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2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

4. Political Attention of Croatian Governments 1990–2015

Author : Daniela Širinić

Published in: Policy-Making at the European Periphery

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter examines the scope, dynamics and diversity of government agenda setting in Croatia. Analysis is based on the data set of all government weekly meetings from the Croatian Policy Agendas Project. The data set contains an empirical measure of issue attention that captures how many times the government has discussed and decided upon a particular issue compared to all other issues on the agenda. Constrained by short tenure, information scarcity and limited governance capacities governments have to selectively focus on a small number of problems because their policy attention is limited. Studies across developed democracies show that core concerns of the state, such as defence or the economy, are often prioritized over smaller policy sectors. Government agenda, however, should reflect a set of priorities specific to each government tenure. Therefore, this chapter also asks whether the partisan composition of each Croatian government since the 1990s affects issue attention.

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Footnotes
1
For example, major topic ‘Defence’ has 18 additional subcategories such as: ‘General Defence’, ‘Defence Alliances and Security Assistance’, ‘Military Intelligence and Espionage’, ‘Military Aid and Weapons Sales to Other Countries’ or ‘Oversight of Defence Contracts and Contractors’.
 
2
Shannon H is calculated according to the following formula: H = (−1) ∑ p(xi) ln(p(xi)), where H is the negative sum of the likelihood p(x) for all topics, that a unit of analysis (x) belongs to a particular topic (i), multiplied by the natural log of that likelihood (Jennings et al. 2011).
 
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Metadata
Title
Political Attention of Croatian Governments 1990–2015
Author
Daniela Širinić
Copyright Year
2019
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73582-5_4