Political science's punctuated-equilibrium theory of policy change genuinely traces to Eldredge & Gould (1972) by named citation, not borrowed vocabulary

punctuated-equilibriumpolicy-changepolitical-sciencecitation-genealogybaumgartner-joneseldredge-gouldcross-domain-analogyintellectual-history

The vault tracks punctuated equilibrium as a concept that migrates across fields. One such migration is political science's "punctuated-equilibrium theory" (PET) of policy change, associated with Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones (Agendas and Instability in American Politics, University of Chicago Press, 1993). Two independent secondary sources — a different author group in a different venue a dozen years apart — confirm that this policy-science tradition names its biological source directly rather than merely reusing the phrase.

Scott E. Robinson's encyclopedia entry "Punctuated Equilibrium" (Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy, Taylor & Francis, 2005) states that "Baumgartner and Jones borrowed a popular model of evolutionary change proposed by Eldredge and Stephen" — the uncorrected proof misspells "Gould" as "Stephen," Gould's own first name — and its reference list repeats the garble ("Eldredge, N.; Stephen, J.G.") while printing the title as "Punctuated equilbria: an alternative to phylogenetic gradualism." The reference is nonetheless unambiguous by everything else it prints — the 1972 chapter in Models in Paleobiology, Schopf ed., Freeman/Cooper, pages 82–115 — which is Eldredge & Gould's "Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism," identified here by venue, editor, year and pages rather than by a correctly spelled byline. Independently, Gordon Shockley (Arizona State University), in a 2017 International Public Policy Association conference paper, writes that Baumgartner and Jones "did not themselves invent its conceptual framework" and locates PET's origin "in the paleobiology of Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge (Eldredge & Gould, 1972 ...) from which the idea of PET originates."

Both point to the same anchor paper the vault's PE cluster already treats as foundational (claim-punctuated-equilibrium-derives-from-mayr-peripatric-speciation, claim-punctuated-equilibriums-novel-addition-was-stasis-emphasis).

This is the mirror image of the cricket-laws case (claim-cricket-laws-phase-transition-independent-of-punctuated-equilibrium), where "punctuated" was ordinary English the authors reached for without citing Eldredge & Gould at all, arriving at their "phase transition" via condensed-matter physics instead. Here the lineage is named, in the field's own secondary literature — a genuine cross-domain borrowing rather than a resemblance the vault itself supplied.

The gap. No freely accessible primary text of Baumgartner & Jones's own writing directly quoting their citation of Eldredge & Gould was located. The 2002 Policy Dynamics introductory chapter, read in full by the capture, uses "punctuated equilibrium" throughout but never cites Eldredge or Gould by name — consistent with ordinary practice of citing an origin once (most likely in the 1993 book or the 1991 Journal of Politics article "Agenda Dynamics and Policy Subsystems") and referring back to one's own prior work thereafter. The lineage therefore rests on Tier 2–3 secondary confirmation, not a primary-text read. [unverified — citation lineage confirmed only by secondary sources; Baumgartner & Jones's own primary-text citation not located; see [[question-verify-baumgartner-jones-primary-text-cites-eldredge-gould]]]