Cover of Agenda Setting, Policies, and Political Systems
Agenda Setting, Policies, and Political Systems A Comparative Approach
edited by Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Stefaan Walgrave
University of Chicago Press, 2014
Cloth: 978-0-226-12827-6 | Paper: 978-0-226-12830-6 | Electronic: 978-0-226-12844-3
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.001.0001

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ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Before making significant policy decisions, political actors and parties must first craft an agenda designed to place certain issues at the center of political attention. The agenda-setting approach in political science holds that the amount of attention devoted by the various actors within a political system to issues like immigration, health care, and the economy can inform our understanding of its basic patterns and processes. While there has been considerable attention to how political systems process issues in the United States, Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Stefaan Walgrave demonstrate the broader applicability of this approach by extending it to other countries and their political systems.

Agenda Setting and Political Attention brings together essays on eleven countries and two broad themes. Contributors to the first section analyze the extent to which party and electoral changes and shifts in the partisan composition of government have led—or not led—to policy changes in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, and France. The second section turns the focus on changing institutional structures in Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Canada, including the German reunification and the collapse of the Italian party system. Together, the essays make clear the efficacy of the agenda-setting approach for understanding not only how policies evolve, but also how political systems function.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Christoffer Green-Pedersen is professor of political science at Aarhus University, Denmark, and coeditor of Dismantling Public Policy. Stefaan Walgrave is professor of political science at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and coeditor of The World Says No to War.

REVIEWS

“Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Stefaan Walgrave have admirably assembled a group of contributors who, individually and collectively, bring the tools of policy agenda analysis to bear on the central political features of each of the countries examined. Along the way, the findings demolish prevailing expectations about national politics in thought-provoking ways. Clear and remarkable for its depth of analysis, this is one of the best collections of essays I have ever read.”
— David Lowery, Penn State University

“An impressive and broadly comparative collection of studies on political agenda setting. Agenda Setting, Policies, and Political Systems makes clear the importance of issue attentiveness in politics. It also provides a useful compilation of work on the effects both of and on issue attentiveness by legislatures, political parties, and governments in Europe and North America. In so doing, the book makes an important contribution to a growing body of research arguing that the study of agendas can be a particularly powerful means by which to understand and compare politics and policy making.”
— Stuart Soroka, McGill University

“The chapters in this volume demonstrate how the study of agenda setting has developed into a theoretically coherent research program. Beginning with the proposition that political attention is scarce and consequential, the chapters pursue this logic by presenting case studies on how issues gain and lose traction, and the interplay between issue agendas and coalition politics, party systems, electoral competition, and legislative outputs throughout Europe and North America. This volume is a must-read for scholars interested in how specific issues rise and fall, and why this process matters.”
— James Adams, University of California, Davis

“Green-Pedersen and Walgrave have collected a number of excellent empirical studies of political agenda setting research. . . . Each chapter offers another piece of the theoretical puzzle and can thus enrich readers’ understanding of how exactly political agendas form and how they impact political decision-making. . . . In sum, [Agenda Setting, Policies, and Political Systems] contains a wealth of information on a variety of countries and extended periods of time.”
— LSE Review of Books

“This is a remarkable achievement, . . .  a cross-country collaboration of unusual rigor and scope . . . [that] will help many more scholars join in the debate.”
— Perspectives on Politics

“Drawing on the political agenda-setting approach, Agenda Setting, Policies and Political Systems explores the dynamics of a broad range of policy issues in different countries. . . . The book reach[es] an important conclusion: the degree to which institutional and traditional political factors influence legislative activities varies across countries, although institutional factors seem to have little effect on average. . . . [The book] should be considered as not only an important scholarly contribution but also a helpful guide to those who are new to the political agenda-setting approach.”
— Political Studies Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0001
[Agenda-setting, Punctuated equilibrium, Political attention, Information, Political systems, Longitudinal research]
The introductory chapter argues that agenda setting is a key political process. It potentially forms the theoretical starting point for a whole research program on political systems, not just policy making. As political attention is scarce and consequential, focusing on agenda setting processes allows us to zoom in on the streams of influence within a political system. Following issues in their journey to the political system is like injecting tracer fluid for medical reasons: it lays bare the mechanism and processes in politics. Attention is driven by the interplay of information about problems and solutions coming from society, of the preferences of political actors, and of the political institutions creating space for, and constraints on, political attention. (pages 1 - 16)

Part I. Parties, Elections, and Policies


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0002
[United Kingdom, political parties, issue ownership, policy agendas, Speech from the Throne, Acts of Parliament]
Studies of agenda-setting often conclude that the influence of political parties is limited despite a wealth of research in other subfields that says the opposite. In the case of the United Kingdom the historically single party government system creates a propitious environment for finding issue ownership of the policy agenda. Through time series analyses of the content of the Speech from the Throne and Acts of Parliament from 1946 to 2008 the chapter shows only a limited number of owned issues for these two venues. This is sometimes in the unexpected direction, with the Labour Party owning crime for example. Overall, issue ownership does exist in United Kingdom policy agendas, but is weaker than one might expect. (pages 19 - 35)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0003
[Lawmaking, Legislative agenda, Legislative attention, Congressional Quarterly Almanac , Policy Agendas Project, Legislative majority, Public opinion, Political history, Agenda composition, Agenda size]
This chapter examines the size and composition of the legislative agenda in the United States, from an agenda-setting perspective. Using datasets from the Policy Agendas Project, it introduces a new method for assessing the relative importance of statutes enacted from 1948 to 2010. All laws from this period are filtered into three discrete subsets according the amount of legislative attention devoted to each law, as measured by lines of coverage in the Congressional Quarterly Almanac. The findings demonstrate fluctuations in the size of the statutory agenda, which are explicable by traditional political variables, especially the size of the partisan legislative majority and public opinion. Additionally, changes in agenda composition are most readily understood within a framework of political history. The lawmaking agenda of the United States is thus influenced by political factors, which largely determine the agenda size, and contextual factors, which determine the range of topics addressed by Congress. (pages 36 - 52)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0004
[party competition, issue competition, issue ownership, issue uptake, French politics, political parties, party manifestoes]
Based on new data on French party manifestoes, this chapter revisits the study of French party competition. While scholarship is dominated by approaches focusing on cleavages and alignments, this paper looks on the issue content of electoral competition. We confront two distinct perspectives: issue ownership vs. issue uptake. Concentrating on the two main French parties between 1981 and 2007, we find little evidence of issue ownership, but show that there is a lot of issue-overlap. Parties' issue profiles bear considerable similarities and vary strongly from election to election. The concept of issue uptake thus accounts better for the dynamics of issue competition: variations in issue attention are best explained through political parties' propensity to take up other parties’ topics. This perspective sheds light on the influence of niche parties and the relationship between change in issue attention and party system change. Our results illustrate the relevance of issue content for understanding party competition and point to new research directions. (pages 53 - 68)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0005
[party systems, agenda setting, Denmark, conflict lines, Danish People’s Party]
This chapter presents an agenda-setting approach to studying party system development. Where traditional approaches focus on either the number of parties or the emergence of new conflict lines, an agenda-setting perspective focuses on the development of the political agenda. This approach is used to study the development of the Danish party system over the past 40 years. Other approaches focus on the 1973 election, which doubled the number of parties, and the 2001 election which allegedly represented the emergence of a new conflict line in the party system. The agenda-setting approach focuses on the introduction of new political issues like the environment and immigration. This process explains the 2001 election and also why the Danish People’s Party unlike the new parties which entered parliament in 1973 has found a stable role in the party system. Further, the Danish party system continues to be dominated by the left-right dimension. (pages 69 - 85)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0006
[coalition agreement, agenda drift, legislative agenda, The Netherlands, coalition government]
The chapter analyses agenda dynamics during the life time of coalition governments in the Netherlands. It shows how the initial policy agenda included in coalition agreements relates to the legislative agenda set each year during the term of a government. The findings do not support the initial hypothesis that governments set the annual legislative agenda close to the coalition agreement in their first full year in office and then drift away from it. Rather, there is a cyclic process. Coalition governments in the Netherlands appear to set a different course of attention to legislative topics in their first full year, and in following years they move closer to the coalition agreement. When in office long enough, they then drift away to the level at point of departure. By and large, agenda correspondence levels vary between some 60 and 20%, with an average at governmental midterm of 0.45. (pages 86 - 104)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0007
[Direct democracy, Issue attention, Parliamentary motions, Party manifesto, Policy change, Popular initiative, Populist right party, Swiss People’s Party , Switzerland , Venue shopping]
This chapter investigates the ways through which direct democracy structures political opportunities for populist far right parties to get political attention, voice policy preferences, foster vote-seeking strategy, and potentially promote policy change. Empirically, it analyses the ideological transformation, electoral rise and policy strategies of the Swiss People’s party. Based on a systematic examination of the parliamentary motions and the popular initiatives launched by the Swiss People’s party over the period 1979-2009, this study focuses on the issue prioritization and ‘venue-shopping’ strategy of the party, and its success in controlling the political agenda. The findings show that the agenda-setting power of the Swiss People’s party is higher in the direct democratic arena than in the parliamentary arena. In other words, with its far-reaching direct democracy, the Swiss political system offers favourable institutional conditions for a populist right-wing party like the Swiss People’s party. (pages 105 - 122)

Part II. Issue Priorities and Institutional Change


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0008
[Germany, legislative agenda, reunification, Europeanization, partisan control, upper chamber control, ministerial agenda control]
The chapter highlights that public policy-making in Germany is dynamic. Based on a study of over 3,000 laws enacted between 1978 and 2005, major ebbs and flows of particular policy issues are identified. Economic issues often dominate the legislative agenda. Law and order slowly emerged on the legislative agenda since the mid-1990s while environmental concerns rapidly and sporadically burst to the forefront. The episodic rise and fall of legislative issues contradicts the notion of incremental, deliberative policy making in German politics. Subsequent analysis shows that the influence of large-scale transformations – reunification and Europeanization – and institutional structures – partisan, upper chamber and ministerial control – is policy-domain specific. (pages 125 - 144)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0009
[Belgium, Devolution, Party manifestos, Parliamentary questions, Issue overlap]
The Belgian chapter deals with the Belgian devolution process and asks whether there is an increasing issue divergence between Belgium’s two main regions in terms of issue emphasis. It investigates party manifestos and parliamentary questions over time and finds that no such trend towards a more diverging issue emphasis is observed. Notwithstanding strong decentralization with several constitutional changes giving more competences to the regions, parties in their manifestos and MPs in their questions do seem to stay focused on the same issues. This challenges one of the main reasons that is often argued to be the cause of devolution in Belgium: that the issues and problems the two regions face, and their issue priorities, have become very different over time. (pages 145 - 163)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0010
[Italy, party manifestos, lawmaking, government alternation, agenda-setting, mandate theory]
Italy underwent a major political upheaval at the beginning of the 1990s. The then 40 year-old party system shifted from a case of polarised multipartism to one of bipolar alternation. Given this peculiar conditions, Italy represents an interesting case to study the effects of variation in party competition on the national legislative agenda, other factors remaining relatively constant. The background assumption is that in the new system of alternation, Italian governing parties have more incentives to enact laws in areas which receive greater emphasis in their policy platform, so as to comply with their electoral mandate. This chapter explores the party-policy link by analysing the correspondence between the legislative agenda (adopted laws) and the party agenda publicized during electoral campaigns (political manifestos of winning coalition/parties). The study covers a period of 24 years (1983-2006), during which 6 national elections were held. (pages 164 - 182)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0011
[mandate responsiveness, policy dynamics, multilevel system of governance, type of government]
This chapter analyzes whether policy dynamics in Spain occur following the programmatic commitments of the governing political parties, and to what extend variations in the implementation of policy promises are explained by institutional factors mainly the type of government and the distribution of issue jurisdiction across levels of government, for the period 1980 to 2008. The methodology is based on the databases –party manifestos, speeches and laws—developed by the Spanish policy agendas project. Results illustrate mandate responsiveness is declining from consolidation to democracy to present. Contrary to previous analyses, this decline cannot be attributed to whether policy makers are governing with the majority of seats or not, but to the consolidation of a multilevel system of governance. Mandate responsiveness is declining with more intensity for those issues with shared jurisdiction, independently of the type of government. (pages 183 - 200)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0012
[Canada, Federalism, subnational government, executive speeches, diffusion, mimicking]
This chapter sheds light on the emergence of policy issues in a decentralized system where each provincial government attempts to define its policy agenda, regardless of what the other provinces are doing. Combining the agenda-setting literature with policy diffusion theories, this chapter focuses on the nature of diffusion that may occur during the period of transformation in Canadian federalism and investigates to what extent regional and federal governments’ agendas influence each other by comparing the magnitude of change (or stability) in attention paid to policy issues. Based on a unique dataset of 445 Speeches from the Throne delivered in each Canadian province, as well as in the federal Parliament, from 1960 to 2009, it is demonstrated that the traditional question laid out by agenda-setting scholars – i.e. why policy agendas move on some issues and not on others – is particularly relevant in a federal context on three dimensions: time, space and sector. (pages 201 - 219)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226128443.003.0013
[Agenda-setting, Comparative politics, Political systems, Electoral cycle, Mandate politics, Devolution]
This final chapter summarizes the book and argues that the chapters in the book show that a focus on attention for issues through time makes for a useful approach. Stripping issues of their meaning and just considering bare issue attention generates a kind of standardized measure of politics that can be employed to analyze political processes on the system level. Addressing landmark properties and/or key puzzles in the eleven countries, the book chapters led to novel conclusions. In short, the electoral cycle and parties’ preferences do not matter as much as classic mandate theory would have expected. A good deal of the agenda seems to be reactive to real-world problems that any party in government should tackle, irrespective of its preferences. Also structural breaks or seminal evolutions like devolution do seem to affect the agenda less than anticipated. Institutional change does not lead to large shifts in the agenda. Both these findings challenge key theories in political science and indicate the potential of focusing on issue attention. (pages 220 - 230)

Appendix

References

Notes on Contributors

General Index

Index of Cited Authors

Book published by University of Chicago Press, 2014. Page maintained by BiblioVault.