes depicted by style-phase
models (see Beck Jrgensen 1985, 1987; Joo
1999). Adoption of `second order' responses
(Levy, 1986), involving change in basic value
systems can be expected to come only after `first
order' responses (that leave core value systems
unchanged) have been tried and sometimes not
even then (Laughlin 1991).3
In the case of biased forms of institutional
reengineering, organizations respond to complex
demands for change by filtering out the more
difficult or demanding (even if more important)
aspects of the change agenda and focusing on
the more readily doable, programmable or
internally valued aspects. Such change does not
necessarily involve pure system-maintenance or
clear entrepreneurship and may simply take the
form of emerging or reinforced bias, for instance
in which of the many demands on their time
overloaded bureaucracies respond to and which
they choose to ignore. An example is Clay and
Schaffer's (1984: 10) account of bureaucratic
irony or paradox, which stems from the way
organizations in development programmes con-
centrate on what is easiest or most convenient
for them to do, whether or not it contributes to
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some larger purpose. In addition, public and
regulatory organizations regularly engage in
forms of `blame prevention engineering' in the
face of rising demands for transparency and
openness over the handling of risk (Hood et al.
2001).
Elements of each of these institutional
responses can be discerned in German and
British responses to `forced choice' dog-bite
tragedies capturing media and public attention
and generating importunate demands for decis-
ive action. Evidently, something more than
simple `weathervane' activity or Pavlovian
politics went on in both cases. But the mix of
responses varies, not only across the two
countries, but also across time and across
different parts of government and the bureauc-
racy. Parts of the story of these two cases fit
established stereotypes of their institutional
`policy styles', even though the notion of `policy
style' is widely contested (see Richardson 1982;
Lijphart 1999). The UK is often claimed to be
particularly prone to rapid and ill-judged policy-
making due to its unitary state characteristics, its
detached, NPM-oriented career civil service and
its virtually veto-point free majoritarian govern-
ment (see Dunleavy 1995), while Germany with
its executive federalism and orientation towards
legal policy harmonisation without policy
centralisation is often seen as a structure that
avoids `knee-jerk' responses and reacts, if at all,
in a delayed fashion as a result of the high
transaction costs for policy change (Lehmbruch
2000). Given that stereotype, it is perhaps not
surprising to find that the UK was one of the
`first wave' of countries to adopt new breed-
specific dangerous dog regulation and Germany
was in the `second wave'. But contrary to the
conventional `tortoise and hare' stereotypes of
the two countries' policy styles, the German
`tortoise' responded as rapidly to dog-bite
tragedies as the British `hare' (if not more so),
and in both cases a variant of the `staged retreat'
response is observable.
British Dangerous Dogs Policy: A
Whitehall Farce?
The UK developed a legal framework for regu-
lating dog-attack risks in the nineteenth century,4
together with a system for dog licensing that
dated back to the eighteenth century, and a
practice of enforcement by the police that com-
monly followed the `one free bite' doctrine found
in various other European countries, as noted
earlier. By the last quarter of the twentieth cen-
tury, that Victorian legal framework was widely
believed to be obsolete, for several reasons. Those
reasons included the fact that the main
nineteenth-century statute, the 1871 Dogs Act,
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PAVLOVIAN POLICY RESPONSES TO MEDIA FEEDING FRENZIES?
did not impose criminal penalties on dog owners
who used their pets as instruments of terror.
Moreover, the penalties it did prescribe had never
been increased to take account of inflation and so
had become derisory a century later.
These deficiencies were highlighted in the
1980s in the context of changes affecting many
Western European countries, as noted earlier.
During that time, new fighting dog types were
introduced to the UK, particularly American pit
bull terriers, which became popular with urban
drug dealers and other criminals as legal
weapons, as well as for illegal dog-fighting and
as part of fascist sub-cultures (see Baker 1993:
433). As in other European states, the UK's
canine `establishment', in the form of the Kennel
Club and breed associations, did not recognize
American pit bull terriers as a `breed', but only as
a cross-breed. By contrast, the fierce dogs
traditionally favoured by the affluent and landed
classes (such as Rottweilers and Dobermans)
were well represented by breed associations and
had political connections in the sense that they
were owned by MPs and Cabinet Ministers.
Following a familiar risk-regulation pattern (in-
volving bounded rationality, issue-attention cycles
and a system bias towards incremental change in
law and policy rather than synoptic rationality),
the patchwork and antiquated structure of UK
dog-attack laws was never systematically re-
viewed. Rather, in the last quarter of the twentieth
century, legislation on dog attack risks followed a
classic `tombstone' pattern. Parliamentary atten-
tion was aroused after dog attack tragedies that
attracted substantial media coverage and imposed
a form of `forced choice' on policy-makers during
periods of saturation coverage, with a correspond-
ing waning of politician attention at times when
Source: Hood, Rothstein and Baldwin 2001: 91. See also Podberscek 1994.
Figure 1: Coverage of Dangerous Dog Risks by Selected British Newspapers
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5
dog bites were out of the news. For example, a
Guard Dogs Act was introduced as a private
member's bill in 1975 following the killing of a
child by a guard dog in Glasgow. The following
decade saw the abandonment of dog licensing in
Great Britain (it was retained in Northern Ireland),
which was presented as a triumph for
`deregulation' by the Thatcher government. But
renewed media attention on dog-bite risks
following a Rottweiler attack on a young girl in
the summer of 1989 led to the enactment of a
Dangerous Dogs Act, a private member's bill that
amended the 1871 Dogs Act5 and to the
discussion of policy proposals for further change
in dog legislation by some of the main UK
government departments.6
However, out of the last quarter of the
twentieth century, it was the spring and summer
of 1991 that saw the development of media
activity and ministerial responses most closely
approximating to a form of `forced choice' on
public officials responsible for dog-bite
legislation in the UK. A small number of tragic
injuries following unprovoked dog attacks in
public places, particularly by pit bull terriers,
produced a media `feeding frenzy' and demands
for prompt and decisive government action to
control what were claimed to be `devil dogs'.
Figure 1 below indicates the extent of that
`feeding frenzy' in 1991 by an analysis of
selected tabloid and broadsheet coverage of
dog risks over approximately a decade.
That media activity put further pressure on a
Conservative Home Secretary (Kenneth Baker)
who was already in difficulties following a major
riot at Manchester Strangeways prison and
needed a way of restoring his political fortunes
ahead of the summer Cabinet-reshuffle season.
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When Baker tried a `stonewalling' response to
media demands for action, stressing the diffi-
culties of further legislative action to deal with
the dog-attack problem, he ran into heavy media
criticism that also put pressure on the Prime
Minister (Baker 1993: 434). The Conservative
government was itself in difficulties as a result of
by-election defeats and was widely seen as
facing an uphill battle to win the general election
that had to be held the following year.
The 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act, which was
rapidly drafted and passed through all its stages
on the floor of the House of Commons in one
sitting, was the product of this `forced choice'
situation. The Act entered British popular culture,
being widely cited in newspaper editorials as a
cardinal example of ill-thought-out `knee-jerk'
responses to tabloid headlines.7 Its architecture
reflected concerns by a range of stakeholders.
The Home Secretary (Kenneth Baker) wanted to
be seen as making a vigorous response to the pit
bull menace highlighted by the tabloids but not
to introduce general dog licensing8 or to target
other types of dogs that were more politically
established or popular with voters at large.9
Police, particularly in London, wanted new legal
powers to deal with drug dealers using pit bull
terriers as tools of trade. Animal cruelty
organisations wanted further measures to control
dog fighting. Home Office bureaucrats were later
criticised by the Minister as putting up `endless
difficulties' in the face of his ideas for action
against pit bulls and stressing the difficulties of
picking out pit bulls from other dogs (Baker
1993: 434). But those bureaucrats at least wanted
to get the dog control issue off the front pages of
the newspapers, to craft legislation that dealt
with the pit bull problem with administrative
elegance and economy, and to move general dog
legislation more firmly in the direction of
orthodox criminal law and away from the
`administrative law' basis of the 1871 Dogs Act.
The 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act made it a
criminal offence to have any dog dangerously
out of control in a public place and introduced
additional controls that were targeted on pit bull
terriers and a few other little-known types of
`luxury' fighting dogs. Those additional controls
included compulsory neutering (by castration for
males), insurance, registration, tattooing, identi-
fication by the insertion of microchips (an idea
taken from racehorse identification via the
government vetinerary network), and the obli-
gation to be muzzled and on a lead in any public
place. The Act further prescribed mandatory
destruction of any dog of the prescribed type
that was found to be in breach of these specific
requirements.10 There is no evidence that the
Act was based on learning from other countries
to any extent, though its architects were keen to
ensure that the Republic of Ireland introduced
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broadly parallel regulation, given the free
passage of dogs between the Irish Republic
and the UK.11
The Act was supported by all major political
parties during its hasty passage through
Parliament (though the Labour opposition
wanted to go further and include other dog
types in the special regime) and public opinion
polls at the time of its introduction showed
substantial support by respondents for extra
controls on dangerous dogs in general and pit
bulls in particular (see Hood, Rothstein and
Baldwin 2000: 294). However, police enforce-
ment of the Act was patchy across the country
and criticism of the measure soon began to
mount up. Magistrates and judges protested
about the lack of discretion available to the
courts under the terms of the Act over
destruction of dogs whose owners had not
complied with the law. This mandatory death
penalty (for dogs) also attracted protest from
several other quarters, leading to the formation
of a Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 Reform Group
led by a former Labour Minister (Lord Houghton
of Sowerby, one of the joint sponsors of the
1989 Dangerous Dogs Act). The tabloids that
had pressed for the introduction of tougher
controls on dangerous dogs in the summer of
1991 were soon carrying tear-jerking stories
about what appeared to be much-loved family
pets on `death row', facing mandatory execution
for what were claimed to be innocent infractions
of the Act.12 Accordingly, the Act was amended
in 1997 to remove the obligation on courts to
impose a death sentence on dogs whose owners
had not complied with the Act.
Moreover, enforcement of the Act by the
police, always patchy, in effect reverted to the
traditional `one free bite' approach to dogs rather
than the `risk-based' approach that the Act was
intended to represent. After a short period of
vigorous enforcement of the law by the police,
especially in London, as part of a crackdown on
drug dealers, the Dangerous Dogs Act ceased to
be actively enforced by the Metropolitan police
a year or so after its introduction and was placed
low in the list of police priorities.13 New public
fears (notably over paedophiles) preoccupied
Home Office ministers and policy-makers, and
the alleged propensity for introducing extra
regulation that was shown by the New Labour
government elected in 1997 did not extend to
new dog laws or more vigorous enforcement of
the existing ones.
German `Racing Tortoise' Responses
to Dog Bite Tragedies
The killing of a six year old by a pit bull and an
American Staffordshire Terrier while playing in a
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PAVLOVIAN POLICY RESPONSES TO MEDIA FEEDING FRENZIES?
Note: This table, drawn from Lexis-Nexis, indicates the number of articles published in both the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Suddeutsche Zeitung. Lexis-Nexis only extends to January 1993
and does not include German tabloid newspapers.
Figure 2: Coverage of Dangerous Dog Risks by Selected German Newspapers over Time.
school playground in Hamburg in the summer of
2000 caused a `shock' to the then existing
system of German dangerous dogs regulation. In
the face of public pressure, a widespread media
outcry and political demands for immediate
action, the different La nder responded by
adopting diverse measures for the control of
dangerous dogs. Figure 2 shows the over-time
incidence of coverage of dangerous dog risks in
two broadsheet newspapers and indicates a
broadly similar pattern of a high peak among
sporadic bouts of interest as in the UK case
shown in Figure 1, even though the time-periods
are not quite the same and Figure 2 does not
include tabloid coverage.
The policy initiatives advanced in 2000 were
not, however, a simple `Pavlovian' response to
the media outcry, but reflected debates and
frustrated reform initiatives that had been in
train since the early 1990s. Due to the federal
nature of Germany's political system, the
competence for public order rests solely with
the La nder, thus ruling out any federal action,
except for initiatives in animal health and
protection (federal powers were used in 1998
to prohibit any training that increased the
aggressiveness of a dog). Earlier attempts to
introduce breed-based lists to target pit bulls and
other dogs popularly regarded as unacceptably
dangerous had been largely frustrated by various
Land administrative courts. The courts argued
that regulation based on breeds would violate
the `proportionality principle' in the sense that
targeting particular dog breeds and types instead
of others with a similar `incident record' was not
justified or scientifically proven. The affected
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7
La nder (Baden Wurttemberg, Hamburg, Bremen
and the Saar) therefore had to revert to the
traditional `one free bite' approach to dog
regulation. The only exception was Bavaria,
which in 1992 adopted a breed-based regulatory
regime that declared five dog types and breeds
to be `irrevocably' dangerous, and nine further
breeds to be `revocably' dangerous (depending
on a case-by-case veterinary risk assessment). In
contrast to the position in the other La nder, this
regime was accepted by the Bavarian
constitutional court. It is notable that the
German Shepherd (Alsatian) breed was excluded
from the framework in spite of a high incidence
of serious bites from this dog; the Court justified
this exclusion on the grounds that the German
Shepherd's share in German tradition and
heritage meant that people were more aware of
its risks and dangers.
The continued rise of the pit bull and related
dog population, further (although not always
fatal) attacks on humans and animals as well as
the `big dog' fashion of the 1990s led to a re-
emerging interest in establishing a breed-based
approach. Local authorities began to charge
differential dog taxes in an attempt to `price'
dangerous dogs `out of the market', but such
attempts met with a mixed public reception and
were rejected by several administrative courts
before being ruled legally permissible by the
Federal Administrative Court in 2000. Several
La nder also attempted to overcome the legal
barriers that proposals for breed-based
regulation had encountered.
Initiatives to come to an intergovernmental
agreement on a common approach failed to
Volume 10 Number 1 March 2002
8 JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT
reach a common set of recommendations as
some La nder remained opposed to breed-based
regulation. However, following a fighting dog
attack that injured a child in May 2000, the
Standing Conference of Interior Ministers agreed
to encourage tougher action at the individual
Land level through the strengthening of existing
laws, restricted eligibility for dog ownership, and
possible requirements for dogs to be muzzled
and on a lead in public. This agreement, allowing
for a large element of discretion, followed a
pattern typical of German policy-making by co-
ordination across the La nder with agreement
among the La nder only being reached in the face
of strong media pressure.
The Hamburg incident provided the type of
external shock that offered policy entrepreneurs
a policy `window' for advancing long-advocated
and long-frustrated proposals, and highlights the
importance of such shocks in policy develop-
ment.14 In some La nder, responsibility for dog
regulation shifted temporarily from animal
health officials to higher-ranking public order/
security officials with a concern for the impo-
sition of risk-based regulation. The Hamburg
incident also allowed officials, in response to
demands from ministers, to overcome the
resistance of kennel clubs and experts and other
veterinary officials. Their initiatives were
supported by advocacy from Bavaria which
pointed to its `no incident' record in Munich
since the passing of its 1992 law. However, none
of the La nder copied the Bavarian approach fully
and their approaches indicate different types of
institutional responses to forced choices. In
contrast to the UK, the police did not have an
established position on dangerous dogs, and as
indicated above the search for regulatory
instruments that would survive legal challenge
was central to the process at Land level. Table 1
offers a broad summary of the main provisions
of the various Land approaches.
As Table 1 shows, breed-based approaches
were widespread, nearly always including the
American pit bull terrier, the Staffordshire Bull
Terrier and the American Staffordshire Terrier.
Similar requirements were imposed to keep
dangerous dogs muzzled and on a lead in public,
and in `secure' accommodation, and there was
widespread agreement on the establishment of
dog ownership criteria following the model used
for gun licences. But there was substantial
variation in the dog types targeted, ranging
from Saxony Anhalt with three dog breeds and
types to North Rhine Westphalia which targeted
43 breeds and types, plus all dogs above 40cm
height and 20kg weight. The same applied to the
degree of coerciveness of regulatory instru-
ments, which ranged from obligatory sterilis-
ation to different tests of dog `personalities' and
of the competence of the owner.
Volume 10 Number 1 March 2002
These differences are closely related to what
extent institutions took on a `system main-
tenance' or `system re-engineering' perspective.
While some La nder (in particular Saxony Anhalt
and Saxony) adopted a `system maintenance'
approach, by introducing minimal coercion and
administrative obligations such as breed bans
and lead and muzzle requirements, other La nder
adopted `re-engineering' strategies. Here the aim
was to reduce or eliminate the population of
particular dogs and breeding lines usually by
prohibiting breeding rather than through
compulsory sterilisation and demanding
compliance requirements such as compulsory
identification signs worn by particular types of
dogs, dog examinations and owner tests.
The Hamburg attack also provided an oppor-
tunity to establish or readjust regulatory pro-
visions that had previously faced concerted
opposition, exploiting high public support for
coercive action and the temporary discrediting of
the kennel clubs. For instance, in Lower Saxony
planned dog `personality tests' were after the
Hamburg attack changing from an instrument to
determine whether a dog should be allowed to
breed to a test for the dog's right to survive.
More administrative effort was put into dog
control and registration by local authorities in
La nder like North Rhine Westphalia, Hamburg,
Hesse and Lower Saxony. However, the involve-
ment of kennel clubs and vets reduced the coerc-
ive nature of the instruments in the implementation
stage, and dog owners again sought to restrain
regulatory initiatives in the courts. Courts in
Hesse, Mecklenburg Vorpommern, Schleswig
Holstein, Lower Saxony and Baden Wurttemberg
ruled out large parts of their respective Land
government's regulatory response, while the
provisions in Berlin and in Rhineland Palatinate
were endorsed by court rulings.
The upshot of this process was that a pit bull
owner, travelling across Germany with her dog,
would have had to comply with between seven
and nine different types of regulatory controls.
Accordingly, a new La nder working group was
established to propose a more harmonised
approach, while the federal government intro-
duced a national ban on the importation of pit
bulls, American Staffordshire Terriers, Bull-
terriers and Staffordshire Bullterriers and any
related cross-breeds. It also attempted, without
success, to persuade the European Commission
to introduce an EU-wide ban on the import of
such animals. Furthermore, using its animal
health powers, the federal government intro-
duced, by September 2001, an overall breeding
ban on dangerous dogs and standardised
procedures for licensing dog owners. The
administration of the regulatory instruments
was generally delegated to kennel clubs, and in
a matter of months after the Hamburg incident
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PAVLOVIAN POLICY RESPONSES TO MEDIA FEEDING FRENZIES? 9

Table 1: Approaches to Dangerous Dog Regulation by the German Lander

Land Category I: Strict regulation Category II: Moderate regulation
North Rhine- 13 breeds and types breeding ban; 30 breeds and types
Westphalia individual examination & registration examination and registration
Lower Saxony 3 breeds and types individual 11 breeds and types examination
examination; if failed: destruction; to reverse lead and muzzling
if passed: registration and neutering requirements
Bremen 9 breeds and types registration
Bavaria 5 breeds and types registration 9 breeds and types examination to
and examination exempt from lead and muzzling
requirements
Brandenburg 5 breeds and types registration, 13 breeds and types biannual
neutering, ban on sale and breeding examination
Berlin 5 breeds and types immediate 7 breeds and types lead and
notification, ban on breeding, muzzle requirements
examination
Baden 3 breeds and types examination to 9 breeds and types classification as
Wurttemberg establish breeding ban, registration dangerous where strong evidence,
registration
Hamburg 3 breeds and types registration, 10 breeds and types examination to
neutering, owner & dog examination, establish level of aggressiveness and
ban on breeding of aggressive dogs exempt from adjustable conditions
Hesse 3 breeds and types two year 12 breeds and types examination
permitafter examination, neutering, to prove non-dangerousness
ban on sale and transfer
Mecklenburg 12 breeds and types dog & owner
Vorpommern examination to revoke requirements:
otherwise ban on breeding and sale
Rhineland 3 breeds and types neutering,
Palatinate ban on breeding and sale, dog &
owner examinations
Saxony 3 breeds and types (established by
subsequent regulation), owner
competence, ban on breeding and sale
Saxony Anhalt 3 breeds and types ban on breeding
and sale
Saar 3 breeds and types ban on non-
commercial breeding, registration,
owner examination
Schleswig 3 breeds and types planned 12 breeds and types lead requirement
Holstein sterilisation and ban on breeding
and sale. Lead and muzzle
Thuringia Rejection of breed-based approach in
March 2000.
Note: This table provides only a partial overview of the key provisions. Most La nder also included a third category to
include other particularly aggressive dogs.

local authorities (notably Berlin) withdrew the challenges and dog attacks continued and
resources they had put into dog controls. As in arguments continued over their efficacy.
the UK, the implementation of the various
provisions remained at best patchy; legal

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10 JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT
How Do Institutions Matter over
Forced Choices?
These cases show a number of similarities and
differences. Broad similarities include speed of
response, limited awareness of international
experience (with the exception of the university-
based veterinary community), the dog types that
were selected for the most draconian regimes
and a common pattern of `institutional retreat'
after the high point of the forced-choice phase.
Differences include the range of instruments
used to tackle dangerous dog risks (with more
broad-ranging measures used or contemplated
by `second wave' countries like Germany). The
German policy story shows the degree to which
regulatory responses were shaped by the legal
doctrine of proportionality, and heavily shaped
by anticipated court challenges, reflecting the
failed attempts to produce breed-based regu-
lation in the early 1990s, while such constraints
on policy-making were much less evident in the
UK case. Equally, German policy-makers were
less constrained by a media backlash against
draconian dangerous-dog regimes than their
British counterparts.
This story suggests at least three broad
conclusions about `forced choices' and how insti-
tutions respond to them. First, small events can
have big consequences. In the cases analysed
here, one dog bite at a strategic moment could
trigger an institutional reaction that demanded
heavy attention and activity by political leaders,
cabinet committees, high officials, street bureau-
crats and court systems. Given the right circum-
stances in this case a combination of an attack
in a public place, an innocent victim, a develop-
ing pattern of incidents that led to `institutional
vulnerability' (Boin and `t Hart, 2000: 20) and an
absence of rival big news stories one dog bite
can present policy-makers with `forced choices'
in the same way as large-scale events that rank
high on any `objective' scale of public risk.
Second, as the Anglo-German comparison
shows, it is in the nature of such `forced choice'
incidents to cause periods of disequilibrium
where an issue is forced out of its usual niche
and becomes part of a macro-political agenda
(True, Jones and Baumgartner 1999). With
normal constraints on policy-making removed
by such incidents, conventional expectations
about the working of institutions can be
confounded. As we saw, the German `tortoise'
moved as rapidly as the British `hare', if not more
so, to produce a regulatory response to a dog-
bite incident that produced a media `feeding
frenzy', and that response contrasted sharply
with the typical `lumbering' pattern of German
federal-policy making in which dramatic new
departures tend to be prevented by unanimity
requirements on decision-making. Indeed, the
Volume 10 Number 1 March 2002
incident seems to have briefly triggered an
uncharacteristic form of regulatory competition
among La nder, with each Land government
trying to seem more draconian in its response
than its fellows.15
However, in both cases `normal' institutional
constraints and processes tended quickly to
reassert themselves once the media `feeding
frenzy' was over. In the German case, the
rapidly-introduced regulatory initiatives were
either watered down at the implementation stage
or, were, to some extent at least, legally revoked
within months. And German policy-making soon
resorted to type, with intergovernmental working
groups trying to produce a more harmonized
approach to dangerous dogs regulation and their
efforts frustrated by unanimity requirements. A
similar pattern of institutionally-driven retreat
from the initiatives taken in the `forced choice' era
is observable in the UK case, with police rapidly
returning to the traditional `one free bite'
approach and opposition (among lawyers and in
the media) to the compulsory death sentence for
dogs whose owners had not complied with the
1991 Dangerous Dogs Act leading to the
amendment of the Act in 1997 to give courts
greater discretion.
Third, institutions mediated forced choices by
a mix of system-maintenance, and partial re-
engineering responses, with a limited element of
solutions-in-search of problems responses. In all
four cases observed here, the institutions that
maintained the canine `class system' worked to
impose the most draconian controls (notably
forced sterilization) onto pit bulls, while partially
or fully shielding established dog types such as
Rottweilers and German Shepherds with attack
records that could be argued to be broadly
equivalent to the pit bull kill-rate. All of the
systems observed show signs of `staged retreats'
by institutions away from preferred status quo
positions, forced in the British case by
continuing political pressure on the responsible
minister to adopt a more draconian regulatory
regime, and by a pattern of repeated dog-bite
tragedies in the Dutch and German cases. There
was no clear-cut case of identified policy
entrepreneurs exploiting the policy window
created by a `forced choice' dog-bite incident
to promote pre-cooked solutions, but
particularly in the German case the Hamburg
incident served to remove the roadblocks facing
policy proposals that had been in the political
process for some time and even in the UK case
the pit bull tragedies of 1991 helped to
accelerate changes in the criminal law that had
already been mooted by government depart-
ments. The cross-national comparison suggests
that the analysis of `forced choices' is likely to
gain by moving beyond the distinction between
active and conservative responses made by Boin
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PAVLOVIAN POLICY RESPONSES TO MEDIA FEEDING FRENZIES?
and `t Hart (2000), and indeed a further differen-
tiation beyond the three modes developed here
is probably needed in further research.
Thus, while `forced choices' are commonly said
to constitute circumstances where policy-making
departs from `normal' or `humdrum' styles of
politics, institutions still appear to mediate
responses to crises of the type considered here.
Forced choices, often stemming from a combi-
nation of events, institutional interaction, political
calculus and public advocacy, can serve to over-
come some entrenched institutional obstacles to
policy change, but at the same time entrenched
institutions shape the context of those choices by
the interests and positions that are developed in
advance of a crisis and being promoted before a
crisis event, and in the detailed way that
regulatory tools and their application are
developed during and after such events.
Notes
1. The notion of `forced choice' is closely related to
debates over crisis management capacities and
patterns of organizational decision-making, for
example selective use of information and
potential centralization of decision-making
(Staw, Sandelands and Dutton, 1981). Disasters
and crises, conventionally defined as a
cumulation of adverse conditions, including
`severe threat, uncertainty and the necessity for
prompt decision-making' (Rosenthal, `t Hart and
Charles, 1989: 10), are normally associated with
large-scale events. This article aims to explore a
type of `forced choice' that arises out of small
events that attract high media attention, political
demand and public attention (see also the notion
of `moral panics' as popularised by Cohen, 1972).
In such a context, a `non-response' is not a
politically feasible option, though (in line with
almost every type of forced choice) the specific
response path is not totally constrained by
environmental pressures (see also Boin and `t
Hart, 2000).
2. The selected approaches encompass the main
themes of system-environmental analysis of
institutional responses to external disturbance
but do not claim to be jointly exhaustive or
mutually exclusive.
3. Laughlin (1991) and Laughlin and Broadbent
(1995) differentiate first-order and second-order
institutional responses to environmental
disturbance. They divide first-order responses
into `rebuttal' (responses designed to resist the
disturbance) and `reorientation' (responses
designed to change an organization without
affecting its core values). Similarly, second-order
responses, involving changes in core values, are
divided into `colonization' (where new core
values are imposed on an organization from
outside) and `evolution' (where all stakeholders
absorb new values more or less voluntarily).
4. The main nineteenth-century laws relevant to
Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002
11
control of dogs in England and Wales were the
1839 Metropolitan Police Act, the 1847 Town
Police Clauses Act and the 1871 Dogs Act. The
1847 Act made it a criminal offence to allow an
unmuzzled ferocious dog to be off a lead in
public or to allow any dog to attack or menace
any person or animal. The 1871 Act was non-
criminal legislation that allowed action to be
taken to control potentially dangerous dogs even
when no offence had been committed. Other
dog-related legislation included laws prohibiting
dog fighting and seeking to control strays and
dog fouling (House of Lords, 1996: 23).
5. The 1989 Act gave courts extra powers and
increased the range and levels of penalties that
could be imposed on dog owners. It also
included powers for destruction of dogs other
than strays and gave courts the power to issue
orders banning dog owners from having custody
of a dog for a specified period.
6. A consultation paper on control of dogs issued
by the Home Office, Scottish Office, Welsh
Office and Department of Environment in 1990
(Home Office, Scottish Office, Welsh Office and
Department of the Environment, 1990),
discussed general changes in the law on all dogs
and proposals for special controls on particular
breeds or types.
7. A study of one broadsheet newspaper stable (the
Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph) revealed
over 35 editorial items over seven years
following the Dangerous Dogs Act's enactment
that used the Act as an example of bad
regulation (Hood, Rothstein and Baldwin, 2000:
282).
8. He had ridiculed dog licensing in a newspaper
article in the 1970s and abolished dog licences as
Secretary of State for the Environment in 1988
(Baker 1993: 467 and 4336).
9. Baker (1993: 435) describes how he resisted
proposals `to put Rottweilers, Dobermans and
Alsatians in the same category as pit bulls'
because `this would have infuriated the ``green
welly'' brigade' and declared, `I was not in the
business of legislating to control chihuahuas
when I wanted to rid the country of pit bulls'.
10. For a more detailed account of the Act see Hood,
Rothstein and Baldwin (2000: 2868).
11. The Irish provisions required twelve dog types
and breeds to be registered and be kept on a lead
and muzzle. The Irish response was also
motivated by public anxiety about bite incidents,
not only in Ireland, and concern about `sheep-
worrying'.
12. Examples included dogs whose owners claimed
they had not realised their pets were of a
prescribed type and dogs whose muzzles had
been removed in public, allegedly to allow them
to vomit.
13. The Metropolitan Police in 1992 `made a
conscious decision not to be pro-active in
enforcing the Act' and by 1994 `had gone back
in effect to the traditional ``one-free-bite''
approach to dangerous dogs that the Dangerous
Dogs Act had ostensibly replaced' (Hood,
Rothstein and Baldwin, 2001: 133).
14. Thuringia did not respond to the Hamburg
Volume 10 Number 1 March 2002
12 JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT
incident. It had altered its regulatory framework
in March 2000 and had rejected the adoption of
a breed-based approach on the grounds that it
was not scientific.
15. In contrast to the United Kingdom, there was
only little systematic opinion polling on the
issue in Germany. One country-wide poll
suggested that 42 per cent argued that the
toughening of regulatory controls on dangerous
dogs meant an increase in individual security, 50
per cent argued that these were insufficient
(www.dimap.de/aktuell/vdw200028.html). The allo-
cation of legal authority at the sub-national level
meant that `centralisation' of forced choice
decision-making took place at the sub-national
level rather than at the federal level, prohibiting
opportunities for intergovernmental decision-
making.
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