Agenda Setting

The Politics of Agenda Setting

In recent years, agenda-setting theory has also become a prominent approach in political communication research, which describes the transfer of important topics to the public sector for resolution, as discussed extensively by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones. This portion of the literature discussing agenda setting considers the political and social mechanisms through which problems are identified and then politicized. This literature reflects the strong political role of agendas in making policy.

The agenda-setting literature also has pointed to the varieties of different agendas that exist in the public sector and the manner in which issues are moved on and off these agendas. The systemic agenda represents all those issues that are deemed appropriate for the public sector to take into account, whether or not they are being actively considered. The institutional agendas are those that are being acted on, or at least actively considered, at any point of time. Furthermore, there are important political considerations concerning which institutions constitute the foci for the political activity around any issue. Some political systems, for example, federal systems and those with active court systems, provide would-be agenda setters greater opportunities than do those with fewer points of access.

For an issue to become public policy, it must pass through several different institutions. In most democratic systems, issues must go through the legislature, and often committees within the legislature, although the source of the idea may have been the bureaucracy or the political executive, or perhaps interest groups. Then the issue, once acted on, will have to go to the bureaucracy for implementation and then perhaps to the courts for adjudication. These movements may occur as a normal part of political life but generally require some forms of political impetus for them to occur.

The agenda-setting literature has also focused on the roles of policy entrepreneurs in the process of making policy. Issues do not move on and off agendas on their own but require individual actors [Page 49]who foster their development and their adoption. These entrepreneurs have to be prepared when “windows of opportunity” open that permit issues that might otherwise be excluded to come to the active political agenda.

Analytic Models of Agenda Setting and Agenda Control

The second approach to agendas and agenda setting has focused on the influence that agendas and the manipulation of agendas have on the outcomes of deliberative processes. Traditionally, agendas and agenda formation have played a prominent role since the 20th century in analytical political science, which investigates the power of agenda setters in the collective decision-making process. For democratic governance, agenda-setting power can undermine the democratic process when the agenda setter has dictatorial power in manipulating the aggregation of individual preferences to collective outcomes. According to the social choice and legislative analysis literatures, a major precondition for this threat of dictatorial agenda-setting power is the instability of collective outcomes under specific democratic voting rules, which may allow an agenda setter to manipulate (or hinder from manipulating) them. Irrespective of the instability of collective outcomes, bargaining theories and logrolling approaches also emphasize the importance of agenda setting when it creates a bargaining advantage for the first mover. In other words, actors who can make the first moves in bargaining are often the ones who are able to shape the final outcomes of the process.

...